A Valentine's Day Treat: Two Short Stories

by Sam Mariano

  Adrian fills him in as quickly as possible. “Ju was just gathering all the kids for dinner. Bella isn’t there. Ju can’t remember when she last saw her. I went in the surveillance room and checked all the cameras; she’s not in the house. I can start reviewing the tape to see when and how she left, but I thought I should come tell you now.”

  “Track her phone,” Mateo says, simply.

  A look of dread on his handsome features, Adrian says, “I did. The problem is, it’s in her room. Wherever she is, she didn’t take it with her.”

  Silence falls for a loaded moment, then Mateo says, his voice deadly calm, “My pre-teen daughter is missing and she doesn’t have her phone?”

  Nodding grimly, Adrian says, “That’s right.”

  My stomach sinks and I push up off the bed. All the noise has Annalise stirring, so I scoop her up and settle her against my chest, walking past Adrian and Mateo toward Lily, still hanging back, watching the scene unfold fearfully. Fearful because Bella is missing, or fearful because she knows something?

  As I come closer she backs up, and once we’re out in the hallway alone, I ask quietly, “Do you know where Bella is, honey?”

  Lily shakes her head quickly, her big blue eyes widening. “No.”

  “Where was she last time you saw her?”

  “In her bedroom. She was writing something down—in a notebook, I think.”

  “Her diary?” I question, latching onto something that might hold clues.

  “No, it wasn’t her diary. Just a—a regular notebook.”

  “Do you know what she was writing? A letter? A list? Was it school work?

  “I don’t know what she was writing.”

  I don’t believe her. Since she’s still wide-eyed and nervous, I nod like I do. “Okay, honey.”

  I’m just about to head back in the bedroom, but Adrian nearly bumps into me as he storms out. Mateo follows behind him, shrugging on his suit jacket.

  Mateo’s gaze hits mine just as he’s about to pass. “I’m sorry; I have to deal with this.”

  Glancing back at Lily once more, I follow, speeding up so I can catch up to Adrian. “Hey, slow down.”

  Adrian looks over at me, raising his eyebrows. “I can’t slow down; I have to find your missing daughter.”

  He has a point, but I think there’s something they’re overlooking. Their damn Morelli instincts have shown one glaring blind spot in the past—they don’t think about questioning women. They don’t expect women to wreak havoc, to keep important secrets or sell each other out. You would think Mateo might have learned his lesson when I went missing because my own best friend sold me out, but here we are.

  There’s no reason I can see that Lily should have been following Adrian, but Mateo doesn’t even question it.

  I glance down at Annalise, sleeping peacefully against my chest, her little butt pushed out, supported by my hand. He’s right; the girls probably are going to be all sorts of trouble—but only because he won’t expect them to be.

  No one taught Mateo how to raise sons and daughters; he was only taught to train potential employees and the women who would support and enable them. Bella was such a well-behaved child when I first met her—the perfect Morelli girl, quiet, appreciative, and out of the way. Obviously we’ve shaken things up in the years since; Annalise is never going to be five-years-old, sitting beside her formal, intimidating father, too timid to ask him to cut up her food—she’s going to be sitting right in his lap, waving a meatball in his face and trying to feed him a bite.

  Bella’s still a good kid, but she’s straddling the difficult line between being a little girl, and coming of age. I know Mateo is probably thinking the worst case scenario, that something horrible has happened to her, that she’s been kidnapped by some rival force he’s going to have to crush.

  I don’t think so, though. I think our well-behaved eldest daughter snuck out, knowing we weren’t supposed to be home this evening. I think the Morelli daughters are already causing trouble, and he’s not ready for it.

  Mateo is cool and collected on the surface, but I can see his wheels turning as he falls into step beside Adrian. “Did you call Ethan?”

  Adrian shakes his head. “He took Willow to Paris for Valentine’s Day.”

  “Fucking Valentine’s Day,” Mateo mutters. “Why do we all have to love our wives?”

  “Hire all bachelors from now on,” Adrian says, lightly. “‘Round the clock availability.”

  “I’m going to,” Mateo states. I can’t tell if he’s joking.

  “It’s fine. I don’t need Ethan; you know I’ll find her,” Adrian assures him, firmly patting his shoulder. “I just wanted to loop you in, that’s all.”

  Mateo stops outside the study to dismiss me. “Why don’t you go play with the kids while Adrian and I work on this?”

  “I want to help,” I tell him, stealing a glance back at Lily, who still lingers, watching us.

  “I appreciate that, but you’ll just get in the way.”

  My beloved husband takes me seriously as a co-parent and life partner, but when it comes to “business” he doesn’t think I can hang. Something about me trying to save people and making extra work for him. Utter nonsense.

  I cock an eyebrow at him. “Is that right?”

  He leans in to kiss me, to smooth down any feathers he may have ruffled. “I didn’t mean it like that. You’ll distract me. I need to focus.”

  “Can I make a suggestion?”

  “Sweetheart, time is of the essence right now.”

  I shake my head at him, leaning in to kiss him on that sexy mouth of his. “You’re exasperating sometimes. Fine, go on, I’ll talk to Adrian.”

  “I need Adrian,” Mateo states, backing into the room. “Don’t hold him up.”

  Given my husband’s right hand man is slightly more capable of seeing the value in a mother’s input, he hangs back. “What’s up? You think of something I should know?”

  Lily is behind me and I still need to scare the bejeezus out of her, so instead of showing my hand, I lean in close and whisper to Adrian, “Check Tommy’s house.”

  Adrian scowls. I nod faintly. I’m no happier about it than he is.

  Sighing heavily, Adrian says, “I’m not ready for this.”

  “No one is,” I agree.

  Now he storms into the study and I pull the door shut, falling back and nodding at Lily. “Come with me. I need a distraction while your father looks for Bella.”

  “All right,” she says, trailing behind me as I head for the playroom.

  She’s still twisting her hair, a nervous habit of hers. I’m relieved she didn’t pick up on what I told Adrian because after all I’ve lived through in this house, I have one firm lesson to teach: we don’t keep secrets from Adrian, no matter who asks us to.

  “How come you were following Adrian?”

  Her cheeks flush. I don’t know if it’s because she has a bit of a crush on Adrian, or because she knows where Bella went and she feels guilty for lying. “I don’t know. I just wanted to see if he could find her, I guess. Will she be in trouble?”

  “She could be in serious trouble right now,” I state, shaking my head and absently rubbing Annalise’s back. “Even if for some reason she left the house on her own, it’s incredibly dangerous that she doesn’t have her phone or a guard with her. We have no idea where she went and she’s out in the city all on her own. Anything could go wrong. She could get seriously hurt—or worse. Your father has a lot of enemies. There are some very bad people out there who wouldn’t hesitate to hurt a member of his family just to hurt him.”

  I can see the conflict in her young, unguarded face. “But maybe she’s not out in the city. Maybe she was going somewhere and it wouldn’t be dangerous. Like, to a house or something. Maybe she’s just with a friend. Maybe no one took her. Would she be in a lot of trouble when they find her?”

  “The longer we don’t know where she is, the more trouble she’s going to be in.” I look down at her
again. “If you have any idea where she is, it’s very important that you tell us. Even if Bella asked you not to. I know you want to keep her confidence, but this isn’t a normal family, honey. There is danger out there for us. I went with someone I thought was a friend years ago, and it got me in so much trouble, I may never have seen any of you again.”

  “I remember,” she murmurs lowly.

  “The same thing could happen to any of us, and it may not end so well again. There’s a reason Mateo is so protective of us. I know it may not always seem fun or fair, but he has to do it to keep us safe. If you know something, you need to tell an adult. Me or Adrian, in particular.”

  Lily is so uncomfortable, torn between not wanting to keep a secret from me and her loyalty to her best friend. I’m relieved it’s loyalty to her best friend causing the conflict. That hasn’t always been the case around here, and that’s another page from the family history I don’t intend on living through a second time.

  As soon as Lily gets to the entry door of the playroom, she runs inside to get away from all the mom-guilt I’m piling on top of her.

  Elise is already inside playing with the little ones, but when she sees me, she puts Candace down and rushes over for an update. “What’s happening? Adrian bailed on dinner and he didn’t give me any details, he just said Bella’s missing?”

  Since Lily is nearby, I lean in and tell her I think they have a lead, but I don’t want to talk about it in front of the kids. She nods her understanding, sighs with concern, then drifts back toward the smallest ones.

  A trio of babies sit on the soft mat, playing with blocks. Elise and Adrian’s daughter, Candace, and my sons, Dom and Tristan. Dom is the eldest of the three, so he’s the leader of their little construction crew. Tristan gnaws on blocks, Candace hands them to Dom, and he carefully stacks them on the tower. Candace gets intrepid sometimes and skips the line, but her motor skills aren’t quite up to snuff, so she nearly knocks down the tower every time she stacks one herself. My little gentleman kindly steadies it for her and she claps with approval. They’re so damn cute.

  As soon as Dom sees me, he beams a smile up at me and holds up a block. “Here, mama.”

  “Thank you, baby,” I say, gently dropping to my knees while I cradle Annalise. Once I’m seated and she’s still sleeping, I take the block. “This is a great block. Do you know what color it is?”

  “Red!”

  I look up, since that was not Dom who answered me, but his slightly older brother, Roman. He toddles over and drops on his butt beside me, reaching for the block. “My block.”

  “That’s not how you ask,” I remind him.

  Roman is not big on asking for things, he’s big on taking them. Normal moms tell me not to worry, it’s just his age, but since Mateo fathered him, I still find it worth worrying about.

  “My block,” he repeats, grabbing for it, but I pull it away.

  Candace chimes in, reminding him of his manners. “Pease!”

  Roman looks at her, but swiftly dismisses her and reaches for the block again.

  I hold it up out of his reach. “Nope. What’s the magic word?”

  “Pease,” Candace says again, not even watching at this point. She’s too busy building a block tower with Dom. Tristan was helping them, but now that Roman is over here stirring up conflict, his little brother is just sitting there observing to see what happens.

  Roman sighs and dramatically drops back against the floor, staring up at the ceiling. He can’t even believe we won’t all cede to his demands and deliver a mountain of red blocks at his little feet.

  I can’t help smiling as I ruffle his hair. He’s so damn cute, and so very much his father’s son. “Just say please and I’ll give you the block, Roman.”

  He would rather live the rest of his life in a block-less world.

  “All right,” I say, with a warning tone. “Last chance. I’ll give the block to Candace and Dom if you can’t remember your manners.”

  “Stupid block,” Roman mutters.

  Well, I tried. Since I have to follow through, I hand the block to Dom instead.

  “Thank you, mama,” he says, placing it on top of the tower. Candace claps like he just finished constructing the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

  Roman huffs and stands up. I expect him to wander away from us and go find something more fun to do where he won’t have to say please, but instead he steps forward and kicks over the block tower.

  Dom grasps the sides of his face, almost comically shocked. “Oh no!”

  Candace scowls up at Roman. “Hey!”

  “Stupid blocks,” Roman announces, stomping past her.

  “Hey, you come back here,” I call after him.

  He doesn’t, but he doesn’t make it far—Candace’s older brother steps directly into his path, looking down at him with a none-too-pleasant look on his face. “Go tell Candace sorry.”

  “No,” Roman says, stomping his foot.

  Gripping the back of Roman’s shirt, Westley Palmetto turns his little ass right around and urges him back toward Candace. “Tell Candace you’re sorry for knocking over her blocks. She worked really hard on that tower.”

  “I wanted it,” Roman complains. “My block.”

  “Say it right now or I’ll smash your juice box,” West says, his patience apparently at an end.

  Still scowling, still with his little arms folded across his chest, Roman mutters, “Sorry, Candace.”

  “And Dom,” West adds.

  Roman looks up and gives West a dirty look, but then with another huff, he says, “Sorry, Dom.”

  Sighing with pleasure, Elise leans over and nudges me. “Aren’t you glad you have my kids around to balance out Mateo’s?”

  Even though I absolutely adore my difficult husband, I can’t help admitting, “Yes.”

  Mateo

  There are a lot of things I excel at in life, roles I’ve studied and learned so well, you’d think I was born to play them. Ousting my asshole father and taking over his role in the family? Piece of cake. More than doubling my family’s income through a variety of legitimate and not-so-legitimate ventures? I can literally do it in my sleep. Playing with human lives and manipulating them into doing whatever I want them to do, like they’re literal puppets with carefully attached string? No problem. Keeping my inconveniently loving wife safe and happy, despite the many obstacles she’s thrown in my path along the way? Sure, I can do that.

  Raising a pre-teen girl, however, is not a job I was cut out to do. Ordinarily I let my wife do all the heavy-lifting here with Adrian stepping in to pick up any slack I don’t have time to deal with. They say it takes a village, right? Well, I have a carefully chosen village around to take care of all that for me.

  But tonight a 12-year-old girl managed to sneak past all my security and out of my house. Now she’s god-knows-where, doing god-knows-what, with god-knows-who. Historically I wouldn’t worry so much about the details—she’s 12, after all—but Bella is my neediest child. I assume it’s because she was my first, and when I had her, I hadn’t a single clue how to raise a child. I assumed her mother would take care of that, but I picked out a shitty mother for her. Even before she died, she didn’t show any signs of being very good at that particular role.

  For the first several years of Bella’s life, she didn’t fare much better than I did, I guess. I didn’t think about it at the time. I did the best I knew how. I hired a capable woman to be her nanny and take care of her, to do all the shit I didn’t know how to do and didn’t possess the time—or, if I’m being honest, the interest—in learning.

  Bella was five by the time the family grew and the entire running of my household changed. Now she has a mother and a father, but those first five years left their mark. Despite being my eldest child, Bella is perhaps the least secure. The years of not making time for her didn’t just disappear because she gets more attention now.

  I shouldn’t be surprised I managed to fuck up my kid. That’s what parents do, even when the
y try—and for a long while, I guess I didn’t know what trying meant.

  Long story short, I really hope my 12-year-old isn’t out getting pregnant right now because I was a shitty dad for a few years. I’ll have to kill the little bastard, and if she is where Adrian thinks she is right now, that would be pretty bad.

  The son of fucking cops. Well, the nephew of a cop, but I looked into it, and blue practically runs in this kid’s veins. His uncle is Chicago PD, his grandfather is a retired chief of police, and he has an aunt who’s trying to make detective.

  All of them are the annoying kind—the ones who can’t be bought. The noble assholes who would prefer to struggle and uphold their principles than take some extra cash and live an easier life just for looking the other way.

  This little asshole is the last person in this entire city I want her to like, so of course this is the one she’s been nurturing a crush on for years. I swear, she only likes this kid to spite me. I thought I had some time before I really had to worry about the little shithead, but right now I’m not so sure.

  She’s 12.

  Even I wasn’t fucking anyone when I was 12.

  I’m going to put her little ass in a goddamn tower, mark my fucking words.

  Adrian pulls into the driveway, looking every bit as unhappy as I am. It’s not even his daughter potentially inside this house, but it may as well be. As he storms up the porch steps, he oozes more paternal outrage than me, and she is mine.

  “No fucking solicitors,” Adrian mutters, reading the little gold-plated sign on their front door as he presses the doorbell. “I’ll show them fucking solicitors.”

  I give him a light pat on the shoulder. “Down, boy. Let’s see if she’s even here first.”

  “She better fucking be here,” he blusters. “And she’s grounded for a month if she is,” he adds, in case I didn’t know.

  “Justine’s birthday party is this weekend,” I remind him. I’m not even sure why I remember when Ethan’s daughter’s birthday is, but I remember Mia saying they were going out to pick up a present for her.