30. Diego
30
DIEGO
I drove as fast as I could to get back to the house. The SUV came equipped with two guns under the seat, and I took one as I ran out to the front door. Stefan had offered for me to take however many men I wanted, but I hadn’t slowed enough to ask or figure that one. I operated the best when I was alone, anyway. The second I stepped inside and saw Antonio driving a knife down at Sofia, pinned beneath him, I didn’t think. Thoughts ceased to matter. All that could enter my mind was the dark evil that flared to the surface.
“Sofia!” I aimed the gun at Antonio. He pinned Sofia to the floor, a knife in his hand. And I fired.
He rolled off her, dodging the bullet and coming back up on one knee to face me and fire back with a gun he pulled out of a holster at his ankle. Fast. Almost too fast. The bullet whirred past my face.
I ducked, creeping along the couch. Gunfire wasn’t ideal in here. Sofia could be hit. Ramon too. I searched for the boy, relieved when he seemed dazed from the hit against the wall, but not shot. Shakily, Ramon got up from the other wall, and I nodded at him. “Go. Help your mother. Help her out of here.”
He didn’t wait, rushing toward Sofia at the same time that Antonio leaped around the couch and fired at me again. I slid to the side, avoiding his shots and pulling the trigger to hit him too. Moving out and to the left, I kicked out the coffee table to make him trip, but my gun skidded out over the floor, out of my reach.
“You fucker!” He fell back, losing his grip on his gun, too. “You goddamn motherfucker.”
I darted toward him, pummeling his face with my fists. I unleashed all my rage on him, all the pent-up frustration I’d felt for him my whole life.
“You think you can try to kill me?” I dodged his hits as we rolled over the floor. “You hit me at the hospital. You dumped me outside and left me to die. All because you wanted the glory of killing Rodriguez.”
“Because it was supposed to be mine,” he shot back. “The boss said he needed someone for the job and he thought you needed a ‘break’ from working so hard. I told him I could do it.”
“That doesn’t mean he wanted you to have the job. He gave it to me.”
Growling and straining to reach his gun, he fought harder and almost shoved me off. “Just like everything else. He gave you Maria when she was already flirting with me.”
He proved what Stefan and I had speculated. That he’d been dead set on taking what he thought he was owed.
“And now this. I’ve been watching this kid for years because he’s my fucking son. I fucked her, Diego. Not Sebastian. I fucked her, and that boy is mine.”
“Not anymore,” I growled, still holding him down.
“I always spied on him here, in case I wanted to demand that she be my bitch again. After she ran away like a coward the first time.”
I squeezed my fingers around his neck, straining to choke the life out of him.
“And since I already checked in on this area, I noticed you . Risen from the supposed dead. I saw you with her. And with my bastard son !”
“Diego!” Ramon cried out. “Mama’s bleeding too fast.”
“Help her.”
“I hope she dies. I hope she fucking dies,” Antonio sneered, trying to hold me off him. “Then that’ll be something else I can take from you. You wanna fuck her and play house with her? Too damn bad.”
“Diego,” Sofia said, sitting up slightly as she held her bloody hand to her side. Ramon pressed her shirt to the wound as she stretched to reach for my gun. Her fingers caught it, but she winced at the lean to get it.
“I’ll kill her. I’ll kill the boy just so you can’t have him either. And I’ll kill you,” Antonio said, seething. “Then the boss will finally see me as worthy. He’ll say I’m his chosen one. His favorite. Not you.”
I shook my head, smiling a wicked grin at him. “I wouldn’t count on it. He gave me one last order to follow before I retire. One last kill to make for him.”
In my peripheral vision, I saw Sofia grip the gun. Without hesitation, she tossed it to me. It landed with a thud near my knee, and I picked it up swiftly before Antonio could.
I didn’t give him a chance to throw me off. I brought the gun up and fired it right over where his heart beat.
“He told me to kill you ,” I said with victory singing through my veins. The sick glee, the darkness of death. It consumed me and granted me the pleasure that came with knowing I’d removed another worthless asshole from this world.
I fired again as he stared at me. Dying and screwed with still not getting what he thought he deserved, he pressed his lips together and scowled.
Once more, just for insurance.
His eyes rolled back, and his body went limp.
It was done.
I’d killed the man who’d made me lose myself. I’d taken the life of the rapist who’d terrorized my woman.
“Sofia!” I got off Antonio, letting his body lie right where it was. Hurrying toward my angel, my sweet Christmas angel, I took over compressing her side. Blood puddled, and I tried not to let the panic show on my face. “Angel, we need to get you to help.”
“I’m worried, Diego.” She looked at me with fear in her eyes. Tucking the tip of her tongue against the corner of her mouth, she looked pensive. “I’m worried I’m losing too much blood.”
I nodded. I wouldn’t lie. It was a lot. “I’m no doctor,” I said as I gathered her in my arms.
She shot me a look.
“But that’s a lot of blood.” I turned to Ramon. “Open the door. To my car outside.”
“Diego,” she pleaded as I lifted her. Her face tightened with a grimace. “I’m scared I’ll lose the baby.”
I did a double-take as I carried her. Baby? “What?”
“The baby.”
“My—Our baby?”
She nodded, holding on to me with her arm around my neck as I carried her outside to the SUV.
“I think so. I mean, of course, it would be yours. Ours. But I think I’m pregnant. And I’m losing so much blood.”
“Which is why I’m taking you to the hospital. Right now.”
She shifted, opening her arms more with alarm. “No! Diego. The Cartel rules that hospital. That’s where that man tried to kill you. Where I was taken. You can’t seriously take me to the hospital. The Cartel?—”
“I am the Cartel,” I told her, glancing at her as I carried her faster. “I remember who I am now, my angel.”
No confusion lingered.
I was confident in the knowledge that I was the boss’s favorite.
“No one,” I promised her, “including anyone in the whole organization, will ever harm you or Ramon again.”
She stared at me as I set her on the seat in the back.
“Not on my watch, my angel.”
“Not ever again.”