“I’m alright,” I agreed, nodding slightly. He touched his forehead to mine, sighing a breath of relief as his hand came to rest on my stomach. We gave ourselves that one moment, the opportunity to breathe together and then he pulled away. His face turned stony, the devil who sought revenge taking over his features as Rafe faded away andEl Diablocame to life.
I buried my face against his chest, breathing in the scent of him one last time even as it was disguised by the smell of burning fabric. When I released him with a shuddering breath, he bent to pick up his discarded gun and led me into the hallway.
“Pavel’s getting away,” I said, desperate for the man to be caught. For him to suffer for all he’d done and would continue to do if he managed to escape.
“I’ll find him,mi reina,” Rafe said, turning back to look at me. His eyes filled with warmth, with love and affection, even as that dark nightmare lurked beneath the surface. Rafael wanted blood and retribution, but my husband wanted me safe even more.
I wanted to hide away and stay wrapped up in his arms, but the need for Pavel and Dima to suffer meant I stayed with him, trailing behind in my bare feet. My shoes were nowhere in sight, and I realized that they must have fallen off when I fought with Pavel as he dragged me up to Dima’s bedroom. I hadn’t even realized it at the time, too focused on surviving.
We moved through the hallway, with Rafael clearing each room we passed and keeping me tucked behind him to the best of his ability. The hall curved to the left; a little alcove tucked away where heavy curtains covered the windows.
Somewhere in these halls, there was an amber room made to be my gilded cage, where the last remaining bond with my sister had snapped in two. We rounded the bend, coming face to face with Dima standing in the center of the hall. Rafael stilled in front of me, shoving me firmly behind him as he observed the other man.
He wasn’t armed, lumbering along as quickly as he could. He stumbled occasionally, as if the loss of his eye made him incapable of balancing the same as before. A blood-soaked bandage crossed his face, covering the void of the eye that I’d taken from him, and it appeared as if it was doing very little to control the bleeding.
“What’s wrong, Rafael? Don’t recognize me?” he asked, spreading his arms wide as if he welcomed death.
“Where’s your father?” Rafael asked, handing me the gun. I didn’t know what I was doing with a weapon so large, but I took it and kept my fingers as far away from all the important parts as I could.
“Long gone by now,” Dima said, dropping his arms to his sides. He trailed his eyes up from my bare feet and over my legs, taking in the marks on my body. “I never should have left you with him. I’m sorry, ??? ?????. I won’t let that happen again.”
I stilled as I stared at him, watching him raise his hand toward me. He was truly delusional enough to believe that I would go anywhere with him, that I would ever choose him.
Rafael stepped forward, approaching him with fury written into every line of his face. His fist shot forward like a whip, the crunching sound of Dima’s nose breaking echoing through the hall as the Russian man groaned. He raised his fists to block his face, jabbing toward Rafael far too slowly to do any good.
I’d watched Rafael and Joaquin fight, a battle of speed and masterful violence. Dima was no more frightening than I would have been in a fistfight, and the sight of his pathetic attempt was almost enough to make me pity him.
But I thought of all the women he’d hurt; of all the children he’d violated and sold. They’d been weaker than him. They’d been vulnerable, and he hadn’t hesitated to exploit that.
It was his turn to bleed.
It was his turn to hurt, and I wanted to be the one to deliver that final blow on behalf of the victims who hadn’t been as lucky as I was.
Rafael’s fists landed against the flesh of Dima’s stomach in rapid fire, the breath knocked out of the other man as he leaned into the assault. “By the time I’m done with you, there won’t be anything recognizable for your wife to bury,” he growled, striking the underside of Dima’s jaw with an uppercut.
Dima fell back, his head bouncing off the wood floor when he landed. Rafael kicked him in the ribs, nudging him as if he wanted his plaything to stand back up so he could keep toying with him. “Pavel, Rafe,” I reminded my husband, stepping forward and looming over Dima.
He was curled in on himself, cradling his legs to his stomach as if that would do much of anything to protect them from Rafael’s booted assault.
I aimed lower as Rafe watched me, his lungs heaving and nostrils flared with the need for violence. Drawing back my right leg, I kicked Dima in the balls hard enough that his shrill scream clattered off the gaudy papered walls and sounded like music to my demented ears. Rafael laughed darkly, pressing the toe of his boot down on top of Dima’s throat while he thrashed from side to side. “Did you take his eye?” he asked, nodding down at the bandage covering it.
“Yes,” I said, and he tore off the bandage to look at the damage. To take that moment to memorize the injury I’d inflicted. I thought it would be a fond memory for him, a reminder of how blood thirsty I could be thanks to the nightmare he’d turned me into.
“And now you crushed his balls. Seems fitting,” Rafael said as he pressed down more firmly on Dima’s throat. Dima clawed at his boots, the sound of his short nails on leather like nails on a chalk board as he gasped and fought for breath. His face turned red, his remaining grey eye bulging from its socket.
I watched in captivation, wondering for a moment if that was what I’d looked like when Pavel had strangled me. “Alive, Rafael,” I said, taking his forearm in my grip. His eyes met mine, understanding and something twisted dawning in his expression even as I took away his newest toy to torment. “I want him alive.”
His lips twisted into a sinister smile as he lifted his boot off Dima’s throat. “Anything for you,mi reina.”He accepted the gun from my grip, slamming the butt of the weapon down against the side of Dima’s head. He stilled on the floor; his eye drifting closed as his consciousness dropped away.
“Stay close,” he said pointedly, as he stepped over Dima’s limp form. He notched the gun against his shoulder and continued down the hallway.
“We can’t just leave him. What if he wakes up?” I asked. I hurried after him, anxious to keep up but not wanting to take my eyes off Rafe’s back long enough to really glance back at Dima lying in the middle of the hallway.
There’d been a time when he was my savior; then he’d been my enemy. In the end, I would be the woman who murdered him slowly.
“I’ll send someone back to watch him,” Rafe said, continuing through the hall in his mission to find somewhere safe for me so that he could go after Pavel. The thought of him leaving me left me conflicted, torn between wanting him to stay at my side for the rest of my life and not wanting Pavel to escape.
We came to the place at the center of the building where the four hallways intersected, the sound of footsteps hurrying down the halls toward us. Rafe pushed me between him and the wall, giving me his back and flattening us against the surface as best he could while we waited for the people to appear.