My eyes drifted once again along the slash. Bruises darkened her slender neck. I urged her chin up. “What are these marks? The cuts? Your voice—it . . someone . . . were you strangled?”
“I fought back,” she said, smiling softly. “And I won. That’s what matters.”
Pride swelled in my chest. My girl. She’d done well, but a victory was hardly enough to placate me. “Don’t protect me, Natalia.”
As I tried to sit forward again, she kept me in place with a bandaged hand on my shoulder.
“What happened there?”
“Please. Lie back—”
“Stop telling me to lie back. Give me every detail, or I’ll go find someone who will.”
She glanced at the heart rate monitor. “I don’t want you to get upset.”
I caught her wrist and brought her palm to my bare chest so she could feel my pulse. “The physical pain is nothing. I’ve felt worse,” I said. “But every second that ticks by without knowing what happened to you, the ache grows. My anger grows, and my heart—”
“Okay,” she said, her voice soothing despite the way her eyes darted over the screen as it picked up my increased heart rate. She scooted closer, keeping her warm hand over my heart. “All right. I’ll tell you. Belmonte-Ruiz had a mission. For all the women you took from them, they wanted to repay the favor.”
“They targeted you.”
“All of us. We fought back,” she said quickly. “Not everyone survived, but Jaz, me, Pilar—we’re all safe.”
That wasn’t good enough. One life lost, one scrape, even—it was too much. I shut my eyes. “I swore to you that you were safe here. That I’d be here to protect you. All of you.” Jaw clenched, I looked away. “I failed you.”
She got even closer. “You were here, Cristiano. A man entered the room while I was on the phone with you. He put his hands around my neck and squeezed until I saw stars.”
I would tear him limb from limb. I would rain fury on his family, his brothers, anyone he cared about. A hazy film shuttered my vision as I shook with an impending explosion. All I could see was another man in my bedroom.
Threatening my wife.
Touching her.
Hurting her.
Visions crashed across my mind like waves against sharp-edged rocks. “I’ll kill the motherfucker.”
“I already did,” she said, her eyes locked on mine.
What? My temper simmered as the words registered. “You . . .”
She nodded slowly, a proud smile forming on her face. “I told you. I fought back, and I won. You were here. You taught me.” Her expression turned serious again. “I panicked, though. I wasn’t in the right mindset, and I couldn’t fight him off, and I started to give up. I did everything wrong at first. But he didn’t expect me to defend myself, and that was his mistake. I don’t think any of them expected that of us.”
“He underestimated you,” I said. “But you didn’t underestimate yourself.”
“You gave us . . . you gave me the tools to defend myself, and I did.”
“How?”
“Jaz helped.” She curled her fist against my chest. “I’ll tell you all the details later, and you can tell me how to do it better next time.”
I shook my head, half-awed, half-wishing I’d seen it with my own eyes. “You did everything you were supposed to. You survived.”
“Rule number one—don’t die.” She took my wrist, dipped her head so I wouldn’t have to reach much, and brought my fingers to her stitches. “They’re a badge of honor. You warned me I might get hurt, so I was ready for it. You have scars. Now I’ll have them, too. And they’ll remind me that sometimes . . . things might seem scary and impossible. But that doesn’t mean they are.”
Was she talking about more than her attack? Everything about me and my life had frightened her when she’d arrived. I hoped this was her telling me that I’d prepared her well, taught her to defend herself, and now she was ready to open herself up to the possibility of scary and impossible things—like us.
“The scars are a part of you,” I said, “and they represent the second chance you gave yourself.” I ran a thumb over her bruised, cut cheek. There was a glaring question I couldn’t ignore, though, and I worried the answer could set me off in a way I wouldn’t be able to come back from, but I had to know.
“Natalia. Did he touch you . . .? Did he . . . did . . .” I urged myself on. She was my wife. We shared a bed. I’d threatened the universe that no man should come near her. If he’d tried anything with her, it would change everything. How I approached her, touched her, even spoke to her. It would break my heart in two and send me to the depths of a hell I didn’t want to even acknowledge, but I had to take care of her before I could worry about myself. “I have to know if he raped you, or even if he tried.”