The Slayer (Untamed Hearts #2) (50 page)

All it did was make her cry harder.

What if he never came back?

What if more Russians showed up?

Even though there had been a truly impressive amount of Italians outside, she didn’t question for one moment how quickly the tables could turn. Today had taught her that if nothing else. That in the blink of an eye, everything could be destroyed in the most horrific way possible.

Then, like a miracle, she heard the house burst to life when before it had been somber and hushed. Car doors opening and closing, rushed Spanish over the boom of the front door being thrown open.

“Is it him?” Alaine asked as she looked to Sofia, who was staring at the door.

Then Chuito’s voice echoed down the hallway before Sofia could answer. “Where is she?”

“
Tía Sofia dijo—
”

“I don’t care what she said,” Chuito barked just as a fist pounded on the bedroom door. “Open it, Mamá!”

Sofia ran out of the bathroom and threw open the door. She gasped and said, “No!”

“Sí,” Chuito countered.

Then the two of them had an argument in Spanish that made the one Sofia had with Marcos seem like nothing. Chuito sounded like an angry bear, but Sofia didn’t seemed to be fazed by it.

Alaine got the impression that this heated, loud arguing was the way their family communicated. Then Chuito showed up in the bathroom, with Sofia at his back, tugging at his shirt.

“This muchacho gets to stay in here.”

“
Pero mírate
.” Sofia threw out her hands to Chuito, gesturing to his clothes that were splattered with blood. “No.”

Chuito tugged off his shirt and tossed it at his mother, who picked it up with a grimace, holding it between two fingers as if it were toxic.

“Ay carajo,” Sofia whispered as she stared at Chuito. “What did they do to you?”

Chuito looked down at himself at the same time Alaine did, seeing the red welts covering his chest that were well on their way to becoming bruises. Tears welled up in her eyes when she realized they must have beaten him to keep him from coming upstairs.

“Get out,” Chuito snapped at his mother. “And go find it. I know you have it.”

“But the fighting,” his mother countered.

“Look at me. Look at her. Fuck the fighting.” He gestured to Alaine in the bath. “Get it for me, Mamá. Por favor.”

“Have a drink.”

“It’s one time.
Go get it
,” he growled at his mother. “Please. I’m begging you.”

“Don’t beg.” She huffed and waved him off as she looked to Alaine. “You see. I told you. Not strong like us.”

“It’s your shit, Mamá. I know it’s in this house,” Chuito said and then went on in Spanish, before he shut the door in his mother’s face.

“What do you want?” Alaine asked in concern as Chuito locked the door. “What are you asking her to get for you?”

“Just bud. She smokes sometimes,” he said as he undid the button to his jeans and tugged them off. “Marcos said he’s worried you’re still in shock. It’ll help. I’m sorry. I know that was a lot of nasty shit to happen in a short amount of time, but we can’t take you to the hospital. Not if we can help it.”

She wanted to argue with him, but there wasn’t enough lavender in the world to keep her hands from shaking. She looked at Chuito’s bruised, battered body and couldn’t help but ask, “Did you kill Angel?”

“I don’t want to talk about Angel.” He opened the door and tossed his jeans and underwear outside; then he locked it again. “I want to go the rest of the day and not talk about it, okay, mami? I just want to forget. I need to forget.”

He crawled into the tub with her, making the water splash over the edge, but neither of them cared. Alaine wrapped her arms and legs around him and just held him as he sank down in the hot water. He put his hands to his eyes, and Alaine saw that they were shaking as he said, “I had to let the Italians come over. They needed an alibi. We’re gonna have to throw a fucking party to cover for them.”

“Okay,” she whispered as she held him, the two of them shaking in the steamy, soapy water. “We can do this. We’re strong, even stronger together.”

“Jesus, you’ve been talking to my mother,” Chuito groaned as he rested his head in the space between her breasts. “Tino’s in this house. I wanna kill him, mami. I hate him.”

Alaine held him tighter, because she could hear how much just saying those words ripped his heart out. “You don’t hate him.”

“I want to hate him,” Chuito amended and then grabbed her hand, staring at it. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you? What did Junior do to you? Tell me what he did.”

“No one hurt me. Junior was kind,” she promised him as she squeezed his hand in hers. “We’re okay. We’re going to be okay. I know we’ll be okay.”

Alaine kept saying it, hoping if she repeated it enough times, it’d be true. They sat in the tub until the water started to get cool and the noise outside the room got louder.

Finally she asked, “Is it all the Italians?”

“All of them,” Chuito confirmed. “My mother probably wants to strangle me.”

Alaine was quiet for a long moment and then asked, “Did you kill Angel?”

“Mami—”

“I just want to know we’re okay,” she said before he could finish. “That Angel or those terrible Russians aren’t going to somehow come back and—”

“We’re okay,” he promised her. “No one is coming back today. We got a hundred Italians in this house. Today we’re safe.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“I don’t know, mami,” Chuito whispered miserably. “I hope so. I’m gonna work very hard to keep you safe.”

“The fighting?” she repeated the same question his mother did.

“Fuck the fighting.” He gave her the same answer. “Fuck it for right now. Maybe, when the dust settles, and Nova plays his hand right. Maybe, but not now. Right now, we got to survive. That’s it.”

“It’s not over?” she asked, because she heard it in his voice and knew that whatever he found out from the Russians wasn’t good.

Chuito sighed. “The Italians are in deep right now, and now we’re in deep
with them
. Coño.”

“Do we have to stay with the Italians?” she asked, though it felt like a sin to do so, a betrayal for reasons she didn’t understand.

“Yes,” he said without hesitating. “We have to stand with the Italians.”

“Why?”

“Because I think Tino just saved our lives today.” Chuito choked on the words, and his voice cracked when he said, “I would’ve let them kill you…for nothing.”

Chuito’s shoulders started shaking, and he put his hands to his eyes at the confession. Alaine just held him while he cried, knowing even then that this moment was supposed to slip through her memory like it never happened.

She cried too.

As if they were both mourning the death of what they were before. Even if the Russians hadn’t shot them, they’d still killed the Alaine and Chuito who existed before that house.

It wasn’t exactly borrowed time.

It was as if their destinies had just careened off into a very different path than either of them had anticipated. This wasn’t a part-time gig; this was something that was going to consume them, because they wouldn’t be sitting here in this bath if it weren’t for Tino choosing this life for them rather than death.

But they were here.

Chuito was in her arms, not necessarily broken, but certainly dented and angrier than she thought possible. She could hear it in his tears, a wild, rapid anger, and she didn’t even know who was going to be at the receiving end of it.

Finally she whispered, “This is not Tino’s fault,” more to remind herself than him, because she didn’t think she was supposed to be angry at a man who just saved their lives.

“No, it’s not,” Chuito agreed, his voice still choked with anger. “It’s his grandfather’s fault. If they need help ending that motherfucker, I’ll be the first one in line. I earned it. We both earned it.”

“Isn’t he Nova’s boss?” Alaine asked fearfully.

“Yup.”

“What happens if he dies?”

“Nova takes over.”

“Takes over what?” she asked.

“Everything.” Chuito turned and looked at her, his eyes bloodshot and tired. “I think he’s been playing to win from the beginning. He plans to own the underworld, and I think he might actually succeed at it.”

“Do you trust Nova?” Alaine asked in concern.

Chuito was quiet for a long time before he whispered, “Yeah, I think I do. He scares the shit out of me, but I’d still rather be on his side than against him. He’s too fucking smart. Too cunning. Now me and Tino are the only ones who know the old man wants to take him out. That makes us the only ones Nova has to rely on to end this. Even if he doesn’t want to, he’ll need us to win, and Nova always plays to win. It’s all he knows how to do.”

“What happens if Nova wins?” Alaine asked, feeling the full gravity of that hit her square in the chest.

“We’ll have the most powerful mafia boss in the world indebted to us forever,” Chuito said with a bitter laugh. “We become gods.”

“And if he loses?”

“It’d make that house look like nothing.”

“And if we run?”

“We don’t run.” Chuito shook his head as he said it, some of the broken, hurt anger in his voice being replaced with a cold determination that was unbending. “I play to win too, mami. Always.”

Chapter Forty-Four

The conversation in the bath didn’t do a lot to calm Alaine down, but she tried very hard not to let Chuito see how shaken up she still was after they’d washed up and got out. He noticed anyway, just like she noticed the lavender hadn’t cooled him off either.

Alaine couldn’t help but think the marketing on the calming effects of lavender was a huge lie.

Outside the bathroom door were clothes for Chuito that fit him perfectly. He was bigger than his cousin, so she suspected they were his that he had left there during a previous visit. His mother had left a pretty, paisley-designed robe for Alaine on top of another stack of clothes for her. She slipped it on while Chuito swooped up a small wooden box that had been resting on top of the clothes.

She grabbed her spare change of clothes, knowing she might need them with a party going on.

He grabbed her hand and said, “Come on. Let’s get out of this room.”

“What’s wrong with this room?” Alaine asked as Chuito opened the door. She was stunned at just how many people were in the house as she peered down the hallway. Not just Italians, because she could hear the Spanish over the Latin music playing from outside. She gaped as Chuito tugged her hand. “Where did they all come from?”

“When my mother throws a party”—Chuito turned back and rolled his eyes—“everyone seems to show up.”

“Your mother’s very beautiful,” Alaine said as Chuito opened the door to another room. This one was masculine and warm, with a cherry-wood sleigh bed and a beautiful, dark blue comforter. It didn’t look like anything Chuito would pick out, but there were posters of him everywhere. “Is this your room?”

“This is the room my mother made up for me that I sleep in when I’m here,” he corrected her.

“It’s lovely.”

“Yeah, according to the credit card bills, it should be. My mother likes to decorate.” Chuito locked the door and then tossed the wooden box on the bed. “Most of my life, she refused to take anything from anyone, including me. But now, coño, I know it’s her way of showing me she’s proud of me. Letting me spend money like water, like she knows it won’t disappear. Every time I get a credit card bill, it’s like she’s reaching across the country, telling me she has faith in me. Life’s been unkind to her, so it’s a good thing, but still.”

“She’s sweet,” Alaine pointed out as she set the clothes on a chair in the corner. “And she loves you very much.”

Chuito paused at that and then looked to Alaine. “Yeah, I know. Maybe she shouldn’t. Just like you shouldn’t.”

“I hope you don’t say that to her,” Alaine whispered as tears welled up in her eyes, and she walked back over to him. “It probably hurts her to hear it as much as it hurts me.”

“Why, mami?” Chuito snorted. “Look at where it got you.”

“You deserve to be loved,” Alaine promised as she reached out to Chuito. “Very much so.” She wrapped her arms around him and buried her face against his chest, just feeling him alive and healthy in her arms. “It feels so good to finally be able to love you. To hold you.”

Holding him brought it back to the surface that she had almost lost him. That they had almost lost each other, and that maybe they wouldn’t have met up on the other side. Everything was so uncertain, making her feel like they were both standing in quicksand, and she clung to him, fearing that somehow she would be separated from him once more.

She just wanted to stand there and hold him forever, even if doing it was making her weepy again, and she hastily wiped at her face. “I wish I could stop crying.”

“It was a bad day.” He pulled back and wiped at her cheeks for her. “You should probably be freaking out a lot more than you are.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yeah,” he assured her as he pulled her to the bed. “I’m shaken up too. That was—” He shook his head and then crawled onto the bed with her. The two of them lay there side by side as the music and the laughter drifted into the room. “I just need to forget for a little bit, don’t you?”

She nodded, because she was still crying. Chuito brushed the tears off her cheeks before he reached behind him and grabbed the box. Alaine stayed curled into him, forcing Chuito to maneuver around her as he dug in the box. Then he fell onto his back, pulling her with him.

She eyed a thinly rolled cigarette in his hand, surprised that it was dark brown rather than white. “It looks like a cigar. That’s not how they look on television.”

“You believe everything you see on television?” he asked with an arch of his eyebrow.

“I don’t want any,” she argued as he lit it and took a long puff and then coughed as if he wasn’t used to it. “Is this going to lead to cocaine?”

“No.” He rolled his eyes with a laugh and took another puff. “It’s like drinking.”

“I don’t think it’s like drinking.”

“Your hands are still shaking. You’re in shock. I’m probably in shock too. I don’t have any fucking gringa Valium. One blunt isn’t gonna hurt either of us.”