Leopard 02 - Wild Rain

don’t know, but I didn’t want Tony to know about that part of my life. Marcia didn’t know. We met at the library one day, ended up having coffee and became good friends. She didn’t know who I was and I didn’t want to tell her. She was a nice woman from a nice family.”
    “What does she do?”
    “She teaches school, for heaven’s sake. She teaches sixth-grade science. I went to see her as often as I could. Her home was like a sanctuary to me. Elijah always sent someone with me but they waited outside, in the car. Marcia thought they were my chauffeurs. She joked about it a couple of times. And then her brother moved back home. I got to know him and he was just as nice. One day he asked if I wanted to go to see an opening at an art museum. He was really into art.” She hung her head. “I said yes.”
    A chill went through Rio’s body. He knew what was coming. Death had a feeling to it, a presence. It was in the room. It was in her eyes. That stricken look she carried that never quite went away. He tightened his hold on her and rocked her back and forth gently, trying to give her a sense of peace, of comfort. There was neither in betrayal. “And your brother found you.”
    Sixteen
    Rachael took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I went to Marcia’shouse and had the guards stay outside. Tony and I got into Marcia’s car and drove away. I bent down as if I were looking for something when we drove out so the guards wouldn’t see me. For a few miles I thought it was safe.
    The next thing I knew, we were in a high-speed chase with cars on either side of us. They were Elijah’s men, not Armando’s. I knew them all. They forced the car to the side of the road. Elijah opened the door and yanked me out. There was shouting back and forth and then suddenly Elijah emptied a gun into Tony.” She covered her face with her hands.
    Her sobs were heart-wrenching, dragged from a woman with tremendous courage and control and all the more terrible because of it. Rio rested his head over hers as he rocked her, his mind racing, trying to figure out why her brother would want her dead after trading his honor to keep her alive.
    “I couldn’t believe what he’d done. It was too many deaths on my hands.” She held them up. “I felt covered in blood. Everyone I touched. Everything Elijah had done was because of me. He was so angry. He shook me over and over and said he should have put the gun to my head.”
    So many emotions ate at him that Rio didn’t know what he was feeling. Part of him wanted to weep for her. Part of him was so angry he wanted to hunt her brother and uncle down. “Rachael, sestrilla. It’s good you came here, to me, to your home where you belong.” He caught her wrists and brought the scars to his mouth. “Here, with me. Every morning the birds will sing to you. The rain has beautiful songs and it will play them for us. This is our world.” He felt a damn fool for uttering the words to her, yet so humbled that she’d accepted his own violent past. That she could look on what he did and not judge him harshly after all she’d been through. He would have quoted her a poem had he known one, just to ease her suffering.
    “Elijah will never stop looking for me.” She caught his face in her hands. “You should have known him all those years ago. He struggled so hard to work behind Armando’s back to get us free. It was such a terrible life, always poised on the brink of death. He walked that fine line every day. We whispered together, passed notes we burned so no one would know what we were planning. He stood between me and our uncle all the time.”
    “It must have been difficult.”
    “We had no life. We were still in school but we couldn’t bring home friends. We couldn’t have any friends. We couldn’t trust anyone, only each other. There were no dates, no dances. We lived in constant fear. Sometimes, if Armando didn’t think Elijah was taking care of business, he and his men would break into our rooms in the middle of the night. They’d drag me into Elijah’s room and put a knife to my throat or a gun to my head. Elijah was so calm. He never wept. He never panicked. He looked at them and he looked at me and he would say to Armando, ‘What do you want me to do?’ That was all. And he did whatever it took to save my life.”
    “Why do you feel ashamed?”
    “He sold drugs. I’m certain he killed people. He was so beautiful, so full of laughter. He never smiles.
    He has