26. Marisol
26
MARISOL
My mind refuses to acknowledge what just happened.
One minute I was standing on the porch, trying to figure out what on earth was happening after I listened to what sounded like a major battle happening from my room. I walked outside to see Dino, taunting my father’s guards and the Russian, and starting a riot.
Or what looked like a riot, anyway.
Then, the ground under my feet rumbled. The house seemed to shake. And when I turned, I saw a wall of earth coming straight for me.
I waited for it to hit me. I did.
But the only thing I felt was my father’s hands on my waist, shoving me to the side, under the roof of the house that was just out of reach of the wall of mud.
I watched the mud sweep my house, and Dino, and the full courtyard of men, down the hillside, taking chunks of the jungle with it .
For a second, I had an outrageous thought, because the forest in front of me was basically clear cut.
If it was a clear night, you could see the stars.
But it isn’t a clear night.
The stars aren’t out.
And I just watched the mountain swallow nearly a dozen men.
Including my own father, who might have just saved me…
And the father of my children.
I was standing, completely frozen, when Paolo found me.
And apparently, he saw that as his opportunity to do something he’d always wanted to do.
Covered in mud and broken, men, apparently, will still be men.
I almost had a grip on the knife at his belt by the time Dino hit him with the rock.
But stabbing him through the heart?
I needed that.
I’m looking at his body when Dino touches my arm. “We need to go,” he murmurs. “The mountain might give out, and I don’t know where the rest of the men are.”
Volkov.
The rest of the guards.
All of them will be a problem right now, and after coming within inches of being swallowed alive in a river of mud…
All I want is to get back to my girls .
I nod.
Dino looks at Paolo, then back at me. He kneels, taking the knife out of his chest. I try not to flinch at the ugly noise it makes, but I can’t help it.
It’s not a good sound, and even over the rain I can hear it squelching.
“You had good aim,” he murmurs as he wipes the blade off on Paolo’s shirt. “Try not to stab straight on. Easier to glance off a rib that way. And definitely don’t stab in the middle of the chest.”
“I know where the sternum is,” I say calmly.
It’s remarkable how clear some details are right now. The slow pump of blood out of Paolo’s heart. The knife. The rain making little rivers down his face. I don’t feel anything, not heat or cold, but I just…
I don’t know what to do with myself.
“Here,” Dino says, offering me the knife. I put my hand forward, my motion jerky as my fingers close around the handle.
We both watch as I take the knife and hold it at my side, shaking.
“If you need to, use that,” Dino murmurs. “Side. Kidney. Leg. Stab someone in the groin and you’ll hit an artery. The neck would be best though. The force you put into that last blow? That’s what you need,” he says.
I blink, looking at him. “Aren’t you going to tell me to leave it to you? That I’m delicate? That you should protect me? ”
I’m still bitter, apparently, about being treated like I’m made of tissue paper, which is absolutely the stupidest thing to be upset about right now.
My father was just swept away in a mudslide.
I shouldn’t be worried about being protected.
“No,” Dino says softly.
That catches my attention.
He looks at me. “I want you to be able to protect yourself. I will always be here for you, Marisol. But I can’t survive an act of God. If something else happens, take the knife. Go to the port. Find a way to get back to Elio and the girls.”
“Dino…”
“You did it once. You’re smart and very, very resilient, Marisol. More fuckin’ resilient than I think anyone realizes. You can do it again, and you might need to stab someone to get there. If you need to stab them, remember?—”
“Neck. Groin. Legs. Liver. Gut,” I say, adding one.
Dino nods. “The gut would be good. Especially with all this dirt around. It’ll be septic in a hot fuckin’ second.”
If I could feel my own skin, that would worry me, because I’d be concerned about dirt getting into my own wounds.
But I can’t.
And I’m not.
The calm is the strangest part. I guess that I do remember feeling like this, once.
When I gave birth to the twins .
Adrenaline, my brain tells me. Fight, flight, flee, or fawn.
Clearly, I’m a fighter.
“Let’s go get back to our girls,” Dino says softly.
One word.
Three letters.
And it stops me in my tracks more effectively than any river of mud.
I blink at him, the rain bringing mud into my eyes. I hastily scrub it out, blinking rapidly against the grit that’s gathered underneath my eyelids.
“Our?” I say.
I hate that the word sounds shaky, and that it’s almost lost in the cascade of the rain.
Dino reaches for my hand, grabbing the one that doesn’t hold a knife.
He nods.
“Yeah, baby. Our girls.”
I have no idea where we’re going.
The road is gone. The jungle is gone. There’s no way to know which way we’re headed, only that occasionally the rain lifts long enough for us to see the glittering lights of Brasilia, which is somewhere around fifteen miles away.
From Brasilia, we need to take a boat to the coast. Or, we need to catch a flight.
I have no passport and I look like the mountain spit me out. There’s no way that anyone is going to put me on a plane…
“Give me your hand,” Dino says roughly.
Automatically, I put my fingers in his.
He hauls me up against his firm chest, tugging me over some rocks that I hadn’t really noticed.
“Thanks,” I mutter.
Dino grunts.
We continue in silence, picking our way through the mountain, through the jungle, and Dino keeps startling like a cat every time he hears something other than the steady fall of rain.
Finally, I can’t take the silence anymore.
“Why do you keep looking over your shoulder?”
He sighs. “More landslides. Moretti. Your father, coming after us with his men.”
I stop. “My father?”
Dino looks at me, his eyes shining in the dark. “I found him,” he says quietly.
“Was he alive?”
He looks away. “Not for long. I’m sorry,” he says hoarsely.
I… don’t know what to say.
“Um. I… Thank you. I think,” I say.
Dino is quiet .
Instead of my brain whirling around this information alone, I start to just… say it out loud.
“I’m not close with my father. He’s a monster. He’s been the boogeyman that I’ve been afraid of for most of my life. So I’m not sad. I’m not. But he… I think he saved me,” I say hollowly. “He pushed me aside right as the mud swept away the side of the house where I was standing. He helped me. And lately he’d been talking to me like… like he cared about me.”
I heave in a huge breath, confusing thoughts rushing through me like a tidal wave.
“He’s always been a bad man. The worst man. But how can he be a bad man and one that wanted to save me?”
“People are complicated,” Dino says softly. “Everyone seems to have their reasons for doing shit, and sometimes it’s hard to know what the fuck they mean by it.”
Dino’s words are bitter.
Like he’s been grappling with this too.
“What were you doing? When I found you?” I ask.
Dino glances at me. “You want to do this here?”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Marisol. We need to get off the fucking mountain. It’s at least a fifteen mile walk back to the city. You’re cold, and we’re covered in mud that might contain the next fucking plague.”
“I’m not cold,” I say defiantly.
Almost on cue, my shoulders start to shake.
Dino’s face pinches with concern. “I think you’re going into shock. We need to get out of the fuckin’ rain like… now,” he growls.
“Dino…”
But he’s ignoring me. He grabs my hand, tugging me forward, and we follow the path of the mud as it wiped away the jungle down the mountainside.
After walking for a while, I realize that I am, in fact, really cold.
More than that, I’m… freezing.
I can’t stop my teeth from chattering. My legs feel like lead, like I can’t move them forward because every step is painful. I’m actually not sure that I can keep up, because my head is pounding and my vision is kind of fuzzy.
It isn’t until the darkness creeps at the edges of my vision, though, that I fall behind.
Dino turns, looking at me with concern. “Marisol? Are you okay?”
“I…” I’m trying to tell him that I’m okay, that I just need to get the rest of the way down the mountain.
But I never get a chance to.
Darkness swims over my eyes, and everything stops.
I’m warm.
I must be dead, because there’s no way that I’m this warm exposed to the rain.
If I’m dead though …
I’ll never see the girls again.
The thought spurs something in me, and grief spears through me like a knife. Slowly, I’m aware of tears that feel like they’re burning against my face, leaving wet trails down my cheeks that scald me like fire.
“Marisol?” I hear a raspy, familiar voice.
Dino.
Is Dino dead too?
Oh my god, the girls are orphans. Please let my mom find them. Please let them be safe with Caterina and Elio and Gia. Please…
“Marisol, wake up. Please, love,” Dino says.
Wake up?
I feel something on my face. A thumb. Brushing the tracks of the tears.
“Wake up, please,” he whispers.
I’m trying.
It feels like trudging through layers of sand, each one thicker than the last. Finally, when I start to see light behind my eyes, I gasp.
When I finally open them, everything seems too… bright.
I can’t see around me. All I see is brightness, that kind of flickers. I struggle, trying to get my elbows underneath me.
“Easy,” Dino murmurs, his hands on my sides. “Take it easy, Marisol.”
I blink .
Slowly, the room comes into focus. It’s small, with an earth-packed floor that is surprisingly dry, considering how much rain has fallen, and a little stove that contains a fire that’s merrily flickering, throwing heat into the small room.
Looking over at Dino, my lips purse together. I want to ask him where we are, but nothing but a croak comes out of it.
“Here,” he says, tipping a metal cup to my lips.
I drink.
The water is good. Clean. Not full of mud. I take a sip then use some of it to swish around my mouth, getting rid of dirt and mud and whatever else is in there, before I spit it over the side of my makeshift bed and onto the dirt floor.
I look up at Dino. “Where are we?”
He shrugs. “I have no idea. After you passed out I picked you up and just… ran.”
“Ran?” I ask.
He nods. “Eventually I came to this hut. There wasn’t anyone in it, but it was clean and dry. I think maybe this might have been an outpost, or something that someone built to spy on your father. There’s a fence, or the remains of a fence, that we crossed before we came here. That fuckin’ fence marks the edge of your father’s property,” Dino says.
When he’s trying to whisper, his voice is so low.
It’s sexy.
This is a terrible time to think of anything sexual, Marisol.
I nod. “Can you help me up?”
Dino slowly helps me to my feet .
I stretch, trying to check and see if anything is broken.
“How do you feel?”
Nodding, I look back at him. “Fine.”
“You passed out from shock,” he says quietly.
I sigh. “I figured.”
“When I say that you’re sick or in trouble, Marisol, I fuckin’ mean it,” Dino growls.
The wound is just too new. The attitude. The argument.
I turn on Dino with the full force of the anger that’s been sitting in my chest for far too long now.
“You don’t know me better than I know myself.”
He freezes.
There’s no stopping me now, though. I’m a fighter. I’m not someone who freezes under stress. I’m someone who can stab a dead body to make sure it’s dead. I’m someone who can give birth to twins.
And I’m not going to take this anymore.
“I’m so tired of the men in my life seeing me as fragile. Delicate. I’m not fragile or delicate, damn it!” I practically yell. “I’m a mother. I’m tough. I’m the one who has figured out how to handle my father. I’m the one who came here to protect my mother and my children. I am not delicate, and you don’t know anything about me that I don’t know about myself!”
Dino nods. “I know.”
I blink .
“One of the things I like about you, Marisol, is that you’re brave. You’re fuckin’ cute as hell and you make me want to tuck you into bed so I can fuck you senseless for weeks, but you’re brave. You’re smart. You can figure shit out faster than I can, and you’re fuckin’ good at it. You’re the best mom I’ve ever met, and I fuckin…” he pauses.
My heart is thundering in my chest.
What was he going to say next?
“I’m not tryin’ to say I know more than you. But people in shock don’t really know they’re in shock,” he says calmly. “I wasn’t tryin’ to tell you what to do, Marisol. Fuck no,” he says with a little rasp. “I was fuckin’ warning you, since it’s pretty common for people in shock to not know what’s happening for them.”
“Oh,” I say quietly.
Dino nods.
“Well. Um. Okay.”
“I respect the hell out of you, baby,” he says. “I’m proud as hell that my girl is like a fuckin’ tiger, she’s so fierce.”
I flush with his words. “A tiger?”
Dino grins.
“Hell yeah, baby.”