He’s a sight for desperately sore eyes. The relief I feel when I see him is so powerful that my knees buckle. I feel like I conjured him, like he heard me pleading for him and knew to come save me. For a moment all I do is blink to make sure my eyes aren’t deceiving me. Then, taking advantage of Franklin’s surprise, I shove him off me and stumble away from him, wrapping my arms protectively around myself as I huddle in the corner at a safe distance.
“So you’re the husband,” Franklin says casually, turning and extending his hand towards him. He must be clinically insane. “Franklin Marsh-Sackville.”
Thiago doesn’t blink, his wrathful stare never wavering from Franklin’s face as long seconds tick by. His anger pulses around us like the beat of a heart.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
Thiago moves towards the hand that remains outstretched between them and brushes right past it, walking up to me instead.
When his eyes find mine, the unbridled fury in them instantly washes away, replaced by the kind of burning intensity all women dream of seeing in their husband’s gaze. The look in them is borderline manic, like he’s barely holding himself together.
With his mouth set in a grim line and that muscle ticking dangerously in his cheek, Thiago rakes a clinical gaze slowly down my body, inspecting me for any injuries. When he’s satisfied that I bear no visible marks, his eyes lift back up to mine. Hands twitch as they move cautiously from his sides. He speaks and there’s a slight tremor woven into his guttural words that betrays the heavy emotion he’s feeling.
“I’m going to touch you, amor. Is that okay?”
I nod and throw my arms around his neck in the same breath, going to him before he can reach for me himself. His hands wrap tightly around my lower back and he drags me into him with a rough exhale. He crushes me against his chest, cupping the back of my head and burying my face in the crook of his neck. For a moment all I can hear, all I can feel, is the comforting pulse of his heart beating frantically against my cheek.
Like a fragile bubble bursting, the dam holding back my tears shatters the second I fall into his arms. It starts with one single teardrop squeezing quietly past my lashes and then I’m crying with total abandon, my face hidden in his throat as he holds me. My body shakes uncontrollably with the force of my sobs as the terror and panic of the last fifteen minutes pour messily out of me. Thiago caresses my hair softly, pressing his face against my cheek and humming soothingly. His other arm stays wrapped protectively around my waist like he’s afraid someone will try to rip me away from him. He consoles me patiently, as if we’re alone, as if he has all the time in the world, simply repeating it’s okay, you’re okay, you’re safe until he’s chanting it reassuringly into my ear. There’s a strain in his voice that makes me think those vehement reassurances might be as much for him as they are for me.
I don’t know exactly when he started to feel like my safe space, but I do know that he’s the only person I wanted when I was in danger. The only one I needed. That being in his arms is the only place I want to be right now, the only place I feel safe.
When my sobs lessen and eventually subside, he pulls back slightly. He cups my cheeks and peers down at my face.
My walking, talking killing machine of a husband looks at me like he’ll rip apart the entire world for the crime of hurting me, just so he can rebuild it piece by piece into one where nothing will ever happen to me again.
Whatever it is he sees in my face, it makes his golden eyes darken to the color of obsidian, snuffing out any humanity in them like the flame of a candle.
“Hold him down,” he orders, the arctic cool in his voice in total opposition to the way he gently brushes away the tears from my cheeks. His cruel tone sends a chill down my spine on Franklin’s behalf.
Over his shoulder, I see that Arturo and Marco accompanied him into my office, ever his shadows. They each grab one of Franklin’s arms and use their grip to slam him face down on my desk.
He howls for his release.
Thiago’s body turns to face the scene, his hand circling around my waist and continuing to hold me close. I look up at him to find his eyes already on the side of my face.
“Does he live or die?” he asks me.
Swallowing, my gaze goes back to Franklin who’s doing his best to struggle against both men. Watching him fight against them makes me wonder if that’s what I looked like, if I was that helpless.
Arturo looks down at the floor and spots my discarded Women in Business award. He tosses it and catches it in his palm a couple of times before smashing it down on Franklin’s face, knocking him out cold.
Marco grabs my water bottle and dumps it on the side of Franklin’s face. “Wakey, wakey, sunshine,” he says, smacking him around.
They’re toying with him.
“If it were up to me, he’d die. Eventually.” The set of Thiago’s jaw tells me just how slowly he’d eviscerate him if given the chance. “But it’s your decision.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him to kill him. It would be so easy to make that decision, to rid the world of one less abuser. But I can’t make myself say it. I can’t condemn him to death, no matter what he just did to me.
“Don’t kill him,” I ask.
Thiago nods once, accepting my decision with a clenched jaw. He cups my chin and kisses my lips. The simple touch is enough to spark the fire in my belly back to life. His mouth moves over mine, his hand gripping the back of my neck to hold me close. I lean into him, wrapping my fingers around his forearm to keep myself steady. With one final peck on my lips, he releases me and steps up to the side of my desk.
He bends at the waist so his face is level with Franklin’s. “What kind of psychosis made you think you could touch my wife?”
His voice cuts across the word ‘wife’ like a knife slicing through skin, the possessive fury evident in the one syllable.
“Please, I’m sorry,” Franklin pleads. “She was promised to me fir–”
A fist slams violently down next to his face, cutting him off. “She wasn’t anything to you.” Thiago snarls.
He straightens, looking over at Marco.
“Machete,” he asks.
With a savage smirk, Marco slaps a broad, crude blade about thirty inches long into his hand. It shines menacingly under the office lighting.
Franklin’s panicked eyes widen until they’re bulging white. He thrashes against the hold, shouting garbled pleas. When he realizes that’s getting him nowhere, his gaze slides to mine.
“Tess, please. Tell him you don’t want this. Tell him–”
Quick as lightning, Thiago grips him by the hair and smashes his face mercilessly down on my desk.
“Speak to her again and I’ll rip out your vocal cords.”
It was a useless endeavor anyway. I won’t be intervening to give him any additional mercy beyond saving his life. He deserves every single thing that my husband is about to do to him. As Dagny likes to say, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
“That’s the second time I’ve watched you touch my wife now. Luckily for you, she wasn’t my wife the first time. But this time…”
Thiago circles the desk slowly, like a predator assessing its prey, coming to stand on the other side of Marco and Arturo. He places the sharp edge of the machete blade on Franklin’s forearm, right below his elbow. I watch the man stop breathing, terror rendering him stock still.
“This is the hand you had between her legs, correct?”
Franklin starts shaking at Thiago’s lethal tone.
“No!”
“I saw you. Are you calling me a liar?”
Franklin gulps, emitting a scared squeak. The dichotomy between the way he’d used his physicality over me to try and violate me and the gutless wretch he is now, currently begging for his life could not be more apparent. He’s a coward, always has been, I was just an easy target for him.
“She–she wanted it. She was asking for it.”
My heart stutters in my chest thinking that he might believe what Franklin is claiming. Thiago has restrained me in the past, but…that was different. I never wanted what Franklin did to me.
The last time he caught me alone with another man, he didn’t react so well.
Thiago doesn’t give it a second thought. The demented grin that stretches across his face chills even me. “Is that why you had her pinned against the wall? Is that why you had your other hand over her mouth to stop her from screaming? Because she wanted it?”
“She said she wanted it rough–”
“Shut the fuck up,” Thiago snarls, bringing the butt of the blade down on his temple. Blood bursts from his skin and explodes across my desk. “My wife doesn’t want me to kill you, so I won’t. But open your mouth again and even she won’t be able to save you. I’ll shut you up for good.”
Franklin nods frantically, lips zipped shut.
“You should never have touched her. Never.” Thiago’s voice shakes under the weight of his fury. While he speaks, Marco rolls up Franklin’s sleeve so that it’s above his elbow. “You could have touched anybody else and walked out of here whole, Franklin. But not her.”
Thiago flicks a watchful eye at me over his shoulder. He’s two men at once in this room, a vengeful husband and a protective lover. His tone softens when he speaks to me. “Look away, amor.”
He raises the machete above his head and this time, I do as he says. I look away. I have time to see the blade come hurtling back down before I close my eyes and turn my face.
The sound of metal slicing through the air is followed by the terrifying noise of it cutting through flesh and bone before it buries itself in the wood of my desk.
A blood curdling scream that raises the hairs on the back of my neck and turns my stomach echoes through my office. I keep my eyes screwed shut even as Franklin’s excruciated howls filter through my ears.
“You’ll hand in your letter of resignation tomorrow,” Thiago orders stoically over his screams. “Typed, obviously. And then you’ll disappear.”
I finally open my eyes and look at the grisly scene before me. Franklin is white as a sheet, his eyes bulged and crazed as he stares in shock at the hand Thiago severed from his body. Blood leaks in thick waves from his stump before Arturo rips Franklin’s belt off him and uses it to tourniquet the wound.
“Contact her again and I take the other hand. Talk to or touch her ever again, Franklin,” Thiago says dangerously, “and I’ll tear out your intestines with my bare hands and use them to hang your body up from the nearest streetlight.” The two guards pull him up to his feet and release him. Franklin wobbles dangerously, his knees giving out, so they catch him again. He’s ashen, almost gray in color, and holding his stump protectively.
“Get the fuck out,” Thiago orders. He turns on unsteady feet and heads slowly towards the door when Thiago calls after him. “And take this shit with you,” he adds disgustedly, grabbing his severed hand by the fingers and tossing it at him. It hits Franklin in the chest and nearly topples him over before flopping lamely down to the ground. He manages to remain standing, bending at the waist to pick up his hacked off limb before he leaves.
“Go with him,” Thiago instructs his two guards. “Take him into the freight elevator and make sure he doesn’t talk to anyone.”
“Jefe,” they confirm with almost military nods, unperturbed by what just transpired. They go to turn but hesitate. Finally, both of them give me a curt nod and exit, closing the door behind them and leaving me with my husband.
