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No. I wasn’t ready to go yet. I flipped over until my palms grated into the warm dirt and I kicked away. Denis already had the gun pointed directly at me; his steps sure as he climbed down the slight slope to where I was. Yuri stood slowly; his arms braced around him. His hands were empty, but I caught a glint of metal from somewhere on him as he straightened.
“Denis,” he warned, “stand down.”
My stomach reeled again at the way his face contorted, a sickly chill rolling over my skin. Anger seethed out of his pores. He lifted the gun and used it to scratch at his head. “Stand down?”
I couldn’t stop myself from inching backward, away from what felt like a ticking time bomb.
Yuri sidestepped until his body physically separated us. His fingers curled into fists at his side and even on lower ground, he looked as though he towered over the stocky man in front of him.
“I said stand down.”
From the road, the driver’s side door closed, and Matteo found his way around the hood of the car, his face unreadable. He came to a stop a few feet from Denis who erupted into maniacal laughter. “What are we waiting for?” he asked between bellows.
“Denis,” Matteo uttered through gritted teeth.
“No!” He shrugged away from the man at his right. “No, I want to know. I want to hear it from the mouth of the golden boy.” He leaned until I was able to see him around Yuri’s broad shoulders. My breath caught. “Why are we sparing her life?”
With his beady eyes on me, I wanted the earth to open up and swallow me whole. Deep into the sweltering heat until my bones crushed to dust and no one else would set their gaze on me. I only wanted quiet darkness where I could lick my wounds in peace— the weight of Denis’ suspecting stare too much to carry.
Yuri said nothing and if it weren’t for the steady rising and falling of his shoulders, I would have thought him dead. Was he so unaffected by the sickening smell of tension that laced through the air? Or was he just so used to being the one to face it that it didn’t bother him anymore?
“Answer me.” Denis barked.
Matteo reached forward to try and pry the gun from his fingers, but Denis shoved him off.
“We’ve got the Desalmados breathing down our necks, slaughtering our men like fucking carcass pigs and you want to waste time on this?” He squatted, his eyes narrowing on me through the gap in Yuri’s legs. “The useless waste of space that can’t even rouse her own father’s loyalty?”
As if my heart wasn’t shattered in my chest, Denis sprung the shards into action— using them to puncture through my lungs, stealing my breath. On instinct, my hand floated to where my beating heart once sat, the gaping hole oozing below my fingers.
“It’s not your call, it’s mine. Get the fuck back in the truck.” Yuri clipped. I kicked another few inches away from them.
Denis shook his head, slowly at first until the sweeping motion of his jaw was giving me motion sickness. “No,” he chuckled, raising the gun again.
Matteo’s hands were lightning fast, his own gun pressed against Denis’ temple in a flash of a second. “Bájala.”
He tossed the gun aside, the smack of it hitting the ground before it slid to Yuri’s boot. Instead of backing down, Denis brushed his sleeves up and charged, slamming chest to chest against Yuri until the both of them tumbled in my direction. Once again, I scrambled to get away, unable to look away from the heap of limbs. Denis reared back and crushed a fist against Yuri’s jaw and chuckled. “You had that one coming.”
Before I could blink, Yuri flipped them. His hands came down in a rain of violence, the crunch of his knuckles on his opponent's face impossibly loud. Denis flailed beneath him, but Yuri didn’t let up until the tanned skin on his hands was coated in blood— the sickly scent of iron thick in the air. Matteo moved to break them up, but Yuri’s head nearly snapped in his direction, “Stay back!”
Strong hands enclosed around Denis’ thick neck, and I covered my ears when I heard a gurgle from deep in his throat. Yuri leaned close to the struggling man beneath him, his lips curled back. “You will not fucking touch her.”
I shuddered. The fury in his words, the words themselves, made my blood pool. As I watched him choke a man beneath him, my body quivered. An unholy and immoral response that for some reason, I wasn’t ashamed of. Yuri was defending me; in much the way I had hoped he would.
By the time Matteo stepped in, Denis’ body was nearly limp. Yuri just shrugged his brother off and rose to his feet, his eyes immediately searching for me.
“Clean this mess up,” he spat at the foot soldiers scattered around the scene were frozen until Yuri yelled in Spanish and they sprang. Matteo sat back and watched as the unnamed soldiers peeled Denis’ body off the ground and pulled him to his unsteady feet– but not once did he dare to look in my direction. Instead, his cowardice reeked until the air was rank with his sour defeat.
Yuri rushed down to me, sliding on the sandy ditch until the distance was gone. Where I had only witnessed vengeance and blinding rage just moments ago, there was worry. Lines etched and spread from the corners of his gorgeous eyes, and he wasted no time on how his actions might have looked.
He lifted me up and pulled me against his chest, smoothing the hair away from my face. “Are you okay, baby?”
Unsure of just how I was feeling, the swirl of emotions rocking through me faster than I could process, I nodded. It was the only thing I could think to do. What I really wanted was to be shielded from the way Matteo’s fingers tapped on his gun and the dirty looks the soldiers dared to dart in my direction when they were sure the boss wasn’t looking.
I couldn't look away from the puddle of blood on the dirt. Some of it stained Yuri’s knuckles but most of it lay there in an oozing pile, a few droplets spreading and leading to Denis. He sat there with his head raised, a hand holding a shirt that one of the men had sacrificed. I was sure his nose was broken and from the way his body twitched beneath Yuri’s grip on his neck, it was only a matter of time before bruises bloomed from collar bone to jaw.
“Yuri,” Matteo called out as he plucked the gun from his waistband and kept it low. He stepped toward us, and his eyes narrowed on me. He wasn’t the only one and soon my skin burned from the glares and not the sun beating down on us. Yuri tensed at my side.
“No,” he responded. “It’s not her fault.”
