10. Diego
10
DIEGO
I was going to kill them.
Both of the filthy thugs who’d broken in here would be dead.
I knew it. More than I knew anything else in this world, both of them would be killed. By my hands.
Controlled by an inexplicable rage, I strode from Sofia’s bedroom and entered the madness in the living room, the singular space where Sofia had given me privacy and security as I grappled with the reality that I didn’t know much of anything. In here, I was granted the peace and comfort to rest from whatever had happened to me before all my memories were scattered or stolen from me.
Now it was a scene of pending death—theirs.
Seeing that man hit her was all it took to unleash this feral need to slaughter him.
Watching the other asshole grab Ramon and hold him back did the trick of making something vital and powerful snap within me.
To witness the threat against the two people I cared about—the only two people in my life who had been so generous to me—was the trigger to send me stalking forward.
No weakness bothered me. Without an ounce of hesitation or second thoughts, I left the doorway where I’d kept Ramon back. We’d heard them come in. Hiding in the closet seemed safest while I surveyed the escape routes in Sofia’s room. Even in that, I felt most like my former self, whoever the hell I was supposed to be.
Stealth. Hiding. Subterfuge.
Those seemed like things I was used to, experienced in embracing a raw need to defend. An instant habit had kicked in for me to strategize both a counterattack and an escape.
Why? How? If I were a doctor, why would I have these skills, these automatic drives to act like a… fighter? Like a combatant?
When we heard Sofia enter, though, all bets were off. Ramon had run out of the closet to rush out there and help her, and I’d caught him just in time. But from the doorway to her room, we witnessed it all.
They weren’t here looking for me.
It sounded more like they were looking for Ramon, who escaped and sprinted out around me to reach his mother to help her. He was the him they referenced. These disgusting men were here on the assumption that Sofia could give them drugs, and they would take him to get her to cooperate.
Not on my watch.
Not this time.
Never again.
I was the unaccounted-for variable. The element of surprise could’ve been an advantage point over them, but deep inside, in my soul, I realized I didn’t need to rely on any advantages or tricks.
My feet moved of their own accord as I ran out into the chaos. Locked and tense, the muscles in my arms and legs braced for the exertion of a fight. Tuning out everything else as I rushed toward the fucker who dared to touch Sofia, I dropped into a darkness. It swept over me. It controlled me and fueled me with a streak of malicious energy that I wouldn’t be able to tame.
Not on my watch.
I grabbed the first man, yanking him backward and off her.
“What the fuck do you?—”
My fist silenced him. With a grunt and a crack, my punch cut off whatever else he thought to shout. Spit shot out with the force of my hit, and blood dribbled out of his mouth as he slowly spun his head back to face me.
Already, my vision was tinted in red. Rage descended over me like a well-fit hood, encasing me in an impenetrable will to inflict as much damage and pain as I could.
Seeing the blood on his lip thrilled me.
The evidence of his agony was the trophy I didn’t need.
Triumphing in the ability to strike back, I let this revelation push me further.
I wouldn’t rest until they were both down. Dead. And never able to threaten them again.
“You’re going to regret that,” his partner snarled. He still held on to Ramon, clutching the boy’s collar as he dragged him. Walking toward me, he raised his arm to stab me.
The man I punched growled, rearing back his arm to punch me back.
And so it began. Fending off both of them, I fought. With a grace and athletic mobility that suggested I’d done this a thousand times before, I moved without thought, relying on muscle memory. Memory . The only one it seemed I had anymore.
Forming fists and spinning into kicks, I was a force of death unleashed on them alone. Bending and dodging their hits, I marveled at how I could intuit and estimate how I could predict their likeliest moves. How I could guess and follow through on what they would try next.
One against two wasn’t that bad of a match. I was taller. I was bigger, faster and smarter, with knowledge I didn’t fully understand. Yet, I was still not one hundred percent. My head throbbed with the exertion of fighting off both men. Sofia’s careful stitches on my bicep broke free, and I bled again. Still lagging to a bout of hand-to-hand combat like this, they could’ve easily taken me down, but they didn’t.
I fought on.
I persevered and didn’t stop.
Not when they got a lucky hit in. Not when that fucker swiped my forearm with that knife. Addled with drugs and exhibiting a freakish superpower sense of adrenaline, the druggies seemed impervious to pain as I kicked their asses, but still, I held on and did what came natural to me.
Not on my fucking watch.
All this time since I’d awakened on the couch and tried to accept that I didn’t know who I was, nothing had felt right. My age came to me. That suspicion that I wasn’t a doctor had developed into a stubborn certainty. Questions swirled and lingered, complicating my best efforts to understand what had happened to me.
But this, this surprising ease with which I could inflict gritty and gory damage to another person. It was who I was. Dark anger blanketed my soul. Sinister rage justified my strength.
In this, I was myself.
I’d done this before. I didn’t dare challenge the thought. I had experience with fighting men. But the injuries I’d had and the lack of understanding of how, precisely, I could be such a fighter held me back from finishing them quickly.
It was still two against one.
It was still a man with a weapon against one with only his fists.
When I would beat down one man, the other would retreat to try to hurt Sofia. Then switching back, to attack him and protect her when her resistance wasn’t enough to defend herself, the other man would lunge back and snatch Ramon.
“No!” Sofia screamed as I pulled the man off her who was trying to stab her in the gut. I flung him back so hard, he smacked against the coffee table that lay on its side and rolled over it.
The other creep had Ramon in his arm, carrying him toward the door. He kicked and flailed, bucking and fighting with all his might to break free before he was stolen out of his home.
Not on my watch.
With a deadly calm, breathing hard and thinking quick, I grabbed the knife from the man I’d tossed back violently. The handle was slick with sweat and blood—mine and Sofia’s coated the blade—but that didn’t stop me. Nothing held me back from raising my arm and throwing it.
With eerie accuracy, flying through the air with a stealthy trajectory, the tip sank into his back. Not his neck. Not on a bone. It pierced his skin and drove into his muscle.
As if I knew not only how to throw it for maximum impact and damage, but also where to aim for the best effect.
I blinked, clearing the sting of sweat that dripped into my eyes from the exercise of fighting.
The man stopped, reaching back to retrieve the blade I’d throw at him. His fingers clawed and groped as he probed for the handle to yank it out. Grotesque and bestial growls and curses left his lips as he strained to get the weapon out of his back. In the window of opportunity I’d given him, Ramon squirmed and wiggled faster until he dropped out of the man’s clutches. He rolled to the floor, then scurried further away from the bloody man.
I didn’t wait, knowing with that unspoken and instinctive muscle memory that time was of the essence. He was wounded, but not dead.
Reaching out to the back of the couch to grip it, I jumped up and leaped over the whole thing, passing Sofia as she cowered into a ball, trying to hide and escape the reach of violence taking over her home. After I launched over the sofa, I grabbed the handle of the knife. First I twisted it, letting the two inches into his back further open the wound. Then I wrenched it free, spun the man, and dragged the blade over his neck.
Jerking and fighting, he faded before my eyes. Bleeding out, he sank and grew heavier as dead weight until he was finally just that.
Dead.
I ran back, enraged again at the sight of the other man crawling back up onto his feet. His face was contorted with anger. Lines marked his scowl. Bared teeth hinted at his psychotic delusion.
As he staggered back up, he drew another knife from his pocket and lurched toward the couch. Sofia clung to Ramon, who’d run back to her. She shielded him, hugging him close and laying herself over him. Tucking her head down, she closed her eyes and prepared to take the knife for her son.
Not on my fucking watch!
I roared, venting some of the dark madness that electrified me, and ran forward. Still holding the handle of the knife I’d used to kill the other man, I intercepted the man. Punching forward, I thrust the soaked blade into his open mouth as he bellowed a filthy curse at her.
He choked, gagging and stunned, with the knife in his mouth. Both of his bloodshot eyes opened wide as he stared at me. Unable to speak, unable to breathe, he acknowledged that this was it. He was done. And it filled a sinister chunk of my heart to know that he’d die looking at me, into the eyes of the man who’d killed him.
I yanked the smaller knife from his hand and turned it with an expert, practiced flick of my wrist as I drove it into his heart. Blocking the man from Sofia and Ramon on the couch, I ended this asshole’s life, holding him up by the force of the knives alone. Blood spilled freely, coating both of us, but only when his eyes rolled back and he sank with the burden of death did I carefully turn to lower him to the floor, preventing them from seeing the gruesome sight of the knives wedged into him the way they were.
Catching my breath, I stared at the man.
I’d killed him. I’d killed both of them. With ease. With pleasure.
I’d killed.
And it wasn’t the first time. As the relief hit me that I’d removed the danger from this home, that I’d solved the problem of a threat directed at Sofia and Ramon, I understood that this might be who I was.
“Diego?”
I turned to Ramon’s small voice. Breathing steadily, I pivoted to face the mother and son on the couch. She clutched him, holding him so tight as she sobbed. Tears spilled down her face. Squeezing her eyes shut, she hugged her son to her and rode out the trauma of what had just occurred.
Ramon, so small but smart, looked up at me without hesitation. His lower lip trembled, but he didn’t cower, holding his mother just as tightly.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
So are they.
All I could reply with was a grunt. I nodded, agreeing with his statement of what was obvious.
“I will handle this.” I watched Sofia shake and cry, stuck in shock. “Stay with her.”
He nodded, fast and jerkily.
“Stay with your mother while I get rid of them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sir?
I narrowed my eyes.
Sir?
A flicker of a memory puzzled me. Was I used to being called that? Did others refer to me like that?
I shook the thought off. Now wasn’t the time for it. Like Ramon had pointed out, almost numb and shell-shocked, I was bleeding. These two men had. The floor was soaked with blood, and I knew just how to handle it.
Have I done this before?
Moving on autopilot, I worked quickly and efficiently to bundle the men in sheets. Wiping up their blood wasn’t a challenge, either. That muscle memory freaked me out again as more and more recalls popped up.
I’ve done this before?
I’d killed men.
Before I was knocked out, I’d disposed of bodies, too?
I didn’t give myself the chance to dwell on it. Trusting Ramon to stay put with Sofia as she spiraled deeper into shock and closed her eyes from the bloodbath, I dragged the men outside the back way. Checking my surroundings for anyone watching, I dismissed the many candles and lanterns lining the street for Noche de las Velitas.
A dumpster a few houses down the street was as good a place as any other to toss the bodies of the druggies. On my next trip back and forth, I collected all the rags and towels I'd used to mop up the blood. Using a disinfectant, I operated on the autopilot of my muscle memory leading me to know how to clean it up with perfection.
Only when I was certain I’d bleached and mopped every last drop of blood did I sigh in satisfaction.
I whipped off my shirt and threw it into the dumpster before I walked back to the mother and son.
The second I entered, I looked down at the woman, my angel, and wondered how she could accept the fact that she’d brought a deranged killer into the safety of her home.