Matteo: A Dark Mafia Hate Story

by Talbot, Ginger

  “Of course,” my real father says as he pulls into the street, and I feel a wave of relief. For a moment there I thought he wouldn’t let me make the call. But that’s just craziness. I’m an adult, and we just met, and it’s not like there’s going to be a custody battle or something.

  We’re pulling down the road, and I realize that we’re driving away from downtown, where all the coffee shops are. We didn’t even need to drive, come to think of it – there were shops within a block or two.

  Was I wrong to get in this car? This is definitely my family – there’s no mistaking the resemblance. Doubt wavers in my stomach. They…they’re well dressed. They didn’t seem like criminals. My own parents wouldn’t hurt me, right?

  “Where are we going?” I call out to my father.

  “I know a place,” he says, and the uneasiness inside me ratchets up a notch as I scrabble for my cell phone.

  And how would he know a place? I didn’t get the impression that they were from around here. I mean, they couldn’t be, or they’d have seen my picture sooner – my father’s been in politics since before I was born, starting out as a city councilman, and he uses family photos all the time.

  I quickly try to call my mother, trying to figure out what to tell her. I can’t just drop this in her lap over the phone. But I can’t get a signal. That doesn’t make any sense – there’s great reception downtown.

  My stomach clenches.

  “Do you mind if I use your phone?” I ask Nikita.

  “Sorry. My battery’s dead; I forgot to charge it,” he says in a bored voice. He’s lying, and not even bothering to hide it very well.

  I am in trouble. I am in big trouble.

  “Excuse me,” I call out to my father. “Please pull over.”

  “In this neighborhood? You wouldn’t be safe.” My father abruptly switches lanes and heads for the freeway exit.

  “Let me out,” I say. “I want to get out of the car, now.” He ignores me. “Now, damn it!” I scream, grabbing at the door handle. Of course the door is locked.

  His voice suddenly turns ugly. “You are my daughter. You will speak to me with respect.”

  My God. He sounds like Steven when he says it.

  I struggle not to panic. They’re my family – they’re not actually going to harm me – are they?

  “I’m sorry.” I choke on the words because I am so not sorry: I’m furious and terrified. “Please let me out of the car.”

  “On the freeway?” His voice is mocking me now.

  “Yes,” I say. “If you don’t, it’s kidnapping.”

  “Nikita,” he says. “I think your sister needs a nap.”

  And before the implication of his words hit me, I feel something jab my arm.

  “Ow!” I scream. “What the hell did you do that for?”

  “Do not let me hear you use language like that again.” My father’s voice is thick with fury. “You’re not too old to go over my knee.”

  What? Is he serious?

  My head is getting fuzzy.

  “This won’t work,” Nikita says angrily. “It’s much too late for her. She’ll bring shame on our family, just like mother did.”

  “Matteo says he wants to try. We’ll try. He’ll just look like a fool when he fails.”

  And then, mercifully, everything falls away.

  Chapter 5

  Bailey

  When I come to, I’m slumped over someone’s shoulder like a rag doll, being carried down a hallway, bouncing with each step. The man abruptly makes a turn into a room, bends over, and dumps me in a heap on the floor.

  I look up woozily to see that my father is standing over me.

  “Whatsh happnng…you shun of a bish…” I slur my words. He reaches down to pull me to my feet, and I stagger, trying to get my bearings. I’m in a doctor’s room. There’s an ob-gyn table. Why? I suck in breaths and my head starts to clear.

  I spin around to face my father, glaring at him. “Are you fucking crazy?” I scream at him. “You kidnapped me, you psycho!”

  He slaps me across the face so hard my ears ring.

  “Listen up, you spoiled little bitch, because I’m only going to say this once,” he says.

  I struggle to breathe, tears flooding my eyes. Nobody has ever slapped me in my life. My parents didn’t even spank me.

  “Your life of being a decadent, corrupt little brat is over. You have no idea what we’ve gone through because of your whore mother’s betrayal. The things I worked so hard to build, destroyed!” His face flushes an ugly brick red, a vein bulging in his temple. My father is a lunatic. “You are my daughter, and you represent me and my family. If you bring shame on me, I will make you wish you’d never been born. You will speak to me with respect, and you will obey my orders. And now, you will disrobe and climb in that chair. The doctor is about to examine you and find out if you’re a virgin.”

  I gasp in shock.

  “You will not resist in any way.”

  The hell I won’t.

  “If you are not a virgin…” His face twists hideously. He looks like an evil gargoyle now, and I am utterly terrified. “This will be your last day on Earth. And if you are a virgin, we have thirty days to make you ready for your husband.”

  My husband?

  “My parents will never stop looking for me! They’ll find me, and you’ll go to prison forever!” I cry out.

  It’s my only hope. They can’t get away with kidnapping a senator’s daughter. He must know that!

  He slaps me again, and I stagger back with a cry. I taste blood. “They are not your family. I am. And I assure you, they won’t be looking for you.”

  My heart stutters in my chest. Has he had them murdered? But that wouldn’t stop the search for me.

  The door opens, and a man in nurses’ scrubs walks in. My father turns and storms out of the room, as if he can’t bear to breathe the same tainted air as me. He slams the door behind him.

  “Please, I’m being kidnapped!” I cry out to the man as soon as my father is gone. “You’ve got to let me call the police.”

  His lip curls in disgust. “If you say that again, you will be punished. And I will make it very painful for you.”

  The door is locked.

  “Step out of your pants and climb up on that chair. The doctor will be in shortly. You will have your legs spread open, waiting for him. If you don’t cooperate, your clothing will be removed for you.”

  Helplessly, I step out of my pants and climb onto the chair. I don’t want to, but I don’t want him ripping my clothes off me. I am seizing what control I can in this horrible situation.

  He walks over, and I tense up, glaring at him.

  “Feet in the stirrups, arms on the arm-rests,” he says coldly.

  I obey, seething. He presses a button on the side of the chair, and suddenly steel cuffs snap shut over my wrists and ankles. I cry out, bucking in panic. I can’t shut my legs; I’m forcibly splayed open.

  He steps back. “The doctor will be in shortly.”

  He leaves the room.

  A couple of minutes pass by. I strain uselessly at my cuffs. My mind is racing, my stomach churning. I’ve fallen into a nightmare world that makes no sense. Who is this “husband”? Why is this happening to me?

  The door bangs open, and I stifle a shriek. A man walks in and slams the door…but he can’t be the doctor. He’s wearing dark jeans and a T-shirt. His arms are covered in crudely inked tattoos, and his dark eyes are sparking with malice.

  “I think you’re going to fail your virgin test,” he taunts me in a thick Russian accent – and quickly unzips his pants.

  “No!” I scream at the top of my lungs. “No, no, no!”

  He struts over to me and steps between my legs. I’m screaming and thrashing uselessly against my steel cuffs.

  My own father set me up to be raped?

  He has a long, skinny, weird-looking penis that curves to the left. At least, I think it’s weird looking – I’ve never seen one in r
eal life before, but I’ve seen them online. He nudges toward my entrance. I buck my hips and arch my back; he grabs my hips and tries to push me back down as I howl in protest.

  “Hold still, you bitch!”

  Oh God, this man is going to be the first man who has sex with me. He’s going to rape me and take my virginity. “Please, don’t do this,” I sob, and I hate how weak I sound.

  I hear a banging on the door, and he spins away from me, frantically pulling his pants back up. The door flies open and Steven storms in, with a gun in his hand. If that’s even his real name. He’s followed by three bulky men who are brandishing pistols.

  “Let me up! Please!” I cry out. Nobody even looks at me.

  The man who was about to rape me staggers back, white-faced with panic. “I’m sorry, I just…I came into the wrong room!”

  Steven punches him in the face so hard that blood explodes from his nose.

  “You came into the wrong room and locked the door behind you, with my fiancée strapped down naked on a chair?” He kicks the man in the kneecap, wrenching an agonized scream from him. “Who sent you here?”

  “Nobody! It was a mistake – I thought she was for sale! I would have paid for her. I’ll pay you, I’ll pay you!”

  For sale?

  “Oh, you’ll pay all right. Tell me who sent you.”

  “I can’t tell you, I can’t! He’ll kill me! Please!”

  “You’re a dead man walking.” Steven’s voice has gone frighteningly calm. “It’s just a matter of how long it takes you to die. Seconds, hours, days?”

  “Please, please, please…” A pool of urine puddles on the floor by his feet. “I’ll do anything!”

  The door bangs open, and my father bursts through – and shoots the man in the head. The sound is explosively loud, making my ears ring. I scream as the man slowly crumples to the ground, a neat dark hole opened up in his temple. I just saw a man die. The room swims and I feel faint with horror.

  Steven moves in front of me, standing between my father and me, and I actually feel grateful. Steven is frightening, but he only seems to want my obedience, whereas my father actually hates me.

  “What are you doing here, Matteo? She’s mine for the next thirty days. Mischa agreed.”

  Not Steven. Matteo. That’s his real name – and he must be the man they plan to marry me off to. My father seems a little bit afraid of Matteo - he’s cringing but trying to hide it.

  Matteo glares at my father with deadly rage. “It is my duty to protect her – and I knew you’d try to sabotage this. And I was questioning him. Why didn’t you want him to speak? Are you the one who sent him?”

  “Be careful, Matteo,” my father blusters.

  We hear footsteps clattering down the hallway, and a man rushes through the door. Wearing a white lab coat, in his fifties… He must be the doctor. He glances at the dead man, then looks at Matteo with sheer terror.

  “I am so sorry. I don’t know how he got in here. I swear to you I had nothing to do with this.”

  “Get out,” Matteo grits at my father. “Or we can fight it out right here. Hand to hand.”

  “We have custody of her until the wedding day.” My father’s voice is an angry whine. “Thirty more days. That is Mischa’s decree.”

  “You have already failed to protect her. I am taking her home with me until the wedding.”

  I want to scream at them that I don’t have to go anywhere with either of them, but I know that that they both seem to think that they own me, and I have a feeling that, somehow, I’m better off with Matteo.

  “That is not custom,” my father says angrily.

  “Nothing about this is custom. Because of your wife. Because of the failure of your household.”

  My father’s face turns red. “That has been addressed. It will never happen again.”

  “Clearly you are no more of a man now than you were then. I am sure that you are involved in the attempted rape of my fiancée – your own daughter. At best you failed to keep her safe, and I am taking her home where she will be safe. Go running to Mischa if you have a problem with it.”

  “You can be sure of it!” And then my father says something insulting in Russian and storms from the room.

  Matteo hurries over to stand between my legs. His men are looking away. He glances at the doctor. “I will find out if you were involved in this in any way.”

  “I swear on my mother’s life I was not!” The doctor is pale with fright. Good. I hate him. I hate anyone who’d participate in this kidnapping.

  Matteo gestures at his men. “Take the asshole out of here.”

  They grab the dead man by the feet and drag him from the room.

  “Examine her. Now.” Matteo grits out the words to the doctor.

  The doctor hurries over to the counter and puts on a pair of gloves.

  “Please don’t let him. Please, I don’t want him touching me,” I beg Matteo, but the doctor is dripping some kind of lubricant onto his fingers.

  The doctor pushes one gloved finger inside me, forcing it into my tight entrance, and I go rigid with disgust at the intrusion.

  He withdraws his hand and nods at Matteo. “She’s intact.”

  Matteo presses the button on the side of the chair, and my bonds spring open. I leap to my feet and pull on my pants as fast as I can. I step into my shoes, then I turn to look at Matteo.

  “I appreciate you saving me from that man, but I need to go home. My parents will already be looking for me. They’ll never stop looking for me,” I say desperately.

  His gaze is stony, pitiless. “Will you walk to the car, or do you need to be carried?”

  My shoulders slump in despair. “I’ll walk.”

  Chapter 6

  Natasha

  There is no chance to escape. Matteo’s hand grips my arm painfully tight. I am surrounded by Matteo and his men, hustled down long white hallways. From a hall that branches off to the left, I hear a woman screaming “No, please, I’m sorry!” and then the sound of a slamming door. I am woozy with horror, desperate to run and help her. Matteo doesn’t even glance over or break his stride.

  We get into an elevator and go to an underground garage. I am forced into the back of a van with Matteo. The van’s door slams shut like a prison cell, and I choke back a sob of despair.

  Matteo is sitting next to me, and I slide a few inches away from him. Any more than that and I’m afraid I’ll make him angry.

  “Did your father explain what is happening?” he asks.

  I shake my head, hugging myself. “He said something about my mother being mentally ill and running away with me as a baby.” I look at him. “She wasn’t mentally ill, though, I see that now. She was trying to save me from him. She sacrificed her life for me.” Pride swells in my chest as I say those words out loud. Whoever my real mother was, she was brave, and she loved me so much that she died trying to protect me. I just wish I knew what happened to that little girl my mother took when she left me in the nursery.

  Matteo’s gaze is pitiless. “Your mother made an unholy mess of things and put you in a great deal of danger. You will not mention her again.” At least he didn’t call her crazy and a whore, like my father did. “Your real name is Natasha Peredyshka Dubrova, and you will only answer to that name from now on.”

  I look away from him. The hell with what he says, I want to know everything about my mother. I swear I’ll find out someday.

  “You will respond when I speak to you.” He grabs me by the elbow and squeezes painfully hard, his fingers hitting a bundle of nerves – and I don’t think it’s accidentally. I think he knows exactly the locations of the most sensitive parts of the body.

  “Yes, I heard you.” I bite out the words with as much anger as I dare. “I will answer to the name Natasha.” Until I can escape.

  “All right. Your father speaks nothing but lies anyway, so whatever he told you, disregard it.”

  I nod in agreement. That, I have no problem with.

  “
Peredyshka, your middle name, means ‘truce’. And by marrying me, you serve a glorious purpose.” His beautiful amber eyes glow as he stares at me. “In order for you to understand, I must tell you our history. I am a member of a family that works in a number of enterprises, some of which are, how shall I put it, off the books. We are the Rossi family. We are part of an international syndicate ruled over by a council of five. However, in the 1960s, the Dubrova family started a war with us, and we responded, and a lot of people died. Finally it started hurting our bottom line, and that of the syndicate as well. Normally we pay the authorities well enough that they look the other way. However, when you have gangs spraying bullets in the downtown area at lunchtime, killing a dozen people in public, it becomes impossible to sweep things under the rug.”

  “How inconvenient for you,” I say contemptuously. It’s appalling that he cares more about his family business than he does about innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire.

  He grabs me by the hair, his fingers yanking it painfully. His other hand grabs my face, and he presses his fingers into a soft spot right behind my jawline that sends a lightning bolt of agony stabbing through me. I claw at his hands, crying out.

  “Drop your hands,” he growls, and I do. He releases my jaw, but his fingers are still tangled in my hair.

  “You have been raised very poorly,” he says to me. “And it falls to me to correct your behavior. I have thirty days until the wedding. Thirty days to see that you’re fit to be my wife.”

  “I won’t be!” I sob, hugging my chest.

  His gaze freezes my heart, and he gives my hair an agonizing yank. “Let’s hope that’s not the case.”

  I wipe tears away from my cheeks with the back of my hand. “You’re hurting me.”

  “Yes, that’s intentional.”

  His casual cruelty sends fresh tears running down my cheeks. I hate him so much. I want to go home, I just want to go home…

  He forces my head back so I have to look at him. My scalp burns with pain. “You are speaking to me disrespectfully. I warned you about that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I choke out the words, not meaning them, and he releases me and continues with his story. “The Council of Five assigned two bosses, one from each family, to come up with a solution. If they failed to come to an agreement, both families eliminated from the face of the Earth. Mothers, children, grandparents.”