Page 171 of The Slayer
“Jesus, you’ve been talking to my mother,” Chuito groaned as he rested his head in the space between her breasts. “Tino’s in this house. I wanna kill him, mami. I hate him.”
Alaine held him tighter, because she could hear how much just saying those words ripped his heart out. “You don’t hate him.”
“I want to hate him,” Chuito amended and then grabbed her hand, staring at it. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you? What did Junior do to you? Tell me what he did.”
“No one hurt me. Junior was kind,” she promised him as she squeezed his hand in hers. “We’re okay. We’re going to be okay. I know we’ll be okay.”
Alaine kept saying it, hoping if she repeated it enough times, it’d be true. They sat in the tub until the water started to get cool and the noise outside the room got louder.
Finally she asked, “Is it all the Italians?”
“All of them,” Chuito confirmed. “My mother probably wants to strangle me.”
Alaine was quiet for a long moment and then asked, “Did you kill Angel?”
“Mami—”
“I just want to know we’re okay,” she said before he could finish. “That Angel or those terrible Russians aren’t going to somehow come back and—”
“We’re okay,” he promised her. “No one is coming back today. We got a hundred Italians in this house. Today we’re safe.”
“What about tomorrow?”
“I don’t know, mami,” Chuito whispered miserably. “I hope so. I’m gonna work very hard to keep you safe.”
“The fighting?” she repeated the same question his mother did.
“Fuck the fighting.” He gave her the same answer. “Fuck it for right now. Maybe, when the dust settles, and Nova plays his hand right. Maybe, but not now. Right now, we got to survive. That’s it.”
“It’s not over?” she asked, because she heard it in his voice and knew that whatever he found out from the Russians wasn’t good.
Chuito sighed. “The Italians are in deep right now, and now we’re in deepwith them. Coño.”
“Do we have to stay with the Italians?” she asked, though it felt like a sin to do so, a betrayal for reasons she didn’t understand.
“Yes,” he said without hesitating. “We have to stand with the Italians.”
“Why?”
“Because I think Tino just saved our lives today.” Chuito choked on the words, and his voice cracked when he said, “I would’ve let them kill you…for nothing.”
Chuito’s shoulders started shaking, and he put his hands to his eyes at the confession. Alaine just held him while he cried, knowing even then that this moment was supposed to slip through her memory like it never happened.
She cried too.
As if they were both mourning the death of what they were before. Even if the Russians hadn’t shot them, they’d still killed the Alaine and Chuito who existed before that house.
It wasn’t exactly borrowed time.
It was as if their destinies had just careened off into a very different path than either of them had anticipated. This wasn’t a part-time gig; this was something that was going to consume them, because they wouldn’t be sitting here in this bath if it weren’t for Tino choosing this life for them rather than death.
But they were here.
Chuito was in her arms, not necessarily broken, but certainly dented and angrier than she thought possible. She could hear it in his tears, a wild, rapid anger, and she didn’t even know who was going to be at the receiving end of it.
Finally she whispered, “This is not Tino’s fault,” more to remind herself than him, because she didn’t think she was supposed to be angry at a man who just saved their lives.
“No, it’s not,” Chuito agreed, his voice still choked with anger. “It’s his grandfather’s fault. If they need help ending that motherfucker, I’ll be the first one in line. I earned it. We both earned it.”
