Seven Sons (Gypsy Brothers, #1)

protecting him. He’s protecting Dornan, who held his high school sweetheart down and raped her. While he made Jase watch.

  “I get it,” I say flatly. “He’s your father. Of course you want to be loyal to him.”

  Jase appears pained. “Want to? Have to. You think you’re the only one trapped here with no way out?”

  I swallow thickly and sit there, my heart pounding in my chest.

  Not protecting him.

  Being held hostage by him.

  It all makes perfect sense now.

  We stay in the glass house for hours, eventually talking of lighter things, only leaving when the sun decides to slip below the horizon. By the time we do, something has definitely shifted between Jase and Sammi. Which is a wonderful thing to cling to amongst the madness I am drowning in.

  When I finally collapse into Dornan’s king-sized bed at midnight, tipsy and exhausted, I can only hope that he stays away another day.

  Twelve

  When I wake in the morning, I am still alone. Thank Christ for small miracles. After spending a blessed day with Jase, the last thing I want to do is wake up to a nightmare. I have a pit in the bottom of my stomach when I wake up, a nervous, cloying tension that something is wrong. I wonder if it’s because Elliot is going crazy trying to contact my useless, smashed phone.

  There is a soft knock at the door and I sit up, tensed for whoever might be there, and wishing I had a gun. I relax when Jase sticks his head in.

  “Awake?”

  “Yeah,” I reply, stretching lazily. I stand up, brightening when I see he is holding a tray with two coffee cups.

  “My father’s on his way back,” he says. “Should be here any minute. You want breakfast?” He holds up a brown paper bag. “I grabbed bagels.”

  I love bagels. “Sure,” I say. “Just let me get changed.”

  “Meet you on the roof,” he says, leaving my coffee on the dresser next to the door.

  I sip the coffee as I change into a sleeveless turquoise-colored dress with little lace details cut into the hem. I had to buy a whole new wardrobe when I had my boobs done. Nothing from my old life fits me anymore, which is kind of a good thing. New clothes for a new identity.

  I slip my feet into clear plastic flip flops and tie my hair in a messy bun on top of my head. Grabbing my sunglasses and my coffee, I head up to the roof.

  This morning, the storm has cleared and the view of the ocean is stunning. Jase has buttered two blueberry bagels and sat them on a brown paper bag on the edge of the building, which comes up to my waist.

  “Thanks for breakfast,” I say, shoving a piece of buttery bagel in my mouth and following it with a slug of warm latte. “I would’ve settled for Cheerios and instant coffee, but this is delicious.”

  Jase smiles. “No problem. The first one’s free.”

  “Oh, really?” I ask. “What does the next one cost?”

  He opens his mouth to answer me, but before he does, the fire escape door bursts open and several of the Ross brothers appear. I almost choke on the bagel in my throat.

  “They’re up here!” Chad calls down the stairs.

  I stand there, looking for a weapon just in case. I don’t know what they’re up to. I don’t trust any of them for a second.

  Except Jase.

  My worst nightmare arrives at the top of the stairs, bound, gagged, and bloody.

  Fuck.

  Dornan pushes the poor boy forward, and I rush to them, freaking the fuck out.

  This is bad. This is so very, very bad.

  “Baby girl!” Dornan booms, clearly amped up on a mixture of adrenalin and some kind of drug, probably crystal meth. “Got you a gift!”

  “Dornan,” I stutter. “What are you doing?”

  Dornan removes the boy’s gag, and grabs the back of his neck, pointing his gaze towards me.

  “Remember her, motherfucker?!” Dornan demands, spittle flying from his mouth and landing on the boy’s face.

  “Dornan, it’s not what you think!”

  “Shut your mouth,” Dornan yells at me. “Let him speak.”

  Oh God. What am I going to do?

  “Dornan, he’s not who you think he is–”

  “Chad, shut her the fuck up, will you?” Dornan points to me and before I can move, Chad has sidled up alongside me and grabbed me in a bear hug, his hand planted firmly over my mouth. I gasp, unable to scream. I look over at Jase, whose peaceful breakfast has been shattered by all the ruckus.

  “Pop,” Jase says slowly, “what’s going on? Who the hell is this guy?”

  “What’s your name, son?” Dornan demands. “Speak!”

  “M-Michael.”

  Michael Trevine.

  I just have one question for you, baby girl.

  The boy is terrified. One of his eyes is swollen shut, there is blood all over him, and I wonder how much of the long journey back to LA was spent beating him.

  Tears form at the corner of my eyes as the full brunt of Dornan’s obsession with me becomes apparent. He left me here for this. He asked me who my ex-boyfriend was, and then proceeded to travel across the country to kidnap an innocent boy from his house. A boy who has never laid eyes on me, a boy who I found online and added to Sammi’s backstory for credibility.

  A boy with a gun pointed at his head.

  I struggle against Chad’s stronghold, but it is useless. The guy is built, and he’s probably been snorting the white powder with Daddy Dornan all the way home.

  I bite down on Chad’s hand and he pulls it away, yelling at me.

  “He’s not my ex!” I scream, fighting against Chad’s rigid embrace.

  Dornan looks at me like a man possessed. A man on a mission.

  “I lied,” I gasp, still struggling. “I’ve never met him before. Please, just let him go.”

  Dornan lowers his gun and looks me up and down. “You don’t have to be scared of him anymore,” he says.

  He lifts the gun, his finger putting pressure on the trigger.

  “Please!” I scream.

  My pleas go unheeded.

  He pulls the trigger.

  Two things happen. Firstly, the roar of a single bullet as it leaves Dornan’s gun and enters the back of the boy’s head. Secondly, almost at the exact same time, I am showered with a fine mist of blood and what I think are pieces of Michael Trevine’s skull.

  Michael lays on the ground, motionless. The red cloud around his head grows swiftly, reaching my flip flops. I scream and Chad releases me, letting me slump to the ground. I crawl through blood and bits of skull to get to the dead boy, cradling him in my arms. He is heavy, a dead weight, because he is dead. And it is my fault.

  I heft the boy onto my lap and realize his eyes are still open.

  Fuck.

  With trembling fingers, I reach over and press his eyelids shut.

  I feel hands on my shoulders, pulling me away, and it takes everything inside me not to kick and claw and bite Dornan as he carries me away. He pulls my clothes off and puts me in the shower, where I huddle into a ball and stare at the lines of grout that separate each white tile.

  You don’t have to be scared of him anymore.

  I make a strangled sobbing sound, but nothing much comes out of my throat except a dried-up, pathetic scream.

  Dornan pulls me from the shower, wraps me in a towel and walks me to his bed, where he sits me down.

  “Do you understand how much I care about you now?” Dornan asks with a throat full of gravel. His hands are all over me, feverish, and I don’t fight back when he presses me down onto the bed and unbuckles his belt.

  I just lay there, in shock, his lips at my throat and his hands roving every inch of my shell-shocked body.

  “Do you know why I did that?” he breathes in my ear as he grips my hips and slides inside me.

  My breath hitches in my throat as he begins to thrust into me, and I feel a single tear roll down the side of my face.

  “Because I’m yours,” I whisper into the darkness. />
  Thirteen

  If I think watching Michael die in front of me for a careless lie I created is bad, the aftermath is horrific.

  Dornan is high, the blood on his hands washed clean away but still leaving invisible handprints all over my body that spell murderer.

  Because it is my fault. I should never have used a real person’s name in my fake past; I should have just made one up.

  It seems that the only thing that gets Dornan hornier than a girl auditioning for a job by screwing him is killing her supposed ex-boyfriend. The hours after he shoots Michael are possibly even worse than the night six years ago when Dornan and his sons took turns raping me. Because at least then I could struggle.

  At least then I could scream.

  Now, here, it is like I am in a hell that I will never escape. Six years’ worth of nightmares are coming to life in the space of a few incredibly torturous hours.

  Dornan is high and he wants to fuck.

  “What’s wrong, baby girl?” he keeps asking me over and over as I lay flat on my back, being fucked, unable to move.

  I just have one question, baby girl.

  After it has been going on for an hour or maybe more, I clear my raw throat.

  “Stop,” I plead.

  He doesn’t stop.

  I push his warm chest away from mine. I can’t breathe. I threw up my breakfast in the shower as I watched Michael’s blood and pieces of skull rinse from my skin and drift lazily down the drain, gone forever. I am shaky and starving.

  For a moment, I think he will stop, afford me a small rest before he starts up again.

  “Please?” I ask him. “Please just stop for a minute.”

  He doesn’t stop.

  It’s the drugs, I realize. He is frustrated. He is hard and he is horny and the drugs are stopping him from having that release that he needs so desperately to calm down.

  “Stop!” I yell, pushing