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No. I couldn’t allow the thought to sink through me. Losing hope was dangerous. I saw it all the time at the hospital. People needed hope to keep fighting.
It sounded noisy outside in the property beyond the basement. Men were shouting in the distance, and there were a lot of scuffling steps, like people running back and forth.
Slowly, a noise echoed through my paralyzed thoughts, and sank in. What was that sound? A loud repeated banging tore through the air. It was like a banging drum, beating quickly. No, not a drum.
Now that I focused on it, it was too distinctive to be anything other than gunshots. Machine guns in the distance. I didn’t have to be an expert to know that sound. My heart all but jumped into my throat.
Renato was here.
The door to the basement busted open, and two of the thugs from earlier came in.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
They yanked me to my feet, and one shoved a gun into my side. “It’s showtime. Hurry up,” he grunted.
Renato was here. He’d found me. But I was bait, and I didn’t want my husband getting hurt.
I struggled against the men, but the gun dug harder into my side.
“Listen,chica, you were bait, and now that the fish has nibbled, we don’t need you. Don’t be difficult.”
“That’s an impossible request,” I muttered, looking wildly around for something I could use to defend myself or slow down our retreat. “Ask my husband. Sounds like he’s outside. I can introduce you, if you want.”
“Shut it, bitch, or I’ll gag you.”
The threat was enough to shut me up. Even the thought of this man putting anything in my mouth made me feel sick. It was ironic how Renato had played with gagging me, finger-fucking my mouth with his black gloves, and it had only turned me on, even when I’d been trying to run away from him, yet the threat of it from these guys had me nauseated. Proof that my husband was my exception in every way.
A voice spoke from somewhere in front of us. The light streaming in was so bright after hours of darkness, it blinded me, and I couldn’t make out the features of the dark silhouette that filled the doorway. But his voice? I’d know that voice anywhere. That voice was home.
“No one gags my wife but me.”
My heart squeezed hard. Hope flashed through me like a forest fire. How had he gotten here so quickly? The gunfire still sounded far off. Had he snuck in by himself? Questions shot through me like lightning, but all of that fell away as I searched for a glimpse of him.
My captors had just turned toward the voice when one cried out and dropped my arm. Renato stood in the doorway of the basement, a gun in his hand. He had it pointed toward us and shot in quick succession, and the other guy holding me fell, dragging me to the floor beside him.
Both men were writhing on the floor when Renato reached me. He pulled me toward him, his face intense and stormy. All in black, he seemed like a mercenary for the Devil himself. I couldn’t stop staring. It was hard to believe that he was real.
He looked me over, anger hardening his features. “You’re hurt.” His voice was utterly lethal.
“I’ll live, now that you’re here,” I rasped. “You came.”
“Of course I came. I told you,bambina, not even an angel with a flaming sword could keep you from me.”
He surveyed me, taking stock of my cuts and bruises, and my bloodied, soup- and pee-stained clothes. A look so dark crossed his face I nearly flinched away from him. It was like the light went out in his eyes.
He stroked his fingers down my cheek and turned to the first fallen Castillo, who’d tried and failed to reach his gun. Renato rose and stepped over his flailing body, picked up the weapon, and pressed it to the man’s hand, pinning it to the floor.
“Need a hand with that?” he asked, his dispassionate mask back in place as he pulled the trigger.
The man’s hand exploded in a burst of blood and bone. The sound was deafening. I crab-walked back to stay out of the spray zone. The other man tried to get up and run, but he’d been shot in the legs, and he only managed to hobble a few steps before falling. Renato took a knife from a hidden pocket in his sleeve.
“It’s nothing personal for us, man. It’s just the boss’s orders.”
Renato stalked him down, his black gloves flexing in the overhead lighting. He crouched over the man and pointed the knife at me.
“Nothing personal? Who marked her face up? Who pressed their worthless fingertips into her skin? Who touched her at all?”
The man on the floor shook, and the smell of pee filled the air. There was a poetic justice in seeing him reduced to the same state he’d put me in.
