by Sam Mariano
“He’s kicking. Do you want to feel?”
As emotionally removed as a complete stranger, he replies simply, “No.”
Torn between anger and embarrassment, I nod my head and ease back from the table.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Mateo asks.
“I’m eight million months pregnant; I have to pee.”
He nods curtly. “Take someone with you.” I glance across the table at Mia but before she can even open her mouth, Mateo says, “Nope.”
Rafe keeps an eye on the interaction. Now he tosses his own napkin on the table. “I’ll take her.”
I head for the wide arch leading out into the hall and Rafe follows a couple steps behind me. Once we have the imaginary privacy of the camera-monitored hallway, Rafe falls into step beside me.
I glance over at him, shaking my head. “We’ve gotta stop meeting like this.”
“I know,” he says, easily enough. “People are gonna start talking.”
I crack a faint smile, keeping my eyes ahead of me. “How have you been?”
“Not too bad. Better than you, from the sound of things. Seems like you’ve fallen down a few rungs on the social ladder since we danced at the wedding. What did you do to earn a dungeon sentencing?”
“Shot a man in Reno,” I offer back.
“Just to watch him die?”
“Is there any other reason to shoot a man in Reno, Rafe? Come on; get your head out of your ass.”
He chuckles lightly, the sound washing over me. God, I miss human interaction. Goddamn Mateo, locking me up and making me all…
I almost think ‘vulnerable,’ then I remember who I’m walking down the hall with. I know Rafe’s game. He hands out those sexy smiles like candy and lulls you in with his easygoing sense of humor. He turns on the illusion of harmlessness like he has a light switch—then while you’re distracted, unwrapping your candy in the safe haven of his non-threatening presence, the sneaky bastard tries to crack your soul open.
Not today, buddy.
Though, I have to admit, I don’t have much to lose at this point. Mateo is almost definitely going to kill me. He hasn’t said a kind word to me in two weeks. He bordered on hostile every time he so much as glanced in my direction at dinner.
Roman kicks me again and my hand automatically goes to my stomach. Nerves boil in my gut, but Mateo’s coldness when I asked if he wanted to feel Roman move has only added to my fear about him not letting me have even a baby monitor in the dungeon to call for help. I told him—and myself—that as long as he’s wanted an heir, he isn’t going to risk this one just because he hates me.
But what if I’m wrong? Mateo has Mia. Granted, I don’t think he wants Mia’s baby to know Vince is his father, and in the event she has a boy, I’m certain he doesn’t want Vince’s son running his family, but I’m worried at the level of his coldness toward me. Mateo is generally pretty even-tempered. He’s an asshole, but a logical, even-tempered asshole. Losing Roman would make his life harder.
But he knows it would kill me. What if he hates me that much? He’s already taken my other kids from me all but an hour a week. Lily is old enough to understand what’s going on, but Rosalie just thinks I’m busy and that’s why Mateo is on primary bedtime story duty. She loves Mia like a mother, so it doesn’t bother her that Mia comes to play with her in my place.
He’s set this all up right from the beginning to ensure he could get rid of me more easily than he got rid of Beth. I never saw it before, but I see it now. He didn’t want another Isabella situation, so he gave my kids two moms and made sure one of them was the one he loved more than life itself—the one he would never kill, even if she stood over him with a gun aimed at his chest.
But who’s going to protect Roman? Mia loves all our other kids so I’m not worried about them, but she’s never met Roman. Will she take on Mateo for Roman? She has enough on her plate making Mateo accept Vince’s son as his own—she doesn’t need another unwanted son to force Mateo to at least feign affection for.
That’s probably not fair. I know Mateo doesn’t feign affection for our children. I’ve doubted it before, studied him to see if he’s just a monster with stellar acting skills, but there’s no way he’d keep up that charade after this many years. Maybe he would for Mia, but not for me. When he got tired of loving me, he could have stopped. He has no reason to continue to father Lily—at the very least—if he doesn’t have real affection for our kids.
But he doesn’t know Roman yet, either. Mateo doesn’t seem to form emotional connections to our babies until they’re actually born—so what if Roman isn’t real to him yet? He considered fighting Mia to get rid of her pregnancy and he values Mia more highly than anything else. If he has no emotional attachment to my son, what if he could discard him just as easily?
“You okay?”
I nod my head on instinct, but then I stop. My stomach churns even harder. I feel like I’m preparing to give a speech in front of 80 million people in my underwear.
“Actually, no,” I say. My brain itches. Can brains itch? It’s trying to crawl out of my head. Even my brain doesn’t want anything to do with me. My steps slow, my stomach still rocking like a baby’s cradle. I think I’m going to throw up, but I force myself to meet Rafe’s gaze. “I need help.”
I can’t read his expression, exactly. There are faint traces of mild curiosity glinting in his brown eyes, but like the other Morelli men of my acquaintance, this one has a solid poker face. “Yeah?”
I don’t know what I was hoping for—that this belated nugget of neediness would appeal to him like Mia’s waterfall of vulnerability? Sure, he helped her escape Vegas, but I can’t do what Mia does. I can’t open myself up and reveal a pool of need for him to swim in; I don’t have that.
“I’m due in two weeks. He only lets me out of the dungeon on Sundays. Maria only brings me food twice a day. He’s going to kill me.” I nod my head like somehow if I can say this calmly enough, I will maintain some level of control over it. “I understand that. I understand I did something he can’t forgive. But our baby didn’t. Maria said he won’t let Mia visit me and I didn’t get to talk to her alone this week. I don’t know when I’ll go into labor. With Lily, I went a couple days past my due date, but with Rosalie I was a week early. This could be the last time I see anyone before I go into labor.”
“I don’t think Mateo would let his newborn son die,” Rafe offers.
It’s telling that even he doesn’t argue with the fact that I’m going to die. He offers no false assurance that he’s sure Mateo will spare me.
But he knew Beth, so I guess he knows better.
“Will you just please tell Mia to take good care of him? Tell her I just want her to love him like he’s hers? It isn’t his fault I’m his mother. I used to be sure, but I’m not anymore… If Mia loves my son, there’s a much better chance Mateo will.” This makes my heart hurt worse than anything else ever has. That I’m having this baby and I have no idea if he will be loved or mistreated, punished for my sins by a harsh father who, in this, apparently holds a grudge.
Now Rafe looks down at the ground. I don’t know what it means that he can’t look at me. Am I humiliating myself? I probably am. I would’ve liked to at least die with my pride intact, but I’m terrified for my son and I just need someone to promise me he’ll be all right. I don’t know why I’m asking this man. He has no control here. Still, I think I’ll feel better if he reassures me.
This time he’s more adamant. “He’s not going to hurt your son, Meg.”
“Maybe not physically. Mateo can be hurtful in a lot of different ways. It’s basically his superpower.”
“Sounds like a crummy superpower,” Rafe replies, somewhat lightly. “Should’ve held out for better.”
“Yeah, well, Clark Kent was taken; I took what I could get.”
“Maybe next time just stay single and wait for the next batch.”
I roll my eyes at him. “Aren’t you paying attention? D
ead woman walking—I get no next time.”
Rafe watches me for a moment. Casually shoving his hands into his pockets, he does a slick glance back to make sure no one followed, then beyond me toward the other side of the hall. Finally, he looks back at me, his gaze probing as he asks, “What did you do?”
“Pissed off Mateo.”
He is not impressed. He doesn’t repeat himself, but his eyes adequately express that he still expects an answer to his question.
I try. I really do. I try to come up with a sentence to say to him, after watching him flirt with her all through dinner, knowing he likes her… but I can’t. Anything I say to him about what I did is more likely to turn him against me than compel him to help.
“The point is, my baby did nothing,” I state, trying to redirect the focus.
Rafe cracks a faint smile. I can’t tell if he’s amused or disappointed, but it lodges in my gut like it’s the latter.
Nodding his head toward the bathroom, he says, “Why don’t you go pee so I can take you back to Mateo?”
I realize I’m fucking this up. I want to stop. I desperately want to stop. I know what he needs, but I can’t give it to him. I can’t do what she did. I can’t spend an hour with him and then open myself up like a flower in the sun and let the man bask in me.
Goddammit.
“I’m not good at vulnerable,” I state, hearing my own defensiveness. “I told you, that isn’t me.”
“You realize Mateo already told me what you did, right? He doesn’t like you anymore; you think he’s keeping your secrets?”
That only makes me scowl. I cross my arms over my chest defensively. “If you already knew what I did, you didn’t have to ask. You’re just playing with me. This is my life. This isn’t a game.”
“It’s not a game. I asked you a simple question to see if you could answer it. You couldn’t.”
“It wasn’t a simple question!” I object, eyes widening. “You clearly like Mia. I got into this position in the first place by pissing off men who like Mia. You weren’t going to help me if you knew what I did to her.”
He shakes his head again, another cocktail smile on this face. This time it’s part amusement, part “the balls on this woman, Jesus Christ.”
“Are you sorry for what you did to your friend, or are you sorry you got caught?” he asks.
I try to read him, but he gives me nothing. On one hand, he likes Mia so maybe he wants me to be sorry. On the other, though, he’s some kind of Morelli criminal who probably does bad shit without apology all the time. Maybe he would respect ruthlessness. Maybe it would impress him if I held my head high and stood by my admittedly callous actions.
I don’t know which route to take. I can’t maintain vulnerability. I can maintain toughness—God, I wish toughness worked on him instead of vulnerability.
Mia spent two nights in his company and he decided to rescue her.
This is the third evening we’ve spent together. Maybe he’s on the fence. If I say the wrong thing, though, I lose my chance.
So, I stall and try to get more out of him. “Is that a trick question?”
This time the look on his face is clear: disappointment.
His gaze drops to the ground, still with a faint smile, but there’s no humor behind it. I failed his test. He wanted the sweetness, and I didn’t give it to him.
He’s not going to help me.
He was never going to help me.
I’m so mad at him now for toying with me, for dangling the idea in front of me and yanking it away. I turn on my heel, face flushed, and head for the bathroom.
“You know why you’re going to die, Meg?” he asks, before I make it through the door.
“Because I’m not loving and vulnerable enough to appease the Morelli gods?” I ask, my tone dripping with disdain.
Ignoring my jab, he says, “Because you’re still trying to control everything. You are not in control. You fucked up big time and you’re at his mercy now. Accept it.”
“He hates me,” I state. “He isn’t going to give me mercy.”
“Have you given him a reason to?” He pauses for just a second, then he says, “Or are you keeping your guard up like it’s going to save your life? ‘Cause I don’t know what his plan is, but I do know this—that guard is never going to save you. It’s gonna get you killed.”
“Well, if he needs to kill me for not being like Mia, so be it.”
“Don’t be stupid. He’s not going to kill you for not being like Mia,” Rafe states, his tone harder than I’ve heard it thus far. “He’s going to kill you for the same reason he killed Beth—because you’re being a stupid, selfish bitch.”
I can’t help gasping, my head snapping to gape at him over my shoulder.
He raises his eyebrows, inviting me to tell him he’s wrong.
I don’t waste my time. I try to freeze him where he stands using the power of my death glare. When that fails, I storm into the bathroom to get the hell away from him.
By the time I emerge from the bathroom, I have convinced myself Rafe, not Mateo, is the devil incarnate. The very worst of the Morellis—and that’s saying something; they’re not exactly the Brady Bunch.
Then I step outside to see him chatting up the official worst of the Morellis—Dante Morelli. Colette stands by his side in a tight blue mini-dress that matches his suit, clutching her tiny purse in front of her and passively observing while Dante and Rafe talk. She looks my way; Dante and Rafe follow suit.
“I should probably get the prisoner back to the warden,” Rafe says, lightly.
Nodding benignly, hands shoved into his pockets, Dante surprises me by asking, “How are you holding up?”
I open my mouth to answer but Rafe does instead. “She’d probably be doing a lot better if she’d stop looking out for her own ass and fall in line.”
Dante flicks a glance at Rafe, then back at me.
I consider telling Rafe I can speak for myself, but Dante is even more traditional (read: sexist) than Mateo, so that probably wouldn’t earn me any points. Instead, I silently glare at Rafe so hard he should wither, but he doesn’t. Damn the man.
“I don’t know,” Dante remarks, faintly shrugging. “There’s a time and place for self-interest. Maybe this is it.”
“There’s a time and place for loyalty, too, and she flew right past that one,” Rafe states.
Dante regards me for a moment. I don’t speak. I don’t know what I could say at this point, anyway. Finally, losing interest in me, Dante places a hand at the small of Colette’s back and nudges her toward the bathroom.
“Go ahead so we can get out of here.”
Colette offers a cutesy little smile at Rafe. “I’ll be right back.” Cutting her gaze to me, she raises her eyebrows. “Come with me?”
I blink. “To pee?”
Chuckling, she says, “Just freshening up. You know how ladies are about going to the bathroom alone.”
That’s a bit odd, but I’m not in a position to turn down socialization, whatever form it comes in. With a shrug, I follow Colette into the bathroom and close the door behind me.
Thankfully, she doesn’t go to the toilet. She stops at the sink, glancing down at her bag as she opens it up and draws out her lipstick. It’s odd she has to freshen up her lipstick just to drive home with her own husband. Dante is a dick to everyone else, but I figured he must be nicer to Colette since she hasn’t stabbed him in his sleep yet.
Regarding me in the mirror, she says, “I guess now that I’ve seen where the road leads, I’m glad I didn’t end up with Mateo.”
I laugh shortly. Here I am judging her for freshening up her lipstick to keep her husband happy, and the man I procreated with would win by a landslide in the category of Most Likely to Want Me Dead. “Oh, yeah, you dodged a bullet there.”
She nods, her gaze falling to my swollen abdomen. “I’m sorry he’s being such a dick. I’m not surprised, but I am sorry.”
“Thanks.” I’m not really sure what e
lse to say—it’s awkward to talk about your own impending death sentence.
Colette finishes touching up her lipstick, drops it back in her bag, and pops a breath mint in her mouth. She turns back to me with her hand outstretched. Initially I think she’s going to hand me a breath mint, too—I’m ready to hold up my hand and do a smell test.
Only she’s not holding out a breath mint.
She’s holding a cell phone.
I don’t even take it right away; I just stare at her, completely bewildered.
“Don’t waste the battery,” she says. “We weren’t really planning this, so it doesn’t have a full charge and I won’t see you again until next week.”
“What is this? Why are you giving me a cell phone?”
She shrugs, watching me. “He won’t even give you a baby monitor in case you go into labor and you’re due in two weeks.”
“In case of emergency?” I question.
She meets my gaze again as she brushes past me and moves toward the door. “Sure. Or in case we need to reach you for any reason. Just don’t waste the battery and it should last you a few days.” She stops with her hand on the knob and looks back at me. “Don’t do anything stupid. Wait until you hear from us. Only use that if you go into labor, and only then to call one of us. You try to call cops or anyone on the outside, Dante will kill you himself—and he won’t wait two weeks.”
I try to pick my jaw up off the floor, but I can only stand here gaping at this ordinarily quiet woman. I’ve never loved Colette—she had some spunk when we first met, but she’s settled into her role as Dante’s lady. Now, all of a sudden, she’s going all Mob Wives on me and I don’t really know how to act.
“Put it away,” she says, rolling her blue eyes at me.
I try to shake off my surprise, tucking the phone in the side of my bra. No one’s looking there, that’s for sure. Rafe doesn’t know Mateo’s paranoid procedures, anyway. Had Adrian been the one to escort me to the bathroom, he would know to pat me down and double check that nothing went down since I got someone else alone.
When we go back outside, Rafe does not do that. He’s still shooting the shit with Dante. Once Colette returns to Dante’s side, the men shake hands. Then, resting his hand around his wife’s dainty waist, Dante regards me briefly before strolling toward the door to leave.
