Bullet to the Heart.
Selina is always talking about the bizarre names of makeup colors, but this seems—
Realization hits me suddenly, and the lipstick tube drops out of my hand, rattling against the hardwood floor. Selina is turning to me with a frown, and I’m rising to my feet, but everything is moving in slow motion.
I know why El Sombrerón hasn’t struck back. Why he hasn’t taken his turn on the battlefield.
This isn’t a war. He’s not playing games with me, not playing by the rules. He’s delivering one fatal blow, an unmistakable message, ending things on his terms before they even begin.
“Selina!” my voice is shouting, strained and panicky, but it’s too late.
I hear the stifled explosion, see my wife’s body jolt back, hands flying off the podium, and then she’s falling into my arms, a scarlet stain spreading rapidly across that gorgeous green dress.
* * *
I can’t believe I’m going to die the same way my brother did.
It would only be fair. I’ve often believed I’m the one who should have taken the bullet that night, even after learning the real reason for the attack that night. He was always the good one. If I had died that night instead, none of this would’ve happened.
And now, I’m going to die anyway.
My eyes flutter open. I don’t feel any pain, but I’m surrounded by chaos. I’m lying down, my body vibrating slightly, two figures in white standing over me, yelling words I don’t understand. One of them is trying to cut through my gown. I try to tell her to stop, it’s custom made, but then my vision fades out again.
A hard jolt wakes me. I see a slanted view of Grady Hospital in front of me, and then my body goes back to a horizontal position, just night sky above me. I hear a voice shouting to be more careful, more fucking careful. A low, dangerous growl that sounds familiar, tinged with something I’ve never heard before. Fear. Who is that? Why does that voice make my body feel warm? Or maybe that’s just in my head. My body doesn’t feel anything at all.
The lights are bright, a blue-ish white. There’s something rubbery and cold over my face, and the air shooting up my nostrils feels sharp. Can air feel sharp? There are new faces above me, and still the shouting, the voice, and other voices saying calm down, sir, let us do our jobs. She’ll be alright. Who is going to be alright? Not me. I’m dying. My slow, lethargic heart wills the voice to say something again. I want to hear that voice one more time. It makes it easier to breathe, when he speaks. But he doesn’t.
I miss not being able to feel anything. Now I feel everything, everything, everything. Someone carved all the flesh out of my body, plucked the bones out one by one, and lit a fire inside my skin instead. I’m on fire, I am fire. The pain is a steady pulse, unrelenting. This is how Max felt, when I held him in my arms and watching him bleed out. This is the last thing he ever felt. Pain. Agony, misery, torture—that doesn’t begin to label it. Words are just words. This, this is a lifetime unlived, balled up, doused in gasoline. Mom, Dad, Max, me. Horrific death is our family legacy. I’m glad I’ll never get to pass it on.
The voice is back. My hand is being squeezed, I think. My limbs feel miles long, and I could walk all day without finding my hand, or who’s holding it.
“Don’t die, princesa,” it says. “Don’t you fucking dare die. I said you could never leave me, and I meant it. You can’t. Fucking. Go.”
I cling to that voice. I have to do what it says, I don’t know why, but I know I do. I will my mouth to open, bite onto that lifeline, but my mind is already fading out again.
The faces above me have blue masks on now. The air in my nostrils is heavy and sweet and
“—one of the catering staff, just a kid. I swear we vetted him, Javi. He says they threatened his mother. You know what that’s—”
“I don’t care. He fucked with the wrong man. Kill him.”
“Okay, but… I think we should wait. Maybe he has more information. We can—”
“I said to fucking kill him. Don’t make it quick. I want you to—”
“Wake up, princesita. Wake up.”
Consciousness returns to me slowly, although I feel like gulping it up in gasps. My eyelids are heavy, mouth dry as a desert. There’s still a deep, throbbing pain on my right side, between my hips and my ribcage, but it doesn’t feel like wildfire anymore. A hot pile of embers, maybe. But not death.
It takes Javier a few moments to realize I’m awake. When he does, there’s something pure and unmasked on his face, something I never could have pictured on his stark features. But then his eyes are dark again, guarded.
“Welcome back,” he says gruffly, taking my hand and then releasing it. He doesn’t know what do to with me.
“You know I couldn’t leave you even if I tried,” I say, and it doesn’t come out joking, the way I wanted it to. It cracks out up my swollen throat and dried lips.
“I’ll ask the nurse for some water,” Javier says quickly, moving to stand, but I will enough strength into my hand to grab his. It’s a loose grip, but it’s enough to keep him seated. Good.
I don’t want him to leave me, either.
* * *
When my sweet captive’s eyes flutter open, it’s all I can do not to grab her fragile, broken body up into my arms and… I don’t know. Just hold her. Feel her heartbeat steadying against mine. Know that her body is still warm and full of life.
I can’t believe that, after everything I did to save her, to keep her, I almost lost my princesa.
The bullet didn’t do major damage, thankfully, lodging itself safely just an inch below her right kidney. I’m not sure if that stroke of luck is due to me catching her attention in time, or the shooter being a complete amateur. It doesn’t matter. It can never happen again.
Selina will remain safely locked up inside the estate as soon as the hospital clears her, and El Sombrerón won’t live to regret what he did. I thought he’d already taken all he could from me, given me enough reasons for the ultimate revenge, but I was wrong. Nearly losing Selina, the only thing that’s ever been truly mine, has left me blind with fury.
“I’m going to kill him, princesa,” I growl, gripping Selina’s tiny, cold hand far tighter than I should. Perhaps this isn’t how a kind and loving husband should be treating his wife when she only just awoke after emergency surgery, but I’ll never be one for soft words and sweet gestures. This is what I have to offer my wife: violence and vengeance. “I swear, he’ll pay.”
“No, Javi,” Selina says, squeezing my hand back and meeting my eyes. I think at first that she’ll dissuade me, give me some anti-violence speech, but what I see reflected back at me in her gaze surprises me. “I’m going to kill him.”
I blink at my wife, rendered speechless. Something warm and heavy is pressing against the insides of my ribcage, something I’ve never felt before. Could it be? Has my captive finally been broken completely, forced to not only accept, but embrace her dark new world? But no, she’s just coming out of shock, and a lot of drugs. She doesn’t know what she’s saying.
“You should rest,” I say, mostly because I don’t know what I might do or say next if I stay here with her. I’ll send in Miel to look over her, of course, and probably H too, but I need to get out of this fucking hospital before I lose my mind. Hell, a second ago, I thought Selina Palacios, renowned pacifist and anti-violence philanthropist, was volunteering, no, demanding to be the one to pull the trigger on our enemy. I need a nap, a drink, and a couple rounds against the punching bag at the estate’s gym, not necessarily in that order.
Since I was nine years old, my life depended on my ability to remain buttoned tight, every emotion under control, not allowing so much as a facial tic to reveal my true inner workings. That ability to remain collected even in chaos is what has kept me alive this long. But as soon as Selina hit that ballroom floor, fuck. Panic overtook me like it never has before. This girl is too far in my head, and I need to take some distance, need to breathe different air
for a moment and remind myself of who I am, and why I can’t let her in like this.
The look in her eyes as I go to stand tells me she’s going to make that task difficult.
“Please don’t go,” she says, barely above a whisper.
I acquiesce, only for a moment, because this woman just took a bullet because of my actions. But only for a moment. “Don’t worry, Miel will make sure you’re safe. But I have to—”
“I can’t do this anymore,” Selina interrupts, eyes meeting mine for just a breath before she nervously looks down into her lap. My heart fucking stops. I don’t know what she’s going to say, but it certainly can’t be anything good. “I could’ve fucking died, Javier. Just like that. Or you could have died. And I can’t keep fighting what I feel, or hiding it, when at any moment one of us could be gone forever.”
I can’t fucking breathe. I’m paralyzed, her hand in mine, mine in hers.
“I know it doesn’t make any sense, or maybe it makes too much sense, or maybe I’m just crazy and fucked up and broken inside. But…” she forces herself to meet my eyes again. “I think I’m falling in love with you, Javier.”
No. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I told myself I would never ask for her heart, never demand it. It certainly never occurred to me she’d offer it willingly.
“I know I’d live for you, and it sounds like you’d kill for me, so maybe we’re halfway there,” Selina gives a soft, humorless chuckle, trying to make light of the most devastating news I’ve ever been dealt. “I’m sorry. I know it’s insane—”
“I can’t—” my voice feels dangerously close to cracking, and I have to swallow hard. The warm feeling that was nearly bursting inside me a moment ago has turned into a cold rock, settling down onto my gut. “I’m so sorry, princesa. I never meant for this to happen. But I… I’m afraid I can’t ever return any feelings like that. I’m not built that way.”
She blinks hard, refusing to meet my eyes again, but keeps her chin high. That’s my girl.
“I know,” she says, though I can tell she’s either lying, or had been desperately hoping her suspicions would prove false. “That’s okay. I just want you to know. You did it, Vega. You broke me. You fucking own me, every last cell of my being. You win.”
She’s laughing through tears now, a sight and sound that lends new meaning to the word “bittersweet.” I can’t leave now, but I don’t want to stay. I never realized that once I broke her, I’d be cutting myself on the sharp edges of the shards left behind.
“It’s okay,” Selina repeats, meeting my eyes again. “You can go now.”
And so I do, because I don’t know what else to do.
I never knew I was a coward until I walked away from that hospital room and left my captive wife crying alone.
* * *
When Miel walks in and finds me crying, she assumes it’s because of the pain, and I don’t dissuade her. When the nurses come and pump a little more pain medication into my IV drip, I let them. After all, if there was ever a reason to briefly break your unofficial sobriety, it would be getting shot, telling your husband—a violent killer who took you hostage and blackmailed you into marriage—that you love him, and him not saying it back.
My life is a fucking disaster.
When I wake up the next day, though, I feel better, at least emotionally. I ask the nurses to stop the morphine, and ask Miel to pull whatever strings necessary to get me back home today. I’ve survived every other horrible thing the universe has thrown my way over the past two and a half decades. I can survive a little hole in my belly and yet another unrequited romance.
I knew from the start that a man like Javier Vega would never be able to love me, or probably anyone else. It hurts, more than I would care to admit. It was easier to accept when I was still burying my own feelings toward him. But I meant what I told him. I don’t want to die holding secrets inside. Not like the rest of my family did.
I also meant it when I told him I am going to be the one to kill El Sombrerón. For what he did to my brother, and what he did to my husband, and what he almost did to me. I refuse to live in fear any longer than is necessary, although this gunshot wound is certainly a setback. I am going to recover, get strong again, and then I’m going to stare that motherfucker down, pull the trigger, and watch his eyes go from surprised to lifeless. Me, the pampered little princess he thought would be easy to kill. I’m going to bring down the most dangerous man in Atlanta.
I don’t think Javier believed me. But I’ll convince him. And he’ll give me this, he has to. And he’ll help me. Because I think this, this is as close to love as a man like my husband gets. I don’t know what to call what I am to him, but I know he’ll go to the ends of the earth to avenge me, and keep me safe from further harm. And that will have to be enough for me.
And now I have to make a hard choice to keep those I care about safe, too.
Javier picks me up from Grady personally, wheeling me down corridors into some sort of ultra-secure basement parking lot, where he refuses my insistence that I can walk the two steps to the Hummer, and gently picks me up and sets me inside himself. He sits in the back next to me, growling at Miel every time she hits a turn at a speed that even a grandma wouldn’t call fast. He does the same when we get to the estate, picking me up in a bridal carry and taking me up the stairs, while I curl my arms around his neck and lean my face into the safety of his chest. This man isn’t my enemy anymore. I’ll never forgive him for the conditions under which we met, but what’s done is done. He’s my protector now, my lifeline. He’ll never admit it, and I’ll never bring this up aloud, but he’s just as much mine as I am his.
Javier Vega is MINE.
No one can take him away, and he can’t leave me. I won’t let him.
He sets me down on our bed, while Kate fusses over too many pillows and asks if I want tea, medicine, a bite to eat, that ice cream I loved as a child, while giving me no time to answer any of her nervous questions. I set my hand on her arm and gesture for her to sit down next to me. She perches on the edge of my bed, trying very hard not to jostle the mattress even a little bit.
“Kate, you have to go,” I say gently, swallowing hard to keep from tearing up. The woman’s eyes are wide and surprised, and she’s not as successful as I am in holding back her emotion. “It’s not safe for you here in Atlanta, here with me.”
Javier stands with arms crossed beside the bed, expression unreadable. I didn’t ask him if I could do this, but he can’t refuse me. I just got shot, for fuck’s sake. I think I get to be a little bit greedy, as long as my insides are still stitching themselves back together.
“I…” Kate begins, sniffling a little bit. “I can’t leave you, Selina, not like this. And… I don’t even have anywhere to go. I’ve always lived here, with your family. I don’t have any of my own left.”
“What about Nantucket?” I ask, forcing a soft smile, and Kate’s eyes go wide again. “You always loved those books set there. And it will be safe. We’ll get you all set up there, and make sure you’re taken care of financially. You’ll never have to work again. You can just… live. Relax. Retire. And maybe… Maybe there will be a time when it will be safe for us to come visit, too.”
I meet Javier’s eyes nervously, and he just gives me a nod. I exhale slightly. He understands. I have to do this.
“That’s very kind,” Kate is saying, wiping at her eyes with her shirt-sleeves. “I… really appreciate that, Selina. Thank you, Javier.”
She doesn’t quite look at him when she says that, but it’s enough. And she didn’t refuse the offer, which I thought she might. She sees it, too. Our life here has gotten far too dangerous, and I don’t get to escape it, but she does. She can still save herself.
“Can I speak to her in private for a moment?” Kate asks Javier, daring to look up at him. He considers this for a second, then nods again, leaving us alone.
“What is it?” I ask the older woman, leaning in closer, though the movement makes me wince.
“You’ve changed,” is all Kate says, raising her eyes to meet mine again.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I’m not entirely sure why I say it, but those are the words that leave my mouth.
“Don’t apologize,” Kate says. “You did what you had to do to survive, to help me survive.”
God, I’m going to cry again.
“I did some things that weren’t so good, though,” I admit, and now I’m the one who can’t meet the other woman’s eyes.
“But it made you stronger,” Kate says, gently squeezing my knee through the blankets. I never realized how much she saw while she was here, even though she never said anything at the time. “And you made it right, didn’t you? The bad things that you said your parents did?”
I nod. I did, and then I paid for it with a bullet to the gut. Just like my brother did. But unlike him, I survived, and I won’t let this scare me into backing down. I’m going to win this war, or die trying.
“I just want you to remember that when it’s time, you’re strong enough to leave, too,” Kate says, her voice low and serious.
I nod, too exhausted to argue with her, even if I wanted to. I don’t know exactly what she means, and I’m not sure she does, either, but she’s wrong.
I’m strong enough to stay.
Glass Cage Page 17