by Sam Mariano
Oh good, none of that was the worst of it. I pull out of my thoughts to hear what else he has to add to the chaos going on inside my head.
“I’m gonna kidnap Mia.”
My jaw drops open, my eyes going wide. “What?”
“Well, not me personally, but I’m organizing it.”
“No! Are you crazy? You can’t hurt Mia.”
“No one’s going to hurt Mia,” he assures me. “I just need your brother distracted.”
I reach forward and shove him in the shoulder. “You’re using information I gave you to hurt my brother. You’re not supposed to do that. We had an agreement.”
“Sweetheart, I don’t think you understand how serious this is. We’re going to war here. You don’t play dirty, you don’t win.”
I don’t want you to win.
I manage to stop short of the words launching out of my mouth, but I don’t. I realize how much I don’t want that—because if he wins, that means my family loses. And I don’t even have enough faith in Sal’s family to believe they can take on Mateo and win, so what happens if Sal loses? It’s not like my brother will open his arms to him after defeating him. No, he’ll kill him. He’ll have to.
I lean forward, suddenly struggling to breathe properly.
And if Sal goes after Mia, he’s going to make it personal. My brother understands war is war, but Mia is his soft spot. If she gets so much as a scraped elbow while Sal’s guys have her, he’s going to come at them with every gun blazing and burn his family to the ground. He might do that even if she doesn’t get hurt, just because they had the gall to take her in the first place.
I’m gonna be sick.
“You can’t kidnap Mia. You can’t do that. Too much can go wrong with a kidnapping—she could get hurt. If she gets hurt, you’re going to unleash a side of him nobody wants to see. Trust me. If you want to kidnap someone, kidnap his stupid treacherous maid.”
“I can’t kidnap Meg,” he says, rolling his eyes. “She’s tucked away in his house. She rarely even leaves—he really keeps his bitches on lockdown, doesn’t he?”
He does, but that’s beside the point. “She leaves sometimes.”
“With Adrian,” he states, eyes widening. “I can’t kidnap her from Adrian. Mia is nice and easy. She lives in an unguarded house. I can get her when she’s alone and nobody gets hurt.”
I shake my head, burying my face in my hands. “Mateo has surveillance on her house.”
He frowns, apparently not accounting for that. “Well, she works at the bakery, too. Mark can take her from there without violence. Mark would never hurt her.”
“You’re not hearing me,” I say, straightening and meeting his gaze seriously. “You cannot take Mia. When the men in my family hold a grudge, they hold on tight. Even if we ran, Mateo would hunt you down. He’d kill us both.”
“He wouldn’t kill you.”
I shake my head. “Yes, he would. You shouldn’t even know to go after Mia. I didn’t even mean to leak that information to your side, and I still have. She’s Vince’s girlfriend; there’s no reason anyone on the outside should know to go after her. If you do, he’ll know you got that information from inside his family. Won’t take long for him to realize it was me. He won’t think I’m just talking to my boyfriend about my life—which happens to include his love life—he’s going to think I’ve taken moments of vulnerability he’s reluctantly shared with me and I’ve sold them out with the intent of exploiting him. I will be completely fucked and he’ll feel betrayed. He already doesn’t trust anybody, let’s not make it worse.”
“Mia talks to Mark about Mateo at the bakery. You’re not the only leak.”
“No, but that’s my fault, too. Mark shouldn’t even be at the bakery. He shouldn’t even know Mia. All of this comes back to me. I’m the leak.”
“You’re not…” He trails off, shaking his head. I understand this is aggravating. I am also aggravated.
“You need a different plan,” I state, sinking back into the couch. “There are safer ways to distract my brother than that one. He has more than one weakness.”
“Well, hell, I’m open to suggestions,” he states, dropping back against the couch with me.
I don’t want to exploit Mateo’s weaknesses at all, but if it has to be done, I’d rather it be a lesser betrayal. A weakness others have seen, something that his enemies may have been able to pick up on without me if they paid close enough attention. Sal has a professional reputation as being thorough and ruthless, so Mateo would probably consider him smart enough to pick up on an obvious chink in his armor.
“Beth,” I finally say.
Sal frowns. “Beth’s dead.”
I nod. “Beth is dead. Why is Beth dead?”
“Because she was a rat?”
“Because she cheated,” I correct. “He let her close and she stabbed him right in the heart. He’s going to kill the maid when he finds out your dad sent her anyway, so if we have to throw someone under the bus, we throw her.”
He contemplates, but he hasn’t quite pieced it all together.
I pull my Sal phone out of my pocket and open up the messages, scrolling through. Some of them are too specific, but these are clearly messages between two lovers. Messages that started a few months prior to Meg being sent to kill Mateo. If I delete a few here and there, they’ll just be generic messages between two secret lovers.
I glance over at Sal, cocking my head. He’s definitely hot and charismatic enough to convince a woman to do something crazy for him.
Hell, here I sit, doing something absolutely fucking crazy.
“I think I have a plan,” I tell him.
---
I live in a state of constant anxiety after that talk at Sal’s house.
My plan is better than his, but there are still a ton of risks. Still plenty of things that have to go right, and plenty more that could go wrong. At the end of the day, Mateo will probably still hate me.
I hate being coldly methodical, but given my actual survival is on the line, I will. I’m already selling out my brother’s weaknesses so I can sneak out with his enemy, so whatever else I’m going to do can’t be worse.
I invite Mia out to brunch.
I do like Mia, so it’s not entirely underhanded, but I don’t invite her because I like her—I invite her because I need her to like me. Because when the dust settles and all this is over, if my brother is still standing, I need someone to advocate for me. Something Mia said struck me the other day, about how my brother gave her everything she asked for. When he told me about Mia leaving, he said he wanted her to leave. She says it was her idea. Now, I don’t know which version is the truth, but upon thinking it over, since he hurt her, I can’t think of a single thing Mateo has denied her. She wanted to go back with Vince, so he let her go back with Vince. She wanted to move out of the mansion, so he gave her a house. She presumably wanted freedom from this family, so he told her if she and Vince break up, she’s free to leave us behind. He even told me he thought Mia would be relieved that he was preoccupied with Meg.
The list could probably go on, but I’m not privy to every detail.
I’ve seen enough to get the idea: maybe my brother does give Mia everything she wants. He wouldn’t publicize that. He wouldn’t even tell her that; he doesn’t like anyone thinking they have power over him. But some people do. Beth did. He did the same thing with Beth. Mateo isn’t typically the sort of man to do a woman’s bidding, but he did hers. Whatever Beth wanted, Beth got. The only thing he refused to give her was her freedom back, once she decided she didn’t love him anymore.
I tried to give him advice there, too. I thought he should’ve let her go. Even if he didn’t mean it, even if he would’ve ultimately dragged her ass back, he should’ve given her a chance to miss him. Set her free, let her think he was done with her, and see if she changed her mind and wanted to come back.
He didn’t listen to me. He never listens to me.
It’s kind of awesome t
hat Sal does, even if I hate everything about what we’re doing. I told him his plan was bad, he respected my opinion, and let me help make a new one. Team work. Mateo totally should’ve embraced my ideas.
Too late now.
It makes me sad, but the writing is on the wall at this point.
“This was a good idea,” Mia says as she uses her hand to smoosh her BLT down to a more manageable width. “We should do brunch more often.”
“Agreed.” I feel a little bummed though, knowing that won’t happen because now I have to hide away with Sal.
Suddenly turning sideways, Mia sticks her leg out to the side of the table. “I forgot to show you these beauties.”
I can’t help smiling at the white lacy Louboutin heels my brother must’ve have sent her. “A new present?” I ask.
She nods, watching me a little more closely than is typical of Mia. “Did you tell him about that talk we had?”
“I—No, of course not. I mean, I just told him I didn’t think you kept quiet out of fear. He thought that was why you lied.”
She narrows her eyes as if unconvinced, but she doesn’t seem to care, either. “Well, he upped my rewards, so I thought maybe you did.”
“Your rewards?”
She nods, taking a sip of lemonade. “When we moved out of the mansion, the presents obviously stopped. Since I lied to Meg, he started giving me presents again. But since you and I had that talk, he sent these, another pair of white sandals, and he’s decided to pay my tuition in the fall.”
I can’t even contain my pleasure. I feel bad that he’s going to kill the maid, but Mia can lick his wounds from this latest betrayal and make him all better. She’ll never betray him, so he’ll never have to deal with it from a romantic partner again. I don’t know what we’re going to do about the maid’s daughter. I guess she’s young enough and just a girl, maybe we can keep her like Dad kept Adrian. Mia likes kids. She can be an adopted daughter or a next generation maid or something.
“How’d Vince take the upswing in presents?” I ask, bringing a spoonful of soup to my lips.
“I don’t think he’s noticed, thankfully. He’s under a lot of stress right now with all the work stuff that’s happening. It’s starting to stress me out, too. I don’t know how this stuff works. Have you guys had anything like this happen before?”
“Not as big as it would be with this family. Mateo’s had to take on smaller operations before, nip ‘em in the bud, so to speak. But the Castellanos crew isn’t a small one, we’ve coexisted with them for so long and they’ve amassed their own power. I’m hoping this doesn’t make Mateo less inclined to coexist in the future.”
Mia’s eyebrows rise as she chews her sandwich, but she shakes her head. “Maybe he shouldn’t have, if they’re going to start problems like this.”
“No, he should’ve,” I offer a little too quickly, but the last thing I need is Mia—totally not understanding mob politics to begin with—being anti-Castellanos. “The peace was a really good thing for Mateo. He doesn’t want the territory they cover anyway, and most of the members of that family don’t want a war with Mateo. It’s just the current boss that’s the problem. If they can avoid outright war between them for a little longer, if they could just oust the current boss, the next one in line is all for peace. We want peace with the Castellanos family. That’s a good thing. Mateo’s temper might try to convince him otherwise right now, but it’s what we want. It’s what’s best for both families.”
Mia nods her acceptance, like that makes enough sense. “I don’t know. Vince never talks business with me.”
“Most of the men don’t. They like to keep the women protected.”
Smiling indulgently, she says, “They’re such sexist jerks.”
I grin. “We’re so delicate.”
“Right?” She shakes her head. “I could totally understand this stuff if someone explained it to me.”
“And I can plot with the best of ‘em.”
“Damn Morelli men.”
“It’s okay,” I tell her, looking up from my soup. “The woman behind the man is important, too.”
“Very true,” she agrees, but in the way that people agree about something that doesn’t apply to them.
I have to smirk into my soup, because I know things she doesn’t. By the time Sal takes over for his dad, Mia’s bound to be with Mateo. She has no idea, but I do; the two of us, sitting here at this table, are the women behind Chicago’s bosses.
Chapter Twenty Nine
It’s all even more stressful than I imagined when I was hatching the plan.
For one thing, Sal was spot on about Mateo locking his ladies down. It’s not that he never lets them leave the house, but unless it’s his idea, he doesn’t encourage it. He’s protective and controlling; he likes to keep his pets in their gilded cages.
I remember the first two weeks Mia was here; she was completely perplexed by the way Mateo blatantly sabotaged her attempts to visit her family. She kept asking me if she was a prisoner, and I kept assuring her she wasn’t, she should just give it time. It didn’t matter to Mateo that it was abnormal for Mia to be away from her family, that she wasn’t like us—she had a parent, even if one who surrendered her rather easily in exchange for a cash payout. Presumably Mia’s mom still thought she’d see her daughter. But Mateo made it clear Mia couldn’t go anywhere without a chaperone, and each time she asked for one to take her to visit her family, he just didn’t come through.
Eventually she caught on and stopped asking.
Which was what he wanted. To break her ties to the family she had before and teach her to be completely dependent on ours. Mia, being the apt pupil she is, adjusted.
As far as I know the maid had no issue whatsoever with Mateo’s training, but I think she might be a sociopath, so she probably doesn’t care about her family.
That’s not nice. I should be nicer to her since she’s going to be history soon.
Anyway, it’s impossible for Sal to enact his part of the plan with her securely behind the Morelli gates. We’re hoping she eventually goes somewhere on her own, but if she doesn’t, I’m going to have to involve myself more than I want to and propose we go out together one afternoon. I really don’t want to do since I’m not her biggest fan to begin with, and I don’t want to get to know her when I already know what her future holds. Beth wasn’t my favorite person in the world, but we were friendly, and it was really weird when she died.
I also prefer not to set off any alarms for Adrian or Mateo, and if I’m the one who suggests the outing and then Meg happens to meet up with Salvatore, it makes Meg look less guilty than if it was her idea to begin with.
But eventually Meg does go out, and Sal gets his opportunity.
Adrian notices.
Meg gets thrown to the wolves—or, in the dungeon, as it happens.
Mateo goes dark.
I see Elise scurry to Mateo’s study with a broom and dustpan, and Adrian emerge a few minutes later with the broken pieces of Mateo’s favorite decanter. Elise follows right on his heels, cheeks flushed, assuring him she could clean it up herself.
My insides are an anxious mess. I feel so horrible, I want to crack. I know I can’t, but I want to.
Before I leave, I go to visit Meg in the basement. I’ve convinced myself I could pull this off up until the moment it actually happened, but standing in the dark underground cell, seeing her curled up alone on the cement pad of her prison, I feel like a monster. I tell myself I have no choice—Sal said he needed a distraction, and even if all of Sal’s plan doesn’t check out in my mind, I trust Sal. I know he wouldn’t betray me. If he tells me something is what needs to happen, I believe him.
I go to my bed for the last time that night, and I’m surprised by how emotional I feel, lying there awake, unable to sleep. Tomorrow starts a new life for me one way or another. I leave for the bakery like always, but I won’t open the doors. The Sullivan family won’t have a cake for their birthday. Phyllis won’t be able
to come in for her daily loaf of fresh bread. The old man with the bushy mustache will show up for his apple turnovers, and no one will be there to sell them to him.
Now mine are the ties which will be severed, because there’s no going back from this. I’ve betrayed Mateo, even if I didn’t want to. I’ve sold him out. I am a traitor to my family, no matter my motives.
Tonight I go to sleep in the only home I’ve ever known, and tomorrow I leave with only the clothes on my back and no idea what’s in store for me.
I’m embarrassed to admit I have doubts. Strong doubts. As I lie in bed, I consider running downstairs and throwing myself at Mateo’s mercy. Begging his forgiveness and confessing everything I’ve done. I could go to the bakery tomorrow and come home, and nothing would change. My life could go on like it has all these years.
Only without Sal.
Leaving everything I know behind is scary, but considering a post-Sal life feels scarier.
I finally fall asleep, and I almost wish I hadn’t. Then it’s like no time has passed, and I’m as afraid as I was the night before, only now it’s time. Now my alarm is going off. It’s time to get up and go to work—and Sal was very clear that he wants me to do all of this like normal. He wouldn’t even let me pack a bag to take with me, because that would make it clear I was acting of my own volition. He hasn’t said so directly, but my takeaway is that if this all goes south, he doesn’t want it to look like I was complicit. If he took me against my will, Mateo obviously wouldn’t blame me. He’s a little crazy, but he’s not unreasonable.
I pile on clothes though, wearing three different T-shirts and a light sweater. I have no idea what kind of supplies we’ll have wherever we’re going, or how long we’ll even be there. I don’t know anything. I’m putting all my trust in Sal and hoping it works out.
In my daydreams about this moment, it would feel freeing. I would be a little nervous, but mostly excited. This is the biggest step toward an actual life with Sal I’ve ever taken. All the hypotheticals, our imaginary honeymoon, the pretend life that’s only been a joke—it’s actually possible now. All I had to give up to make it happen? Everything.