Diego doesn’t seem to notice. “Eleven,” he mumbles. “Marcella was a baby. She’d just started walking and … she was the only person I loved and who loved me. I would have done anything to protect her. My mother would have thrown her under a bus to save her own ass, but I would have torn out my own spleen for that baby girl. I still would.”
Swiping at my tears, I stand to my feet, my eyes glued to his back. “What did you do, Diego? What did she make you do?”
He turns to face me, not batting an eye at my flushed, damp face. Emotion is still locked away, his face a blank slate. It’s as if he’s telling me about horrific things that happened to someone else.
“She took me into his office … the same office I work out of now. He was pacing back and forth, talking on the phone. He was annoyed with us for interrupting him and waved us off like he always did. He went back to his phone call and turned his back, so he didn’t see her hand me my pistol. I shot him in the back first, even though I’d been taught that was the coward’s way. But Mother said things were different in that situation. We were under attack, and this was about survival. The threat my father had brought on the family had to be eliminated from the top down.”
Diego watches as I brace a hand on the table, not certain I can stay on my feet. This can’t be real life. Mothers don’t coerce their sons into killing their fathers. Fathers don’t beat their sons and force them to become criminals before they’re old enough to know what they want from life. This isn’t how families are supposed to work.
But then I think of how my father was willing to let me die in his place. My mother was a wonderful woman, and he never deserved her. If she were still alive, everything might have been different. I can take comfort from that, but Diego has nothing. No comfort, no rest from an invisible cage keeping him trapped.
“He went down onto his knees,” Diego continues, “and Mother pushed me toward him and told me to finish the job. So, I shot him between the eyes. Then, Mother had all the men who were still loyal round up the ones who had betrayed us. They were forced to kneel, one-by-one in front of me to be executed. Counting my dad, I killed twenty-two men that day. When it was over, she made all the remaining men kneel and take an oath of loyalty to me … their new king.”
“God,” I whisper, sniffling and drying the last of my tears. “No wonder you don’t want children.”
Diego nods, his lips pinched tight. “It’s also why I never wanted a wife.”
I let out a sound that partially a laugh, but also a sob. “Afraid I’ll stab you in the back?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m afraid that someone who wants to hurt me would do it through you. I never wanted to be that vulnerable. Being in this position is easier when you have nothing to lose.”
I take a tentative step toward him, then another, and he doesn’t move away. Diego is watching me like I’m a snake he expects to strike—or a woman who will collapse on him and get hysterical.
“Then why did you marry me?” I ask.
He shrugs helplessly. “I didn’t have a choice, gatita. You were too good to be true, and once I had you, I couldn’t let you go. But I won’t lose you … not now, not ever. If you never trust me to do anything else, you can trust me to keep you safe. I would burn the world to ashes for you.”
Something deep inside me fractures, and I lose what’s left of my resistance. I told myself this would never happen—that Diego could never get to me on any level that wasn’t physical. But he’s like a cyclone, swirling and destructive and pulling me into his center.
I go to him and place both hands on his chest. His heart is racing, and it’s the only hint that he’s not as calm as he appears on the outside.
“This is who I am, gatita,” he says, bracing his hands over mine and holding them against his sternum. “I don’t know how to be anything else. I know I’m not the kind of