Page 134 of Mafia Don's Secret Twins

“You did it once. You’re smart and very, very resilient, Marisol. More fuckin’ resilient than I think anyone realizes. You can do it again, and you might need to stab someone to get there. If you need to stab them, remember?—”

“Neck. Groin. Legs. Liver. Gut,” I say, adding one.

Dino nods. “The gut would be good. Especially with all this dirt around. It’ll be septic in a hot fuckin’ second.”

If I could feel my own skin, that would worry me, because I’d be concerned about dirt getting into my own wounds.

But I can’t.

And I’m not.

The calm is the strangest part. I guess that I do remember feeling like this, once.

When I gave birth to the twins.

Adrenaline,my brain tells me.Fight, flight, flee, or fawn.

Clearly, I’m a fighter.

“Let’s go get back to our girls,” Dino says softly.

One word.

Three letters.

And it stops me in my tracks more effectively than any river of mud.

I blink at him, the rain bringing mud into my eyes. I hastily scrub it out, blinking rapidly against the grit that’s gathered underneath my eyelids.

“Our?” I say.

I hate that the word sounds shaky, and that it’s almost lost in the cascade of the rain.

Dino reaches for my hand, grabbing the one that doesn’t hold a knife.

He nods.

“Yeah, baby. Our girls.”

I have no idea where we’re going.

The road is gone. The jungle is gone. There’s no way to know which way we’re headed, only that occasionally the rain lifts long enough for us to see the glittering lights of Brasilia, which is somewhere around fifteen miles away.

From Brasilia, we need to take a boat to the coast. Or, weneed to catch a flight.

I have no passport and I look like the mountain spit me out. There’s no way that anyone is going to put me on a plane…

“Give me your hand,” Dino says roughly.

Automatically, I put my fingers in his.

He hauls me up against his firm chest, tugging me over some rocks that I hadn’t really noticed.

“Thanks,” I mutter.

Dino grunts.

We continue in silence, picking our way through the mountain, through the jungle, and Dino keeps startling like a cat every time he hears something other than the steady fall of rain.

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