Battered Not Broken (43 page)

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It wasn’t a sound that woke Ally, but a touch. Lost in sleep that was fitful but deep, she missed the squeak of the opening hospital room door entirely. But the touch – it roused her immediately. Blinking, she focused on the person who’d just stroked a lock of unruly hair off her forehead and tucked it behind her ear.

“Ryan.” Her voice came out breathy and weak, as if her mouth had gone desert-dry while she’d slept. Her heart made up for her voice’s feebleness by pounding furiously. Could he hear it, a rush of muscle and blood that drowned out the soft ticking of the clock on the wall?

He bent down, burying a hand in her hair as he pressed his lips against her jaw.

She’d tied her locks back in a loose ponytail in an attempt to keep them from going too crazy.

He dislodged the slack elastic band with an easy tug, freeing her hair to expand and curl into waves that were sure to be messy. She couldn’t have cared less about how it looked. All she could think about was the reassuring press of his fingertips and palm against the back of her skull and the heat of his lips against her face.

“I love you,” she said as he began to kiss a trail from her cheek toward her mouth. She hadn’t said it back to him before he’d left – a fact she’d realized a few moments too late. She’d regretted it during his absence, had agonized over the possibility that she might never get a chance to say it to his face. Speaking the words might as well have lifted the weight of the world off her shoulders for how light she felt as he pressed his mouth firmly over hers, taking her lips in a kiss that was reminiscent of the one he’d given her before leaving.

His breath was stale and his lips were lightly chapped, as if he’d spent a lot of time outdoors in cold weather and hadn’t had time to take care of himself.

She kissed him more deeply anyway, her veins tingling with the simple knowledge of news she’d been longing to hear ever since he’d walked out the door.
He’s alive. He’s back. He’s alive.
Her heart drove those facts home with each beat.

“What happened?” she asked when their lips parted. “Tell me what happened. Where have you been?”

Ryan sank down onto the edge of her hospital bed, next to her knees. There wasn’t a visible scratch on him, though there were dark circles beneath his eyes and a couple busted blood vessels in their whites. He was wearing the same clothes he’d left in, and they were noticeably wrinkled, a little dirty. Another day or two and his stubble would be worthy of being called a beard.

“There were three people in that car during the drive-by. Three men. They’re dead.” He delivered the news with all the emotion of an automaton.

“You killed them?” She hated the note of surprise in her voice. Of course he had. That was what he’d set out to do, and he’d made it back alive. What other explanation could there be?

“Two of them were already dead.”

Ally remained still and silent as her brain tried to reconcile the idea of the man who made love to her with such skill and tenderness to the idea of that same man using that same body to take human life. It didn’t work – she couldn’t picture it. When she kept trying, continuing to think about it, it left her mind feeling fogged and achy.

“Don’t look so sad. I didn’t kill anyone. I would, though, to protect you.”

He’d been a marine. He’d gone to war. It wasn’t surprising if he’d killed men there, but that seemed far away. There was a difference between knowing that he’d killed thousands of miles away, in a place she’d never see, than thinking of him doing the same in her city, to people that had affected her life, however negatively. Maybe there shouldn’t have been, but there was. A chord of emotion deep inside her trembled with relief.

“Where’s Manny?”

Ryan held her gaze but didn’t say anything. There was a subtle shift in the room’s atmosphere, a change that was invisible and intangible but noticeable nonetheless.

Instinctively, Ally glanced to her right, where her mother was asleep in a chair, leaning against the wall. Her shoulders were hunched and she’d never looked so small.

“Where is he?”

“He was killed.”

Her heart definitely stopped for a second. Everything else stopped too – time, her own breathing and the ever-present ticking of the clock on the wall.

When everything resumed again, it was almost like sensory overload. Strange, since the room was calm and nearly silent. The feeling passed within a few moments, and she finally blinked. “What?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You have to tell me what happened.” Maybe then it would make sense. At the moment it didn’t – she’d feared it, had even thought about it in morbid detail during the last twenty-four hours, but now that she knew for sure, it just didn’t seem real.

Ryan breathed a long sigh. “Are you sure?”

“Yes. Tell me now, while my mother is asleep. Keep your voice down so you don’t wake her.”

“The men responsible for the drive-by were part of a rival gang. A new one and a small one – a little smaller than Casa de Ladrillos. They’d recently started giving Carlos some trouble. Your brother got those cuts in a confrontation with one of them. Killed the guy. The shooting was in retaliation for that. They wanted to send Manny a message, to piss him off so he’d come looking for them in a rage.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t go after Inés.” It wasn’t something said out of spite or dislike. It just seemed like Manny’s fiancée would be the logical go-to target if that was the rival gang’s goal.

“Yeah. I’ll get to that. Anyway, apparently while Manny was here yesterday, several of them went after Carlos. Shot up his house. Didn’t kill him, though. Didn’t hit anybody. Just pissed Carlos off. So Carlos and the rest went after them.”

Ally gripped a fistful of bedsheets. The cotton weave was strangely cool against her palm, a contrast to the flush of heat and emotion that had rushed through her when she’d woken in Ryan’s presence.

“They tracked down the car and killed all of the men who’d been in it when Carlos’ house was targeted. Two of them were also two of the men who shot you. So that was already done.

“Manny and I went looking for the third on our own while Carlos and the rest of the guys went after the man who’s reportedly leading the rival gang. We found the third man in the last place we’d expected to – Manny’s house. The doors were locked three times over and there were no signs of forced entry, so we didn’t expect him or anyone to be inside. But he was.”

“How did he get inside?”

“You know that woman your brother was supposed to marry?”

“Inés?”

“Yeah. Apparently she had a boyfriend in the rival gang. He was the third man.”

Ally heard her breath leave her lungs in a rush, but didn’t feel the need to breathe for several moments. “What the hell?” she said when she finally inhaled again. “She was cheating on Manny?”

“Yeah. She gave her boyfriend a key to his house.”

“So she killed him. She plotted to murder him.”

Ryan nodded, the circles under his eyes darker than ever.

“Bitch,” Ally said, barely remembering to keep her voice low. “That bitch.” Her voice was almost a whisper, but there was nothing gentle about it. “It all makes sense in a sick sort of way. The way they got serious so fast. Making a show of planning a big wedding. God, what did she do to make him fall for her like that?”

“I don’t know. But she had him hook, line and sinker, apparently.”

Ally ached inside and out, and not just because her limbs were trembling, which aggravated her wounds. “He must’ve been so lonely – he must’ve wanted so badly to belong to a real family again.” Why else would he have let a bitch like Inés drag him into an engagement so quickly? And that had happened around the same time he’d started visiting home again, forcing his way back into his sister and mother’s lives. Now, it made sense.

Maybe he hadn’t been cut out for gang life after all. Maybe he’d always been that same little boy who’d watched
Jaws
with her and let her spend the rest of the night in his bed a few hours later when she’d woken up from a shark-themed nightmare. Since they’d been caught watching the forbidden movie by their parents, she’d felt too guilty to approach their mother or father over it. Manny had been the only one she’d felt safe confiding in. “Poor Manny.”

Ryan gave the faintest of nods.

“What happened when you entered the house?” she asked after a few moments of tense silence.

“He was waiting inside – he’d been expecting Manny. As soon as Manny opened the front door, he stabbed him in the gut. He said ‘this one’s from Inés’.”

Ally fought a wave of potent nausea.

“Manny was hurt. I wrestled his attacker off of him, but it was a bad wound.”

The feeling grew worse, prompting Ally to eye the plastic basin that had been left on the stand beside her bed, just in case.

“The guy had been expecting Manny, but he hadn’t been expecting me. After I got him off of Manny I knocked the knife from his hand. We fought. Just for a few seconds. I won. Managed to get him down onto the floor and pinned him there.”

Ally listened silently, a tight feeling in her throat that would have prevented her from speaking, even if she’d wanted to.

“He wasn’t a danger to Manny anymore, but the damage was done. The blade had gone deep. Manny was bleeding out, but he wouldn’t stop obsessing over what the guy who’d stabbed him had said. He begged me not to do anything else to the guy until he’d gotten the story straight. So I told the guy that if he didn’t answer Manny’s questions, I’d— Well, never mind what I said. He cooperated.

“So Manny got to ask his questions, and the guy confessed about Inés and how she’d played Manny. I didn’t care about that, to be honest. I cared that the guy had shot you. That was why I was going to kill him.”

“But you didn’t.” It was almost a question. Ally’s heart was speeding even though he’d already said that he hadn’t killed anyone.

Ryan shook his head. “Manny begged me to let him kill the guy. So I did. Manny drew the gun he’d been keeping in his jeans. I let the guy up. Manny shot him before he could make it out the door.” Ryan turned up his palms and looked down at his hands. “I didn’t kill him, but I let Manny do it. I guess there’s not much of a difference, is there?”

Ally’s heart beat faster as she let Ryan’s question go unanswered. “And then Manny died?” she asked. It was strange how cool her voice sounded. She felt anything but on the inside.

“Yeah. Lost too much blood. I’m sorry. It happened fast, and there was nothing I could do. He was definitely gone – I checked before I left.”

“How long ago was this?”

“A few hours ago. I made myself scarce for a while after that. Headed to a different part of the city. Waited until I was sure I hadn’t been followed or anything to come here.”

If anyone else had said that, she might’ve doubted or feared their claim. But she trusted Ryan, not least of all because he’d been trained for war, unlike the other men he’d spent the past twenty-four hours dealing with.

At least he hadn’t actually killed for her, like he’d intended to. She wouldn’t have been able to handle that – not after how those sorts of efforts had ended for her father and brother. But still…

 “I’m sorry.” She gripped her fistful of bedsheets even tighter as her imagination assembled a slideshow of what the ordeal must have looked like, of what it must have been like for Ryan. “That all sounds so horrific. I can’t believe you went through all that to protect me and mamá.”

He leaned down, invading her personal space in a way that made her feel something – just a little something – other than grief. “I’d do anything if I thought it would protect you.” If he was shaken by what he’d been through, he hid it well. “But I’m afraid things still aren’t safe. Carlos is on a witch hunt for anyone affiliated with that rival gang, and they’re retaliating. I don’t even like the thought of you in this city, let alone in your home, where they know you live. Manny is gone, but still…”