3. Dino
3
DINO
I don’t know what I’m doing.
I’m running on pure instinct. And every single one of those instincts, right now, is telling me that I’m an idiot if I let Marisol walk out on me.
So I won’t let her.
She’s not going anywhere, a fact that is resoundingly clear to me. I don’t care if I have to keep her here under lock and fucking key.
I’m not letting Marisol out of my sight again. It isn’t a fucking option.
Her brown eyes narrow as she looks at me from Elio’s makeshift hospital bed. “Keeping me here puts everyone in danger, Dino.”
“I don’t give a fuck.” I truly don’t. If I need to use Elio’s army to keep her here, and every last one of them dies protecting her, I don’t care .
I’m not letting her go back there.
“If you know about me and the twins, then you know about my father.”
Everyone knows about her father.
Benicio Souza is the nightmare that keeps the cartels in line. He’s something else entirely, a monster made human.
When I first found out that Marisol was his daughter, I couldn’t figure it out. The difference between the two of them seems completely irreconcilable. Where she is kind and thoughtful, and sweet, he’s.. not.
He’s a hardened killer. His attack dog, Andrei, is brutal and nasty not because it’s necessary to fuck people up the way he does, but because Benicio is entertained by it. I’m sure Andrei has a couple of screws loose, but I’m also certain that Benicio loosened them right up.
He’s sick.
He also has lots of children, somewhat scattered all over the world. Being Benicio’s wife, mistress, or child is one of the most dangerous roles on the face of the planet, as he seems to kill them without a second thought, and quite often.
Marisol, however, is obviously his favorite.
I nod. “I know about your father.”
“Then you know that to keep them safe I need to go.”
Just like that first night, Marisol is practical.
“No,” I say again.
“Dino. You’re being ridiculous. You can’t keep me here against my will. ”
“I can.”
She starts to sit up in the bed but I put my hands on her shoulders, pushing her back into the bed.
“You will not leave. The children are safe.”
She glares up at me, and the unspoken word that I didn’t say simmers between us.
Our children.
“You don’t know anything, Dino. You have no idea why my father had me in Brasilia for the last two years. Also, do you think that I escaped him just to be trapped by someone else?”
I snarl at her. “I. Don’t. Care.”
“He’s going to marry me off, Dino.”
The silence is so loud, you could hear a pin drop.
Marisol.
Marrying.
Someone else.
“He’s in debt. Like, a lot of it. Some of his fields were taken over in a government coup, and he can’t persuade the new president for anything to give them back. All of it was confiscated. Thousands of tons of product. He can’t make his payments, his shipments are all empty, and every day that he doesn’t have it, is another day that he continues to lose money. He’s desperate. I’ve never seen him like this before. He’s auctioning me off to the highest bidder, essentially, and I’m the only leverage he has.”
Her words cut through the ringing in my ears. I hear them, but I’m still not certain that I understand .
Marisol looks up at me, her brown eyes wide. “Please, Dino. He doesn’t care about his grandchildren. He’ll do anything to get me back. He has my mother, and I think if I don’t go back to him, something awful is going to happen to her. If it hasn’t already,” her voice drops to a whisper.
My blood feels like it’s roaring so loud, I can barely hear her.
“I have to. Or he’s going to hurt these people, and I can’t let him hurt the people I love. I can’t let him hurt Gia and Elio and Sal and Caterina, not when they were so nice and helped me. Not when Gia helped me escape him that first time,” she whispers.
I notice that I’m not on the list of people she cares about. It should sting.
But it doesn’t.
“You and your goddamn sense of integrity,” I growl. When she found me on the beach and told me she can’t call herself a kind person if she doesn’t act in a kind way, I thought it was cute. A little idealistic, but cute.
Now, it’s just annoying.
“It’s not integrity. It’s common decency. I can’t sacrifice people I care about to save myself. Plus,” she adds, looking down. “It’s pointless. He’s going to come for me one way or another. I might as well make it a little less damaging when he does.”
Fuck that.
I grunt and push back. She stares at me, wide-eyed, her chest rising and falling as her nostrils flare .
“Don’t move,” I grunt.
With that, I walk out and slam the door behind me.
I storm upstairs. Gia and Caterina are sitting at the kitchen table. Judging by the amount of food and the silence, they managed to cut the party short. There’s no longer a crowd of people floating around, and while I have no idea where the kids are, I assume they’ve put everyone either to bed or locked them up as well.
I can’t talk to the twins yet.
I…
I don’t even know if they know I’m their father.
The thought makes my stomach twist with anxiety. Instead of uncovering why I feel so sick at the thought of meeting my own children, I square my feet and look at the women sitting at the kitchen table
“Where’s Elio?” I bark.
Gia frowns at me. “He’s at the front gate, checking on the guards…”
The rest of the sentence doesn’t matter to me. I turn and spin, marching down toward the gate house.
The air is warm, unseasonably so, but that’s fine with me. It echoes the heat I feel from the hatred in my heart.
Marisol can’t marry someone else.
It’s been years. I never really thought that there was a future for us, sure, but she never so much as looked at another man. When I rediscovered her a few years ago, I was so fucking happy that she didn’t have a boyfriend or a husband.
I’ve been watching her ever since .
She hasn’t so much as gone on a date. Hell, I don’t think she’s even glanced at another man.
So for her to get married?
It’s not fucking happening.
She can’t marry you, idiot.
The thought nearly stops me in my tracks.
I’m not good enough for Marisol. I know that, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
But at the very least, I can make sure she doesn’t marry anyone else.
The gate house is full of people. I step inside, quietly filing in behind Sal.
Elio’s speaking.
“There are round-the-clock patrols. Do not let a single person enter this area who is not approved. No one goes in or out,” he says to the crowd. “We are on total lockdown. Nobody will come into this place of ours without our knowledge, and no one will leave. Do not underestimate the threat before us. Andrei Moretti has been trained as an assassin since he had his feet beneath him as a baby. Benicio Souza… I do not need to tell you what a threat he is,” Elio says calmly to the gathered crowd. “He will stop at nothing to get what he wants. Until Marisol can leave, and feels able to, we will ensure that our family, our people, and our organization remain safe. This is not our battle,” he says to the crowd.
Anger flares in me. Not our battle?
Marisol is mine. The twins are mine.
Here again, the difference between us stands. When it is Elio’s family at risk, it’s all hands on deck.
But when it’s mine?
Not our battle.
I feel Sal shuffle next to me, and I want to turn and slam my displeasure into his face. However, he merely nods, agreeing with Elio’s words.
As he always has.
Elio finishes giving his orders.
The gathered soldiers nod before filing out.
After a moment, Elio gestures to Sal and me. “Come. Let us see if there are any weaknesses in the fence.”
Walking the fence seems like a weird way to spend the time, especially considering that Elio likely wants to be inside checking on his family, but I follow all the same.
Outside of the iron fence that guards Elio’s home, the New York forest is oddly quiet. The air is still, almost like there’s nothing moving in the woods, and even the normal noises you’d expect, like bugs or frogs, are muted. I don’t hear anything except the crunch of gravel under our shoes as we walk the path that goes around the perimeter of Elio’s compound. We make it the whole way around and back to the gravel road when Sal finally speaks.
“You can’t keep her here,” Sal says quietly.
I stop. “You don’t get to fucking tell me what to do.”
“It’s not safe.”
“She’s not safe out there. ”
“Souza wants her,” Elio says calmly. “He’s her father. She knows him best. Perhaps we….”
He pauses.
There’s a shape walking up the road.
The three of us react. I reach for the knife in my belt. Sal shines a flashlight on the person.
And Elio sprints for them.
The split second before Elio flies in, arm poised to punch the stranger in the face, is when I realize who it is.
“Marco?”