Page 69 of Marrying the Mobster
Sounds come from me, but I’m not sure I’m forming actual words. The warm, fresh air of the outdoors kisses my skin, and I hear ocean waves from somewhere in the distance.
“I have you now,” Diego says. “You’re going to be okay. Do you hear me? Nothing like this will ever happen to you again, I swear it.”
“Y-you … came,” I manage between the shudders wracking me. I think shock is setting in, or maybe it’s relief that has me feeling as if my soul is detaching from my body.
“Yes,” he reassures me. “I will always come for you.”
“I … thought …”
Diego squeezes me tighter and it hurts, but the pain is sweet, poignant. It’s the best feeling—one of being safe and protected, knowing that the torment has come to an end.
“I know,” he says. “I should have known better. You would never have left me that way. I should never have doubted you.”
I want to be angry with him for assuming the worse, but I don’t have it in me. It was all part of Viktor’s plan, making Diego think I had left with him willingly. What he didn’t count on was Diego’s determination to keep me by any means necessary. He didn’t count on me being willing to fight to the death to get back to the man I love.
Jovan’s voice interrupts before I can respond. “What the fuck? What did that motherfucker do to her? I swear to fucking God—”
“Open the door you idiot,” Diego snaps. “I need you to get her out of here. Now.”
I cling tighter to Diego’s shirt as my body dips and settles on to the leather seats of a car. “No … don’t … don’t leave …”
I crack my eyes enough that I can see Diego looming over me, his hands sweeping my hair back from my face. He looks like murder on legs, like death personified. Through the veil of worry over me, I can see the determination in his features, the resolve driving him.
“It’s only for a little while,gatita,” he says, stroking my battered cheek. “Jovan’s going get you home so Antonella and Mariana can clean you up and Dr. Molena can examine you. I have to finish neutralizing the threat to us … to you. Do you understand? I have to take care of Viktor. I can’t breathe thinking of him walking the same earth as you. But when I’m done, I’ll never let you out of my sight again.”
I let go, my hand falling limp at my side. The strength to respond escapes me and I turn my head away from him, closing my eyes. I understand what he has to do now, but that doesn’t stop me from hating it.
“Go,” Diego says to Jovan. “Take care of her, Jovan. I need her safe.”
“Consider it done,jefe.”
My head is heavy, my neck too weak to go on holding up. I register Jovan maneuvering me so I’m more comfortable, then clicking the seatbelt across my lap.
“Hang in there, tiger,” he murmurs, patting my arm. “You’re the toughest bitch I know. You’ll make it through this.”
It’s the last thing I remember other than the roar of the engine when Jovan starts the car. With a jolt, it speeds off into the night and I finally allow myself to fall back into the dark void of nothingness.
33
Diego
In the days following Elena’s homecoming, it feels as if a heavy blanket of death has fallen over the house. The staff are silent when I walk past, but I hear them whispering among themselves—talking about my wife’s ordeal and speculating over whether she’ll ever be the same again.
After returning home that night, I went straight to the bedroom to find Dr. Molena bent over Elena, inspecting her injuries. I was helpless, impotent in my fury at the sight of her, broken and bruised from head to toe. Molena assures me that there are no broken bones or signs of internal injuries—just superficial wounds that will heal, a bit of dehydration, and fatigue. He leaves her a bottle of pain pills and a nurse who will sleep in the room next to ours to monitor her progress and keep fluids flowing through the IV embedded in her arm.
Once we’re alone, I stand for what feels like hours and watch Elena, who’s lost to a drug-induced sleep. Her face is black and blue, one eyelid swollen. Fingerprints show me where Viktor had his filthy hands all over her—her cheeks, her throat, her waist, one of her breasts. Her stomach is an angry reddish-purple, and her legs are slashed with cuts caused by what I find out was glass.
With her out cold, I have no way of knowing what exactly he did to her, and it drives me crazy to speculate. He wouldn’t have stripped her down to almost nothing if all he wanted to do was smack her around a little bit. The thought of him taking her against her will, degrading and using her, makes me tremble and fills my throat with bile.
Aside from guilt over what was done to her, I also have to wrestle with knowing I would have gone after Elena faster if I’d had more faith in her. I was convinced she had left me, and I left her to suffer in Viktor’s clutches like the asshole I am.
It doesn’t matter that it only took a few hours for us to track them down and for me to pull my head out of my ass long enough to see the truth. Within those hours, she might have endured a variety of horrors … things I could have saved her from if I had been there.
I’ll have to live with my own failure for the rest of my life, but I also intend to spend that time making it up to her. Even knowing she might hate me for doubting her, I can’t bring myself to let her go. It might be the right thing to do, but everything within me rebels at the thought of releasing Elena to live a life separate from mine. No one will protect her like I will. No one will love her with the visceral intensity driving me to hold on to her.
Elena sleeps for twenty-four hours, and I spend every second of that time sitting at her bedside. The nurse comes to examine her after she wakes, assuring me that everything is fine. Her body will heal, but it’s her spirit I’m worried about.
My wife isn’t the woman I’ve come to know and love. She doesn’t tear into me for not being here to protect her, or cry on my shoulder over what Viktor did to her. Elena is like an empty shell, staring off into open air as if being haunted by ghosts I can’t see. I might have slaughtered my way through that house to free her, and removed the threat of Viktor so she never has to fear him again … but I can’t fight the invisible. I can’t tear down the memories of what she endured in that basement.
