by Eden Butler
“Alejandro…please don’t…”
“And come alone,” he said, the sound of the birds and wind behind him gone, his voice getting louder. “Just you and that gringo. If you don’t, I’ll know. I see everything.”
“You’ll do nothing,” Dimitri said, his voice loud.
“You wanna test me, mother fucker? You wanna see how much pull we…I have?” Alejandro’s voice matched Dimitri’s, his temper seeming to flare and then, there was the pound of something hard crashing.
My stomach twisted, my knees buckling, when Mateo’s cries filled up the room.
“I got enough on you to put you away for decades. Shipments, dock records…you think your girl Kat is the only hacker around?”
Dimitri didn’t react, but I noticed Dino’s flinch as he moved behind his boss. That name meant something to both of them and my ex seemed to know it.
“You think I find out my wife is with some fucking gangster with my son and I don’t find out every fucking thing I can? You come and you bring your…Carelli, Maggie…” Another pound and Mateo’s screams got louder.
I crashed to the floor, fighting the urge to vomit. He wouldn’t hit the baby. I couldn’t believe that, but Alejandro’s temper was terrifying, always had been. If it scared me, God only knew what it did to Mateo.
“Bring my wife,” he told Dimitri. “And come alone or your fucking business and your freedom is done.”
“Cameras, all over my town,” Dimitri said again, still pissed that Alejandro somehow got past all the safeguards he and his family had outfitted in their offices and businesses. He sat next to me, his fingers curled around the steering wheel, his gaze staring out of the front windshield. “All this time, we’ve been so isolated, so protected and just like that,” Dimitri snapped his fingers, the sound reminding me of the click of a gun, “some asshole with an inside man comes in and fucks us.”
“Alejandro designed security systems for fun in college. I’m not surprised he’d spy on me once he found out where I was.”
Dimitri stared at me, his eyebrows hidden underneath his sweeping bangs. “For fucking fun?” When I shrugged, finding it unnecessary to elaborate, he shook his head. “Jesus…this guy…”
“I told you, when he’s sober, no one is more focused.” I leaned back against the seat, my fingers still shaking when I rubbed them over my shoulders.
“You almost sound like you…admire him—”
“You can’t be serious!” I laughed, unable to do anything else, and Dimitri seemed to know his mistake automatically. “He once tried to convince me to give myself to Reynolds for drugs. Me. His wife. Alejandro was so strung out and desperate for a fix, he wanted me to fuck his boss so the asshole would give him a baggie of blow and you think I’m what? Proud of him for being sober enough to set up cameras and infiltrate our lives?”
“Shit…” He grunted as he looked out the window again. “I’ll fucking kill him. I swear.” Dimitri smashed his fist against the radio twice, destroying the console casing and splitting the skin over the top of his hand.
“Stop it!” I said, grabbing his wrist.
He took it back, wiping the small bead of blood against his dark jeans and rubbed his face, like he didn’t know what to do with himself. This had to be hard for Dimitri. He was a man who thrived on discipline and control and nothing about this situation was in his control.
The water was calm, but there were seagulls covering the dock and pier and all along the beach, leading up to the small shacks peppered along the shoreline. The last one at the end of a row of five was where Alejandro had instructed us to go.
After several minutes of silence, Dimitri calmed. “Bella,” he finally said, saying the word slowly, both syllables enunciated clearly. When he looked at me, there was something cold, disconnected in his eyes I couldn’t recognize. “You may not like who I have to be in there.”
“I don’t know…”
“Listen to me,” he said, his voice clearer now, louder. “I wasn’t lying when I told you everything changes when I’m with you. Who I am, what I want and I meant that.” Dimitri looked through the window, the muscles along his neck flexing, his jaw tightening. “But I can’t be that man and protect you. I have to be who I need to be to get Mateo back and keep you both safe.”
“Dimitri…”
“Just know everything I do is to make sure you both get out of here alive.”
My stomach ached and my arms felt empty. It had been hours and hours since I held my son and I felt like part of my heart was missing. Resting my chin on my fist, I watched that shack, willing Alejandro to come outside, to do something, anything that gave me a sign that my son was safe. But I didn’t even have the power to control my own fear. How could I hope to control that lunatic?
“Maggie…” Dimitri said, reaching a hand across the seat for me. I took it and let him squeeze my fingers. “I’ll kill him before I’ll ever let him hurt either one of you.”
In that moment, I knew he meant it. He’d do anything for us.
Because he loved us.
And it might get him killed.
“I should have left months ago.”
“What are you talking about?” He turned, unbuckling his belt with his knee moving next to the console separating our seats.
“I thought about leaving. I was going to make a clean break. Distance from you. From your family. I was going to ask Toni for a job in the city and move in with my aunt.”
“Toni would have never…” I cocked an eyebrow at him, one look I knew would remind Dimitri that his sister was still pissed at him for how he’d handled her and Luca years back. “Hell. She would have helped you just to spite me.”
“She would have. I’m sure of it.”
“What stopped you?”
I smiled, watching his face, loving the look in his eyes. “This,” I said, pointing between us.”
Dimitri took my hand, kissing my wrist. “When we get our boy back, I promise you, I’ll spend the rest of my life making you happy.” Then he touched my face, all his anger and temper from moments before gone as he looked at me, brushing a finger over my forehead. I wanted to kiss him, just for a second. More than anything, I wanted his promise to come true.
“You’re mine, no matter what anyone else ever tells you. We belong to each other.” My body felt electrified where he grazed his fingers against my skin—my neck, the shell of my ear, the curve of my arm, every inch was on fire from his attention. “We’re in each other’s heads… too deep. We can’t walk away now. It’s too late.”
I moved back, looking up to catch Dimitri’s eye, wondering what he meant and where he was trying to go with this. “I don’t… what do you mean?” I moved the hair from his eyes, wanting to see them clearly. “What are you trying to say to me?”
Dimitri’s mouth relaxed as he watched me. He touched his fingers over my forehead, smoothing them along my cheek, and kept silent, one side of his mouth shifting up. “When this is over, it will be…just us. No bullshit. No excuses. Just you, me, and the baby. The three of us.”
I held my breath, unable to keep my heartbeat from rattling against my ribs. Smoke didn’t lower that smile when I grabbed his hand, pulling it from my face. “What does that mean exactly?”
“No delays. All of us, under the same roof. Together. We’ll be a family, bella.”
“I…”
My cell chimed with a text and I straightened, moving away from Dimitri. He grabbed it before I had a chance and from the expression on his face, what he saw there deflated the mounting happiness that had distracted him just seconds before.
“What?” I said, ripping the phone from his hand.
“He wants us to come, right now.”
Alejandro did, in fact. The picture was dark, but I could make out Mateo’s bright eyes, my eyes, and the dimples in his perfectly round cheeks.
I opened the text message accompanying the image and the muscles along my jaw tensed. “Let’s go,” I told Dimitri, forgetting every
thing but the desire to get my baby away from that bastard.
As we left the car, the cell pushed in my back pocket, I reminded myself that staying off the water and with Smoke was the game plan. No matter what Alejandro wanted, I wouldn’t do what his message demanded.
Alone time with the gringo is over.
Now come home to your husband.
17
Maggie
The shack was small, with worn apple green lap siding around the surface. Some of the pieces had rotted or were completely missing in certain areas while the small, eight-foot-deep front porch was shy the left side-railing.
Dimitri walked in front of me, his gun in the waistband of his jeans and another one strapped to his ankle. If Alejandro had been watching before we left, he’d know where Dimitri had kept his protection. But a sweep of his office had come up empty, unlike the restaurant and my apartment. We were banking on my ex not being ballsy enough to infiltrate all of Dimitri’s security measures.
“Keep behind me,” he warned, reaching his hand back for me as we came to the porch.
“He’s not gonna like you touching me,” I tried, earning a slow look over his shoulder for my effort.
“Easy, mami,” I heard as we came to the porch, spotting the open front door shielded only by an old screen door. “Nice and slow.” Alejandro’s voice was lower now than it had been on the phone, calmer somehow. But it didn’t fill me with anything resembling ease. “Open the door, gringo. Let my wife in first.”
“That’s not gonna happen,” he said, stepping forward, then Dimitri paused, tensing when the sound of a gun clicking seemed to echo.
“I have no problem shooting you where you stand. But I’d rather not upset my son or my wife.” Alejandro moved, coming to the door. His body was shaded by the darkness in the small cottage, but I could make out the thin silhouette of his body and the glint from his gun as he held it up.
When neither of us moved and Dimitri kept everything but the glare he threw at Alejandro still, the man seemed to give in, just a little bit.
“I’m not going to hurt her. That’s a promise.”
“You took our son,” he said. “You invaded our lives with your cameras. Your word means dick to me.”
“Our. Son,” Alejandro corrected through gritted teeth. “Besides, you can’t stalk someone who belongs to you,” he said, his voice low, each word releasing with a sharp bite. “She’s my wife—”
“Not anymore. She divorced your ass and as long as I’m here, she’s standing behind me.” He inhaled, moving his head to the side, squinting like he tried to get the make of Alejandro, see how far he could push him. “Back up and we’ll come inside.”
“Fine, gringo,” he answered, moving back into the dark cottage. “Watch yourself.”
Dimitri nodded, shifting his gaze to me, not meeting my face directly. He squeezed my hand before he reached for the screen door and opened it.
I moved behind him, my fingers against his back, my heart thudding in my ears. I took slow, even breaths before we moved across the threshold. Then, my gaze was everywhere, at everything, looking at the small table to the right, at the monitors that lit up one corner of the front room and the images on them—Vi in our apartment with Mr. Kempt and one of his daughters, then Mr. and Mrs. C. with Dante and Toni at the bar in the restaurant, drinking small cups of espresso, their expressions worried.
Dimitri glanced toward them, and he flexed his jaw and pressed his lips together like it took effort not to charge at Alejandro and beat him senseless for invading his family’s life the way he had.
“Slow,” my ex said when we came to the center of the room. He walked forward, coming into the light from the darkness that surrounded us.
My breath caught in my chest at how gaunt, how unhealthy he looked. My ex-husband had been so beautiful when we met. All the girls in our Freshman Econ class fought over who got to sit next to him that first week. He hadn’t been interested in any of them. He’d moved each class, avoiding them, sitting in the back, then the front, then, by the third week, in the middle, for each lecture, right next to me. It took Alejandro a solid month to ask me out and me, two more weeks to realize that was what he was doing.
He’d been so smart and stunning, really. His light brown skin clear. His black eyes round, deep set and haunting. His full, lush lips pink, delectable. I couldn’t resist him. I’d been helpless.
But the man who stood in front of us was not the boy I’d fallen in love with ten years ago. This man was rail thin and ghostly. His skin was pockmarked and scarred. There were blemishes and sores on the sides of his face and along his forehead. He’d grown so thin that the high set cheekbones that had always made him look like he should be walking runways, now made him appear sick. His collarbone protruded and his once thick, curly hair had become thin and matted.
“I thought you said he was motivated,” Dimitri said, staring at Alejandro with his face twisted in disgust. I could see the pity beneath all the rage that cornered in his eyes.
“I…don’t know…” Despite Dimitri’s warning, I moved forward, taken over by dread and fear. This is what had become of the man I’d once loved so fiercely. Mi corazón, I’d called him. But he wasn’t my heart anymore. He’d been replaced. “Where?” I said, not hiding the anger in my voice. When he only stared at me, that anger intensified. “Where is my son?”
He didn’t speak. His gaze locked on me, moving over my face as his hands shook, his mouth wide, opening and closing like there was so much he wanted to say and couldn’t. He licked his lips, swallowing so thickly I could hear his throat working before he took a breath, like he geared up to speak but couldn’t decide what to say first.
“She asked you a question!” Dimitri’s loud voice jerked Alejandro’s attention away from me.
“My… my son is fine. Sleeping.” The glare he gave Dimitri was fierce, but there wasn’t enough of him to back up the challenge in his eyes.
This didn’t make sense to me. None of it. His behavior, his anger. The tech I understood. That had Alejandro’s name all over it. But how thin and sick he looked, how caught he seemed by watching me, how jealous he was, didn’t make any sense to me.
He’d been confident on the phone, teasing us. Now he jerked when Dimitri called him out. Now he looked as though he could barely hold up his gun.
“What is this mierda?” I asked, walking closer. Dimitri touched my arm but didn’t pull me back. I was betting on that response and the one I got from my ex-husband.
Alejandro had always been possessive, aside from that time he offered me up to Reynolds, so I knew he’d hate seeing Dimitri touch me. And when he did, the thin man in front of me moved his top lip up, a wide bend curling it. He narrowed his eyes and the irises seemed to darken as he moved his gaze to the spot where Dimitri held my arm, then to his face like he dared the bigger man to challenge him. But Alejandro wasn’t stupid. He was weaker, smaller than Dimitri. I think he knew that and resented the idea that I did too.
“There’s no mierda.” Alejandro scrubbed his fingers over his face with his free hand and gestured with his gun as he spoke with the other. “I wanted you here…I…I got you here.” But he didn’t look at me when he said that. In fact, he didn’t look at either of us. He moved back, his limbs shaking like the onslaught of a fit was beginning and he tried to play it off. “I want the gringo gone so you…you can…”
“She’s not staying here,” Dimitri said, pulling me back. Alejandro opened his mouth, his anger seeming to ease some of the shaking as he glared at Dimitri again, but he wasn’t scared or impressed by my ex’s attitude. Dimitri was in front of me, tilting his head, and he crossed his arms, looking relaxed, but still guarded. “Maggie’s right. This is shit. The whole situation. You show up after a year ready to get your family back now? Why?”
“I don’t owe you…shit. I’m not explaining anything to you.” His laugh was humorless, bitter but to my ears it just sounded sad.
“But you owe me.”
&
nbsp; “Exactly,” Dimitri said, ignoring Alejandro when he waved the gun at him. “Your fucking arms are so skinny it’s amazing you can lift that thing.” Teflon calm, he continued. “You get us here, stalk her, spy on me and mine, hack my data and here you are looking like a crackhead. There’s no way you pulled all this shit on your own.” He glanced at me, shrugging. “No matter how smart or talented you say he is, this isn’t the guy. No way is this the guy you told me about.”
“He’s…different,” I explained, not bothering to worry over Alejandro’s grunting protests or how he moved closer. “All I care about is getting my son back.”
“You’ll get him, baby, don’t worry,” Dimitri said, dropping his hands to his sides. “Just as soon as this asshole tells me who the hell has been helping him and why.”
“Nobody. I…I don’t need anybody...” He spoke with a bravado he couldn’t back up.
Alejandro was stubborn. Always had been and he forced Dimitri’s hand, charging forward, the gun lifted.
His reaction was instinctive. He blocked the hand and the gun, knocking it to the floor and clocking Alejandro in a move that was so quick I wasn’t sure I’d seen it right.
“Fuck!” my ex screamed, stumbling back until he landed on the floor. “You mother fuck…”
“I wouldn’t say that if I was you,” I warned him.
Dimitri kicked the gun out of Alejandro’s reach, kneeling in front of him as the skinny man lay on the floor, covering his bloody nose with the hem of his shirt.
