by Sam Mariano
He’s terrifying.
Even now, even calmer, Mateo is terrifying.
Without warning, he grabs me and kisses me, but it’s the hardest, meanest kiss he’s ever given me. I know it’s only for Vince’s benefit. He pulls back a moment later, his eyes colder. I didn’t kiss him back. It seems like not being kissed back grates on him more than it does most people. He even insisted I kiss him back when he was raping me, for god’s sake.
My lips feel bruised. My heart feels bruised.
He reaches a hand out and drags the back of his long finger across my jawline. It should be a tender gesture. It has been a tender gesture. But it isn’t tender now—it’s just like the first time he did it in the hallway outside his bedroom all those months ago, lightly mocking. “You look scared.”
I don’t say anything back. I don’t know if he wants me to be scared, and I’m too afraid to give the wrong answer.
“You weren’t prepared for this, were you?” he asks, almost lightly. “Did you think life with me would be a fairytale?”
A knot of angry embarrassment slides through me. My chest is so full of fear and anxiety, I still don’t speak. I hate when he mocks me. I tell myself it’s good he’s turning sardonic—maybe he’s being mean, but I’d rather he be mean to me than Vince. He’s also less likely to do anything rash if he has his wits about him.
“Do you know why I always win, Mia?” he finally asks me, quietly.
I shake my head, swallowing.
“Because I am willing to do whatever it takes to get what I want.”
I swallow three times, my gaze darting briefly to Vince in the floor, before returning to Mateo. I still can’t get past the lump in my throat. My voice wavers, but I still manage to ask, “Do you remember what I said about how you can make people stay with you, but you can’t make them feel, and you can’t make them forgive?”
He stares at me, his dark eyes slightly narrowed. Fear coils in my gut, because as long as I’ve known him, I have no idea how to handle his temper. I know he’s used to making the rules, and I’m afraid to say anything he’ll take as me trying to manage him. I don’t want him to feel like I’m threatening him, but he needs to know where my limits are. He said he loves me, I know he cares; maybe he’s angry and cold right now, but he won’t want to ruin things between us.
With that thought it mind, I say as carefully as I can, “I might be able to forgive you for using things I said to you in our most tender moments against me, to hurt someone I care about. For lashing out at me and embarrassing me just for the hell of it. I can probably get past those things. But if you kill him… I will never be able to forgive you for that.”
He nods slowly, his face impassive. I can’t tell if I’ve further angered him, or reminded him he has something to lose. Finally, his voice clear of emotion, Mateo says, “Okay.” Then he looks to Colin. “Take her outside while I finish this.”
I can only stand here, horrified, as Colin comes over to do Mateo’s bidding. I don’t understand. It takes a moment for it to dawn on me… he’s still going to do it. He’s still going to kill Vince. He looked me in the face, he heard my words, and they meant absolutely nothing to him. I’m floored, completely floored that he was unmoved by my plea.
Desperation claws at me now, helpless terror climbing the walls of my heart. “Mateo… Mateo, no. Please!” I take a step toward him, needing to touch him again, needing to connect. I can calm Vince down when he gets in one of his fits; surely I can reason with Mateo, I’m just not doing it right.
Colin grabs me before I can reach him. Looking back at Colin, I shake my head in denial. “No. Get your hands off me. Please, I need—I need—”
Colin ignores me, removing me from the house and leaving Mateo inside.
“Please don’t do this! Please! Mateo, please!”
Mateo ignores me completely, turning back to Vince to give him another kick. Colin pulls the door shut so I don’t have to watch.
“Please!” I scream at the closed door, throwing my weight against Colin as he drags me down the steps of my front porch, trying to get free.
“Please! Please!” I’m screaming now, crying. Clawing at Colin, trying to get loose. Trying to go back in the house. I need to get to him. I need to stop him.
“Shh, settle down, lass,” Colin says.
“Please!” I can’t breathe. Terror has claimed me and I feel like I’m losing my mind, flashes of Vince when I first met him blinking through my mind. Vince standing at my locker, waiting for me. Vince stealing the seat beside mine in class. Vince buying garlic bread for my little brother because I’m too fucking poor. Now it gets darker. Vince trying so hard to warn me about Mateo. Me telling Vince he’s crazy. Me defending Mateo. Me returning to Vince and seeing him asleep on the couch in his old room, trying to wait up for me because he knows I’m with Mateo, and he might hurt me.
I need to get back in that house. I need to stop him. Someone has to stop him.
“Please,” I try again, but my voice gives out, gets lost on a sob.
Colin lets me go to open his car door, but I finally break away. I don’t run for the house—I run for the Escalade. Adrian is inside the Escalade.
Throwing open the door, I try to assemble a comprehendible sentence, but helpless words tumble out of my mouth like alphabet soup. “Adrian! Mateo. Vince. Adrian, please go help Vince. Please! Mateo’s—Mateo...”
I don’t know how to explain. Forgot his soul in his other suit pocket? Is a monster? Has lost his goddamn mind? Has gone dark?
Adrian seems to understand. He looks sympathetic, but he doesn’t move to get out of the car.
“Get in, Mia,” he says, sadly.
“You have to go help Vince!”
“I can’t.”
“I’ll never forgive him for this,” I tell Adrian, shaking my head. “Not ever.”
“Vince knew what he was doing, Mia. This should’ve happened already.”
“What is wrong with you people?” I scream, grabbing at my hair. “What is wrong with you? He’s your friend! You watched him grow up! Do none of you have souls?”
This time Adrian gets out, but he doesn’t go in the house. He walks around to the passenger side and pops open the glove compartment, then he approaches me and tugs me into the seat.
He pops a pill into my mouth and tells me, “Swallow.”
I spit it out.
He sighs.
Opening the glove compartment again, he grabs another pill and hands it to me.
“Put this in your mouth or I shove it down your throat.”
“Go help him,” I say lowly.
“Please don’t make me be mean to you, Mia.”
I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. Here I am, surrounded by people I’ve thought of as family, and they all feel like strangers. I feel like I’ve been having a goddamn tea party with a group of slimy, razor-toothed monsters, and I just haven’t been able to see them clearly until now.
“I’ll never forgive any of you for this,” I tell him.
At least Adrian looks like he gives half a damn. Only half. Not a whole damn. Still more than Mateo.
I try to remember what Vince’s last words to me were.
I’m sure they were about Mateo.
Oh, my god. Vince’s last words.
I dissolve into helpless tears. Adrian tries to give me a hug, but I shove him away. I climb into the Escalade, my breath hitching, near hyperventilating, and I see Meg. She’s frozen, her hands covering her mouth, staring at me. Her blue eyes are wide with horror and glistening with unshed tears.
Adrian finally does glance toward the house, but he doesn’t go in right away. He goes over to talk to Colin first. Mateo still hasn’t emerged.
It lasts forever. I have to sit there, unable to help, knowing what’s happening inside the house I shared with Vince, knowing it’s entirely my fault. Knowing the kid who tried so hard to save me is being beaten to death by the monster he tried to save me from, and it’s all. My. Fault.<
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Finally Mateo comes outside.
I try not to look at him, but when he climbs inside the car, it’s impossible. I’m confronted with the visual evidence—Vince’s blood all over Mateo’s snowy white shirt, on his busted knuckles; I barely make it outside the car to vomit.
Colin comes over to check on me, but I don’t want him near me. I don’t want any of them near me. The only person I want near me is the one who never will be again. I wish I would’ve let Vince burn down the house they all sleep in. I wish I would’ve sold Mateo more on how much I wanted to stay with Vince. I would’ve stayed. If this was the alternative, I would’ve stayed with Vince forever. I would’ve been faithful.
I wish I’d never met Mateo.
I wish I could wake up in the morning and have Vince be making me breakfast. I wish I could go in and hug him, and not be such a horrible fucking person. I want a second chance. I need a do-over. This was a mistake. I made so many mistakes and they all have consequences. They come at a cost.
My legs give out, and I’m just sitting on the sidewalk where Mateo gave us the keys, Where he gave us a measure of freedom before I threw it away. Where Vince adorably lamented having to live on jarred spaghetti sauce.
I’m so lost in grief I don’t even know who picks me up and carries me back to the car. I don’t initially realize it’s Mateo. When I do, I shove him. I hit him. He lets me. I get Vince’s blood on my hands. I stare at it and break down again.
“Mia,” Mateo finally says, reaching a hand toward me.
“Don’t touch me,” I say raggedly, struggling to draw in a breath. “Don’t you fucking touch me.”
I can’t look at him, so I have no idea if he keeps looking at me. I don’t care if he does. I don’t want him to look at me. I don’t want him anywhere near me.
Colin pops one of the white pills into my mouth and dumps a little water down my throat.
I don’t fight him.
I’m out of fight.
There’s nothing left to fight for.
Chapter Fourteen
Meg
Nobody speaks during the ride home.
When Colin first dragged Mia out of the house, I didn’t understand what was happening. I watched Mateo storm into her house like a bat out of hell. Several minutes later, Colin had to physically remove her from the house. Mia was screaming, but it didn’t click. I figured Mateo and Vince were fighting—that was probably long overdue.
But then she had a nervous fucking breakdown.
Then Adrian refused to help Vince.
Then when he went outside to talk to Colin, I strained to overhear their conversation, and I picked up Adrian telling Colin he would have to stay behind to clean up.
And then Colin drove us home. So, there was something to clean up.
And judging by the look of Mateo’s hands and clothes, and Mia’s rabid emotional state, it’s Vince.
I don’t know what to be more horrified about.
First there was Mateo talking to Mia on the phone in front of me, going over things she clearly said to him during sex. Him demanding to hear she loved him more than Vince. Him refusing to let her go, by the sounds of things, when she asked him to.
And then, in a blind fucking fury, he came over here to beat his competition to death.
There’s a lot to choose from. I’m horrified by a lot of things right now.
It’s one thing knowing you’re engaged to a murderer. Understanding when treacherous dinner guests just simply stop showing up. This is quite another.
Mia falls asleep in the car. It’s a godsend, because that girl is a fucking mess. Her face is red and tearstained, her girlish polka dot dress now stained with Vince’s blood from where Mateo picked her up off the ground. It’s probably getting on the seat. That’s a weird thing to focus on, but suddenly I’m so aware of the blood everywhere—on Mateo, on Mia, on the seats. It’s revolting, but that’s not even what makes this real. What makes it real is Mia’s pain. I wanted to hug her, to comfort her, but she was feral. When Mateo tried, she actually hit him. His jaw locked, his body tensed; clearly it pissed him off, but he let her do it.
Which I get. After what he just did to Vince, she has every right to be a mess.
Mateo doesn’t speak to me, either. I’m only half worried. I’m also half relieved, because I don’t really have anything to say to him right now.
I told him once I knew he did horrible things, and that I’d be there at the end of each day anyway, but this was a lot. This was a side of him even I’ve never seen before.
I don’t think he got that angry when he thought I betrayed him with Salvatore.
This is the thing that gets to me. This is the thing that hurts my heart. Because I don’t know if love is the right word—I don’t know if he loves Mia; I don’t know if he loves anyone, because now I’m a little worried that he’s a legit psychopath—but he wanted her enough that he wouldn’t let her go. He wanted her enough to literally kill for her.
He let the guy who framed me marry his sister.
It’s a little hard not to take away certain conclusions from that—such as, maybe my fiancé wants Mia more. Maybe that’s why he proposed this whole sister wives thing to begin with. Maybe he realized he fucked up and wanted Mia back, but he’d already knocked me up. Whatever his reasons, Mateo clearly still wants kids—little sociopathic heirs to carry on his evil empire.
Seeing him sitting here covered in Vince’s blood, I now realize on a whole new level, not just an academic one, that this man is fully capable of cold-blooded murder. This man who once had his hands wrapped around my throat, who affectionately cuddles my child in bed each night when we read bedtime stories… they’re somehow two sides of the same person. I wonder if there are more sides I haven’t seen. I wonder if Beth saw him like this, thus solving the great mystery of why she stopped loving him.
Did she even really stop loving him? What if that’s just the story he tells? What if he actually stopped loving her? Maybe he decided he didn’t want her anymore; Mateo doesn’t like to set women free once they know this much about him, so he killed her instead. Made up a lie to justify it—he’s certainly not above lying—and ran with it. Mateo isn’t one to play the victim, but he manages the people in his life. Since Beth was his partner and lived in his home for years, she probably had relationships with the people in his life. Maybe he just gave them a story to make it all easier to swallow. Maybe I don’t know him as well as I think I do. Maybe I don’t even know him as well as Mia does.
What if he doesn’t want me anymore?
Is he even planning to keep me on after I give birth, or will I be the next Beth?
These are the things that keep me up tonight.
Also the fact that I’m alone in his bed. He was supposed to be mine tonight—not that I’m in the least bit amorous, and if he is after what he just did, that would worry me—but he doesn’t come in. The girls are already in bed, since we were on a date night and it’s late, but he doesn’t even come in to shower or change out of his bloody clothes.
I’m terrified to imagine he’s with Mia. I know she doesn’t want him right now. She wouldn’t even let him lay a hand on her in the car, and he obviously wanted to. Once they’re alone in that bedroom, Mia has no protection from him. Even with all of us around, she only has a semblance of it. We’re all practically his minions, bending the world in whichever way we’re able to suit his ever-evolving needs and desires.
I’ve already had to come to terms with that fact that my intended husband is a homicidal maniac, but the possibility that he uses sexual violence against Mia has always floated just outside the realm of things I can accept as real. Lying in bed alone, though, it’s all I can think about. I didn’t see whatever she saw inside that house, but she’s traumatized to the point of lashing out at him. Mateo hits back—not physically, but if she lashes out at him in pain and says the wrong thing, he’ll retaliate. He has hot buttons, and I don’t know if she knows that. I don’t really know anything a
bout their relationship. I didn’t mind before, but now it scares me.
He already punished her in grand fashion for the crime of trying to leave him, doling out a death sentence to the man she tried to stay with. In that way, he’s already forcing himself on her.
I can’t handle the prospect of him doing it physically, too.
I don’t need anything else to be horrified by right now.
Chapter Fifteen
Mia
Maria brings in breakfast.
I don’t eat it.
I roll over and smell Mateo on my bedding, and I can’t find my appetite. There’s an ache inside me, a pit in my stomach, but it’s not from lack of food.
Everything hurts.
Being conscious hurts.
I ask for more of whatever they gave me last night to make me sleep.
Maria leaves, hopefully to get it for me.
I have the hangover from hell, only I didn’t drink. Well, I guess I did. I drank from the devil’s cup, and now here I am.
And Vince is gone.
It’s all my fault.
Be careful what you wish for, sweetheart.
Remembering Mateo’s words, one of his many warnings, slices new lacerations across my already gaping wounds. It’s so easy to forget he’s legitimately dangerous. It’s so easy to get swept up in the romance of him, to see the soft side and forget the dark side is always there, it’s just not always at the forefront.
It’s so easy to love him, when you should hate him with everything you have.
Well, not so much now.
It’s a foreign feeling, but it’s easy not to love him right now.
He’s sucked me dry. He’s drained me. I need energy to heal, to try to find my way back from this, and I don’t have any. Where I had feelings of love, memories of tender touches and sensual smiles, now I have helpless fear, memories of him saying horrible things and doing worse. Memories of Vince’s blood on the hands that once brought me such pleasure.