Eleven Rules: A gripping domestic suspense (The Rules Book 1)

by PJ Vye

  “Let them go, Mat and I’ll tell you.”

  “Why are they here?” he asked, ignoring his two prisoners.

  “It’s about Junior.”

  Tulula stepped up to Mataio and put a gentle hand on his forearm. “No-one’s getting hurt here today, Mataio. Let them go.”

  Mataio didn’t take his eyes from Sunny’s. “Please, Mat” she pleaded, clearly distressed.

  Tulula couldn’t be sure if Mataio even realised he caused the frightened expression on Sunny’s face and not the people he had in his grip.

  He released them both.

  The reporter wrapped his hands around his throat and the camerawoman rubbed her ear and tried to move past Mataio to the car.

  He blocked their path and they stopped. Tulula came and stood beside him and he addressed his question to her. “Why are they here about Junior?”

  “Bernadette must have called the media and told them about you,” she said and glared at the reporters for good measure. She abhorred physical violence of any type, but vicious stares—quite acceptable.

  Sunny stepped forward and joined them. “Junior is dying. His organs are completely shutting down. He only has days to live.”

  Mataio moved forward to speak but Tulula held up a hand in a ‘wait’ gesture and Sunny continued. “That’s why we’re all here. He’s in there alone right now why we’re dealing with this. Bernadette helped us care for him—she’s also helped administer large doses of morphine to keep him comfortable.”

  The reporter shuffled from one foot to the other. “Bernadette says Junior’s lost forty kilograms in less than a month.”

  “He stopped eating because he lost his appetite,” replied Sunny.

  “She said she tried the serum and she’s lost ten kilograms in seven days.”

  Tulula would have serious words with that women if she ever entered her house again. She’d fed her, made her welcome and this is what she did. Tulula was about to say as much, when Sunny beat her to it.

  “She stole from us and we had to fire her. You going to take her word for it?”

  “What did she steal?”

  “It’s obvious isn’t it? The morphine. No wonder she’s making up stories about miracle weight loss drugs—she’s been high for a week and forgot to eat. Do some research on her. Do your job.”

  The reporter straightened his jacket and cracked his neck. “What is Junior dying from?”

  “Complications due to his morbid obesity. It’s not something we want to see on the news. It’s a very difficult time for the family. I’m sure you’ll understand.”

  “Who fed him into this state?”

  Tulula’s breath caught in her throat and she turned to Mataio but Sunny answered first. “Are you kidding me? Which channel did you say you worked for?”

  “Nine,” answered Tulula, reading from the side of the woman’s camera.

  “Then we’ll contact channel seven and tell them a television crew is disturbing our last few days with a beloved family member, and get them to do a story on the rudeness and unprofessional behaviour of news reporters interested only in the story, not the people.”

  Tulula wanted to applaud but instead she worked on looking her saddest and most depressed so they understood she was ‘grieving’. It wasn’t hard. She had twenty years of method training and had plenty of resources to draw on.

  Sunny came and put an arm around her and led her back into the house. Over her shoulder she said, “Mat, see these people off our property, please.”

  “What’s your relationship to the dying man,” asked the reporter of Sunny but she ignored him. The last Tulula saw as Sunny closed the door was Mataio shepherding the man and the woman into their van.

  Tulula smiled brightly and Sunny gave her an excited squeeze. “Nicely done, Lo ‘u Teine,” said Tulula.

  “Nicely done yourself, Aunt,” replied Sunny. “Academy award worthy performance from you. You looked positively grief stricken. So believable. You’re wasted here. You should be on the stage.”

  Tulula didn’t want to break the girl’s enthusiasm by admitting those feelings lingered at the surface every moment of her life.

  “The look on their faces when you mentioned the channel 7 crew. So funny,” said Tulula.

  “Do you think they bought it?” asked Sunny.

  “Oh yes. It made very good sense. Besides, there was an element of truth to it. Junior could still be dying. We don’t know. Nothing is for sure.”

  “He’s looking better though, right?” Sunny asked. “You think it’s working?”

  “My heart tells me it is. Mataio has always been a man who likes certainty and he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t truly believe he had something that could work.”

  Sunny’s face clouded at the mention of Mataio and Tulula made a decision to talk to the boy. Sunny deserved better. Besides, she’d just called her Aunt. Tulula liked the sound of it. She liked having a woman in the house again and she’d just shown her worth by protecting this family.

  She’d talk to Mataio. She’d make him see sense.

  Rule No. 9

  No Vacations

  Thirty-Four

  SUNNY

  Sometime after midnight, Sunny heard Mataio return home. She didn’t know where he’d gone or what he’d been doing, but she’d spent the hours waiting in her room, rehearsing what she’d say.

  Leaving Judd had made her feel strong—like she was in charge of her own life after a long period of drifting. Now, after today’s bedroom fiasco with Mataio, her newfound strength had left her again. She didn’t want to be needy and desperate and yet right now she felt both of those things.

  A loud snap of the door sounded, and she sprang from the room to meet him. Matario didn’t look surprised to see her still awake and handed her something from his back pocket as he walked past. Over his shoulder he said, “You can leave tomorrow.”

  She looked down at the passport in her hand and wondered what miracle it had taken for him to get it from Judd.

  By the time she found her voice to ask him to wait, he’d already gone. Instead, she spoke to an empty hallway. “This passport is void when you apply for a new one.”

  She should be angry. She should storm after him and demand answers. How dare he dismiss her like that, after she’d just saved his arse out there with the reporter? How dare he treat her like she didn’t matter?

  She should be yelling and screaming off the roof right now. Another girl might have. Another girl might pack her bags and leave without another word. Another girl might draw a line in the sand and demand to be treated with respect.

  This girl, standing in the dark hallway with a useless passport in her hand and a defeated look on her face did none of those things. This girl, turned and quietly headed back to her room and dragged the door closed.

  She had a powerful urge to talk to someone. Mataio had been a friend when she’d had none. But he didn’t want her. Not even a little bit.

  For the first time since she left the massage shop, she missed it. Even though the workers had their own ridiculous dramas and weren’t the kind of friends she’d normally gravitate to, at least they’d been available, to ask for advice, throw ideas around.

  Three weeks ago, she’d received messages from the girls to say Judd had been hounding them for information and Sunny was glad they had no information to give.

  She could FaceTime her friends—what time was it now in the UK? She did a quick calculation but lost the urge before she worked it out. They’d just want to know about the Judd breakup details and she really couldn’t be bothered. The decision to leave Judd felt like a decade ago.

  Mataio had told her she was beautiful, and she’d believed him. What kind of witchery was that?

  He’d held that reporter by the throat against the wall with an intensity on his face she’d never seen before. Mataio always seemed so even, never expressing any emotion at all with any kind of depth, and yet he’d pinned some poor helpless guy against the house before he’d
even asked who he was or why he was there. Like he’d been expecting the enemy.

  It wasn’t over. She didn’t imagine Bernadette would let it go. Neither would the media. She’d bought them some time, that’s all. Did Mataio realise? Did he have a plan?

  She flicked her mind back to the image of him laying beside her, his eyes saw only her, his hands touched her like he was feeling skin for the first time. His body wrapped over hers, like the house could fall down and he wouldn’t have known.

  How could a man be so into you one moment, and then completely lost to you in the next?

  She’d been with Judd for three years. She’d forgotten how to play the game. Should she play it detached and indifferent until his curiosity or libido brought him back to her?

  She looked at her violin and remembered how he’d watched her play. How he’d changed, watching her. Like he’d let some curtain drop and stood before her without the protection of his shield.

  She wanted to bring that shield down again but it seemed he’d ramped up the thickness and hidden all exposures and triggers well away.

  Actually no. It wasn’t that the shield had come back—he looked like a completely different person now. Sunny recalled the cold expression on Mataio’s face as he spoke to the reporter. Something had changed in him.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, her hair sticking up in odd places with black makeup marks under her eyes. Had she really met him in the hallway looking like this? No wonder he wanted her gone. She couldn’t even keep her face looking right.

  She hurried to fix it, trying to flatten it back into order. She’d need to wash it. She should take a shower, but that would mean washing away the last trace of Mataio from her, and while she could still smell him on her, she felt closer to him, like it hadn’t just been a fantasy in her head.

  She texted her UK friends to see who might be available to talk. She needed some advice. Maybe an unbiased third party could tell her the cold hard truth she already half knew—Mataio had just used her for sex.

  Thirty-Five

  TULULA

  In the morning, Tulula found Mataio beside a sleeping Junior, the guitar resting on his lap without him playing it, like it was an animal he was allergic to. She sat on the end of the bed, faced Mataio and spoke in a gentle voice. “E the le afaina lo ‘u tama?” (Are you okay, my boy?)

  “Lelei,” he answered dismissively. (Fine)

  Tulula let the silence rest awhile, aware he wasn’t interested in talking, but not willing to let it go. Eventually she put a hand on his knee and asked, “What is happening with Sunny?”

  Mataio lifted his head to check Junior was still asleep, then gave her a full-frontal frown. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “A respectful boy doesn’t walk out on a girl.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this with you.”

  “What is it you want, Mataio? What are you searching for, with all your pushing and fighting and loneliness? What do you want?”

  “What I want, Aunt, is to not talk about this with you.”

  “Why not talk to me? I can help.”

  “Sunny’s leaving. She’s going back to the UK today. I got her passport back”

  Tulula’s heart sank a little in her chest. “But she doesn’t want to go, Mataio.” Tulula didn’t know that for sure but it sounded true.

  “She has to go, Aunt.”

  “Why?”

  He couldn’t answer her. He never could answer the important questions.

  Tulula reached over and lifted Mataio’s chin so that he looked her straight in the face. “Why?” she repeated.

  “Because she has to. For her own sake. It’s better for everyone.”

  “Who’s everyone? Me? You? Sunny? Junior?”

  “I said I don’t want to talk about it, Aunt.”

  He spoke to her louder than she’d heard in a long while and it surprised them both. Junior’s pattern of light snoring faltered and they both waited until it returned to normal.

  Tulula spoke in a forced whisper. “Sunny doesn’t have to do anything she doesn’t want to do, Mataio. She has free will. Under all that insecurity she carries around with her, I think you might find she still has that—and probably a bucket load of strength and resolve even she hasn’t discovered yet.”

  Tulula desperately wanted Sunny to find it and push it up against Mataio’s own brand of free will and personal strength. That was a battle ground that was set to be bloody. “Besides that, I like her. And she seems to like you. For whatever reason that is. You’re not an easy man to love, Mataio.”

  “What makes you think she’s interested in anything more than friendship?”

  Tulula couldn’t believe how, for such a smart boy, he could be so unaware. So self-absorbed in his own business. Just like his father.

  “Did I ever tell you about how your mother met Bruce?”

  Mataio’s mouth twitched but he spoke quietly. “You’ve never mentioned my father’s name in this house since he killed Ma.”

  Tulula hated the man and would shoot him on sight. Even the name on her tongue tasted bitter. “He’ll be out of jail in a few days. Did you know?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Tulula nodded. “He won’t come here, Mataio.”

  “No, but I think he’ll try and find me. He’s been writing letters.”

  “What do they say?” Even though she asked it she didn’t want to know the answer.

  “I don’t read them.”

  Tulula nodded her approval. There was nothing that man could ever say to take away the raw gash that still hadn’t healed when he took her sister from her.

  She stood and took a photograph from the window ledge and brought it over for Mataio to see. “You remember this photo?”

  “You and mum in Samoa.”

  “She was seventeen, I was nineteen. This photo was taken the day she got her job at the Tonoa Aga Hotel Resort. It was so unusual for one so young to get an assistant to the manager job. I’m still sure our father pulled some strings. She was always his favourite.”

  Mataio looked past Tulula as if a vision of his grandfather, who he’d never met, stood across the room.

  “Siiva was so pretty and accommodating. She lived to please her father and he took her everywhere with him, teaching her to weave, play guitar, sing, cook. She was smart too, and he trusted her with things he wouldn’t trust his sons. Her siblings would tease her and complain about the relationship she shared with him, but it didn’t bother her that much. She didn’t see the favouritism until she had to live without it.

  She met your father on a beach in Samoa just a few weeks after getting her dream job. He’d been charming and affectionate and spoke with an accent. Australians were a fantasy to a young Samoan girl who had never left the shores of the island. He told her about Melbourne, how you could walk along the river that ran through the middle, how the fires would spit out every hour along the Southbank, how every year they’d light up the city with projections and fireworks, how everyone would gather together and cheer a football team down the street.

  She dreamed of a bigger life and he had a smile that sent her insides as soft as the sand they walked on.”

  “So, he wasn’t always a chauvinist, violent, selfish arse?”

  “I don’t think your father even knew what he really was. On the beaches, in the sun, life in Samoa on vacation was a fairytale, even for him. No pressures, no real-life stress, he could be easy and in love and on his best behaviour. None of us knew. Except maybe our father.”

  “He forbid Siiva to marry Bruce?”

  “Yes. But we all just thought it was because no man could ever be good enough for his girl.”

  “What did you think?”

  “After Bruce went home, he wrote to her and I read his letters. They were genuine and loving and talked about the marvellous life they’d have together if she came to Melbourne. I wanted it as much as she did. I wanted the life he talked about and I encouraged it. They planned
to get married, secretly, as our father wouldn’t give permission. I helped organise it. Bruce lined up a job for your Uncle Akamu in Australia so we could also move there. I’d be with my dear sister, both of us living in a country we’d only dreamed about. Not everyone who wants to leave gets out of Samoa. This was our ticket.”

  “You were young Aunt,” said Mataio softly. “You can’t blame yourself.”

  “We all have to take responsibility for our part. That was mine.”

  Tulula couldn’t quite get a read on Mataio’s reaction, but she went on. “Even if I hadn’t encouraged it, even if I’d told my father and prevented the marriage, Siiva would have found a way to be with him.”

  “Bruce had her fooled,” said Mataio.

  “I’m not sure he even tried to fool her. I don’t think it was a trick he played. He just managed to not show his true self to her, maybe because he felt something different in those early days. Like he didn’t have to be angry or arrogant or powerful in the beginning. He was happy. To be with your mother was enough. It’s like he fooled himself.”

  “She loved this version of him.”

  “That’s my point Mataio. My sister had an expression whenever she spoke of him in those early days. A look that said this was where her future began. She belonged to him even before she committed. She had a look.”

  “How long did it take him to wipe that look from her face after they were married? A day, a week, a month? The first time he slapped her for not wiping the dishes dry enough?”

  “The thing is, Sunny has that look.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Sunny does not have a look, Aunt.”

  “Why do you fight this Taio?”

  “I’m not fighting anything. I’m trying to keep Junior alive, Sunny safe and you happy. That’s all. Who has time for fighting?”

  “You remember the last time we had the media outside?”

  “Yes.”

  “How invasive they were.”