AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I close my eyes again, trying to remember. Did I recognize anyone? Anysoldados?Oh.Oh!
“Raul!”
“I don’t know.” He strokes my fingers again. “I am pretty sure he was shot, but not certain. I don’t know who, if anyone, made it.”
“Well, there you go, Tío wouldn’t kill Raul. Or let anyone shoot me.”
He talks low and calm, but with controlled fury. “Eleanna. If you want to take out an ally, you have to make it look like someoneelsepulled the trigger. Right? Or else, all of your allies start to get nervous. I think the bomb was meant for me too.”
“The bomb? How?” I ask, my mouth dry. This is too much.
“If I’d been standing in the right place at the right time, it could’ve killed me.”
“But, but if my uncle wanted you dead, in the pizza shop, we were surrounded, wouldn’t they have just killed you?”
He nods. “Except. You were there. You weren’t supposed to be. They couldn’t just kill the boss’s niece, or even kill me in your arms. So, I think, I think you saved me.” His voice is warm and his words are deliberate. Fresh tears fall and all I can do is shake my head. This cannot be happening. He can’t be right about this. “Shhh, sweetheart, don’t waste tears on this. I’ll find a way out for us, for me. I’ll talk to Fausto and see why he wants to cut me off.”
“Have you asked them?” I look to the metal door in the corner with no handle. There are no windows, just air vents and a couple cameras that I’m just now noticing. And a drain by our feet.
“No,” Mark spits, “No one has even come in to give us so much as a damn drink of water.” He says, glaring at one of the cameras.
“Maybe they’ll let me go and I can talk to my uncle, tell him,” I rack my throbbing brain, “We could tell him I’m pregnant! Or tell him I won’t give him the money. Or something?”
Mark makes a sound beside me. “You, you would go to bat for me? Stand up to him…for me?”
“Of course I would.”
“Of course you would,” He stares at me, with so much affection in his eyes it almost makes up for the situation. “Unfuckingbelievable, my wife.” He looks at our fingers. “And if we have to cut ourselves off, leavela familia,could…would you do that?”
“I—“ I stop myself. I want to say, yes, I would. But if I do, and then Mark leaves me, what will I have? Without my family, I have no one. Luna in Chicago who I’d probably never be able to see again. I don’t have friends, skills, connections.
Mark leans toward me in his chair. “You wouldn’t have to give up everything and everyone. I can find a way to sneak you to see Mia. We’ll have plenty of money and security. But we’ll lose a lot of pull, a lot of connections. We would be on our own. Just you and me.”
I search his eyes. “You and me, you mean, together?”
His scowl deepens. “Of course together.”
I force the words out. “So, no more divorce?”
I see it, the softening in his eyes, the sincerity. “No, no divorce. Ever.”
“But you’ve been pushing me away, you haven’t been home and then—“ I stop myself from saying that he had someone shoot me. I must have just misheard. I need to get to a hospital.
Mark sighs and shakes his head. “I was just being a fucking coward. And I’m done. I promise I’ll be the husband you deserve, Ellie. I’ll do better. I’ll give you all of me, but you have to answer, would you leavela familiawith me? For me?”
I think about the man underneath it all, the Mark no one sees or knows. But I do. The brokenness he hides but also the tenderness, the kindness. I still want all of him. I still want my dream, with him. “Yes, I would.”
Mark’s shoulders sag with relief. “Okay, then there’s something I—“
The door slams open, interrupting us. A man in all black combat gear rushes in. He walks straight to Mark and starts talking quickly and quietly.
In Russian.
“What are you doing, brother?”He asks Mark angrily.
“I’m telling her the truth. I’m bringing her in.”Mark says.
“This wasn’t approved!”
