Page 71 of Wild Heart
My fist as my weapon and rage on my shoulder, Delgado had minutes left.Seconds.
His fist cracked against my temple in a desperate attempt to escape. Knees planted firmly on the ground, I barely swayed with effort and blinked against the spots that danced in my vision. Tightening my grip, Delgado undulated beneath me.
I lifted him by the neck and slammed him back into the ground.
“You threatened my boy.”
Slam.
“You scared him.”
Slam.
“You put your hands on what wasmine.”
Slam.
His eyes came out of his face, rolling backward until they disappeared. The lips that dared whisper my boy’s name were puffy and pale. Chin bulging, his body surged once more before giving up.
Beneath my hand, his windpipe crumbled, and I held onto his dead body with a poisonous smile on my lips. I swore I felt the life as it left him, inhaling against it with bone-deep satisfaction.
A charged silence blanketed the room, and I pushed away from him with a grunt. My world tilted a little as I righted myself, giving my weight to the door frame as I sat with my legs splayed out in front of me. My damaged hand was more blood than skin now, and I wrapped it in the ends of my shirt with a sluggish pace.
“Baby, we need to call Ben,” I said, but my words left my lips slower than I’d intended.
“Baby,” I said again, but the adrenaline had already ceased, succumbing to the pain.
I was fading, and my head rolled against the wood it rested on, seeking him out.
His lithe body made a vast shadow as he stood over Delgado. Feet planted and chest heaving, my baby choked against his tears and pointed both guns at a dead man’s chest.
He fired.
Bullets blew through Delgado at a rapid pace. The smell of blood touched the air, and Marcos never let up, not until both clips were empty and both guns were on the ground.
Hands on his head, he rolled in on himself…
… and then he started to scream.
ChapterTwenty-One
Ivan
Our bedroom was warm and quiet. The only sounds to be heard were that of my heartbeat and the soft, concentrated breaths he made. Marcos sat naked on my lap, cheek to my chest, as he colored my mother’s clock. Beneath us, the mattress swayed every once in a while, but he was careful not to jostle the pillow my bandaged hand rested on.
The injury was unlike anything I’d ever felt before, and when the swell of adrenaline wore off, the pain was enough to take my breath away. The initial throb was nothing compared to the days that followed. I’d woken up from surgery expecting my hand to be engulfed in flames. It was a piercing, eye-watering, vision-narrowing hurt that kept me unconscious for a full forty-eight hours. My finger couldn’t be saved, but I didn’t really give a shit. It was a tiny, insignificant price to pay when the alternative was losing him.
My butterfly struggled to let go of a piece of me, and he carried a bucket of ice around the hospital, my finger buried below the cool cubes. A scream tore down the barren halls anytime somebody suggested getting rid of it, and now it sat inside our freezer, cushioned within a little wooden box.
He’d drawn a butterfly on the top as if he were claiming the severed limb as his own.
“I promised to take care of it, Papa.”
It was impossible not to love him—not to cherish every fucking breath his lungs made.
I couldn’t even begin to comprehend a life in which he didn’t exist, and there was no amount of pain I wouldn’t endure to keep him safe.Whole.
Marcos crawled up my chest a little, round eyes darting to my hand. Breath caught in his throat, he peered up at me with a lip between his teeth, waiting for me to tell him I was okay.
