Isla sucked in a gasp and tugged the sheet, clutching it way up at her chin. “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered, reaching to switch off the small lamp next to her bed and then inching down the mattress to hold her close to me. “Stay quiet.”
We both shallowed our breath to listen for activity in the house. It was well after one in the morning, and Ernesto had gone to bed hours ago—which was the only way I had been able to sneak into Isla’s bedroom in the first place.
Our relationship was in a dicey stage given the small, but totally inconvenient gap in our ages. When we lost our virginity to each other a little over a year ago, we were both underaged, but now only she was, which was why we’d had to start sneaking around. And I don’t think Ernesto would actually kill me, but he was a large and intimidating patriarch, and I wouldn’t put it past him to inflict some kind of damage.
But the strange sound outside definitely wasn’t Ernesto marching up the stairs to catch us, rather it sounded more like some of the scarier shit that sometimes went down in the dead of night at the Reyes estate. Isla had been climbing into my window in the middle of the night as a terrified little girl since she was only six or seven. Our families have known each other for longer than I could remember, and tiny little Isla had decided from around toddlerhood that I hung the moon and was placed on the earth to protect her. I, in turn, had always seen her as the most enchanting little creature I’d ever encountered. Through the years, we grew together, grew closer, grew inseparable, until we finally made the leap from childhood friends to teenage lovers, and we had every intention spending the rest of our lives together.
We were soulmates in the truest sense of the phrase.
Another loud POP-POP-POP echoed outside, and that definitely wasn’t a car backfiring.
“Dios mio,” Isla gasped, burying her face in my clavicle and anchoring her fingers into the muscles of my back.
“Shhhhh, baby girl.” I stroked her hair and kissed her head. “Just stay quiet. I’m here. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
From way the hell across the house, the front doors slammed, and there was an explosion of shattering glass, as though the glass in the French-style double-doors fractured on impact.
Every muscle in Isla’s body tensed against me, and she whimpered. I held her more tightly, and she began trembling.
A cacophony of shouting in Spanish echoed through the cavernous house, and I really needed to learn her native tongue, if for no other reason than to decipher what the hell all these strange voices would yell about in her house in the dead of night.
I located her ear in the darkness. “What are they saying?”
“Money… they want Papá’s money… it’s…” She started hyperventilating, and I rubbed her back in long, firm strokes. “Primos de California… his cousins from California… they’re not real family, Malachi. Los Dolorosos, they’re called. They’re bad people. They do bad things. Papá has spent my whole life trying to keep us away from them. Even before I was born. It’s why he moved him and Mamá here.”
There was a louder shout from the other side of the house, and Isla gasped.
“He says… if you refuse to work with us, we will make you pay dearly with what matters most to you, and then you will put your inheritance back in our family where it belongs.”
My brow pulled low, and I didn’t like the sound of that at all.
More shouting ricocheted through the house, and there was a slam of something that sounded like wood cracking and splintering.
Every nerve in my body electrified with a need to get Isla out of this house, and I pushed up and away from her to sift through the sheets for our clothes.
“Malachi, where are you going?”
“Shhhhh…” I located her lips in a pale blue moonbeam and pressed my index finger to them. “We’re going next door. You can’t stay here tonight.”
Isla collapsed backward on the bed and continued to hyperventilate.
I reached back under the blankets at our feet and sifted blindly for several seconds until I came up with a handful of clothes. Holding a couple of articles up to the moonlight, I managed to differentiate what was hers and what was mine, and quickly tugged on my boxer briefs and shorts before turning back to Isla with her panties and sundress.
“Here, baby girl,” I whispered, reaching for her waist. “Put these on, and let’s go.”
She didn’t respond, and merely continued to breathe rapidly and shallow.
“Isla… sweetheart.” I leaned over her face and attempted to assess her expression in the moonlight. “Baby, put these—”
“Malachi.” Her already quiet voice was reduced to a teary squeak. “Please… please… please…”
“I’m here, baby. Put these—”
“Malachi.”
I leaned closer to her face and could make out her eyes in the pale, blue light. They suddenly appeared glassy in a way that didn’t just look like tears. Her dilated pupils were pointed in the general direction of my face, but she seemed to be looking right through me.
“Please… please… please…”
I blindly reached for her hand, but my grasp landed on her trembling wrist. Her pulse under my thumb was quick and wild.
“Malachi… please… please… please…”
Even in the light of the moon, I could plainly see that she’d gone far paler than was normal for the natural tan of her skin, and it was like deja vu.
When Isla was that scared, she would be briefly rendered to a catatonic state until she slept it off, and I knew there was no getting her out the window and down the trellis.
So, I had no choice but to stay here with her.
Even though I knew the door was locked, I jumped out of bed to double check it. For good measure, I slid a dresser in front of it, cursing myself for being only eighteen and not twenty-one so I could buy a fucking gun already.
But I had no gun. I only had a locked door, and a dresser, and pure grit, and the unflinching willingness to step in front of a bullet for her if I had to.
So, I crawled back into bed and pulled her close to me, holding her against my chest and tucking the blankets tightly around her, just like when she was a little girl and would climb through my window in the middle of the night.
And I waited out the chaos.
All night long.
The chaos dissipated at around four in the morning, and there was a quiet knock on the door.
“Mijita?”
I cut my eyes sideways, but stayed silent.
The doorknob twisted and released.
“Todo está bien, mijita,” Ernesto’s voice murmured through the door. “Solo descansa.”
I held my breath and listened as footsteps padded away down the hall, and continued to hold Isla tightly against me.
I didn’t sleep.
It wasn’t until the early light of dawn began to peek through her lace curtains that she began to stir.
“Mmmm…” Isla hummed against the dip between my pectoral muscles. The tiniest giggle eked from her lips as she pressed a kiss to my skin. “You stayed all night, you bad boy.”
I dipped my face to kiss her head. “Are you okay, baby girl?”
Another quiet giggle. “Of course. I never get to sleep with you. I love it.”