by Aiden Bates
Alverita looked down and seemed to be struggling with the next part. “Part of the decision we came to about taking Pedro off of life support was so we could help Marcos move on. He’s spent so long lingering over Pedro’s bedside day in and day out. As time goes on, I’m afraid all he’s finding there is sadness, guilt. I thought if we were able to let Pedro go that maybe Marcos would find happiness again. I thought him bringing you into his life was a step toward that. I believe it could be.”
There was no denying how much she loved her sons, and how much she wanted Marcos to be happy. It felt terrible to lie to her about this. It made sense that she’d decided the relationship Marcos and I had sold her, the baby, indicated that Marcos was finally starting to build his life away from Pedro. But now, it seemed that Marcos was withdrawing more than ever. I tried to imagine how painful it would be for her afterward if Marcos continued the way he was now, if things really did end up completely falling apart between us. There was no way I could continue this now. No way I could continue pretending she could be my mother-in-law, not when there was the very real possibility she could be, and at the same time the very real possibility she wouldn’t.
I took a deep breath and told her everything. All the details of the agreement. I couldn’t help it. As she sat rooted in place, her shock evident, I spilled all the beans about Oliver, Marcos and me. The three of us.
“I swear to you. I swear. We only wanted to help Pedro and Marcos, and he wanted to help us. But now, things have changed. I love him. Oliver does, too. Both of us are over the moon about him, and Marcos loves us back. At least, I think he did. I’m so sorry we lied to you. I know it wasn’t a good thing to do, and there’s nothing else to say than to apologize for it.”
I braced myself for her completely deserved anger. I watched her face slip from shock to sorrow, crumbling right before my eyes. “Alverita, I’m so sorry to have made you so angry.”
“I’m not angry!”
Tears spilled from her eyes and she started to sob. I couldn’t take it. Seeing the older woman so broken made the guilt in my chest explode. I grabbed up a napkin from the table and moved to kneel beside her, gently mopping up her tears. She didn’t jerk away or slap my hand, so I continued to dab at her cheeks. It was the absolute least I could do.
“We didn’t mean to hurt you, either,” I added.
Alverita gave me a small smile and shook her head. “No, no. I’m not hurt. I’m just…overwhelmed. The lengths he would go to save his brother’s life? Marcos would do anything, sacrifice everything if it would save Pedro. Anything.”
“I know. That’s why I love him. I swear I do. He is so good. So honorable. It’s impossible not to admire or love someone who would sacrifice himself so completely.”
Alverita nodded, smiling as if relieved. “Then you understand. Mitch, if you love him like that, then you, both of you, can't let go of him, verdad? I worry every day that Pedro isn’t going to make it, that he’s never going to wake up. What will that do to Marcos? If he has no one to hold on to, if he has no one to turn to, I don’t know what will happen to him.” The tears poured down her cheeks again. “If that happens, I’m so scared I’ll lose him next. Please. You have to promise me. If you love him, you have to try.”
I was still in shock from everything that had just happened, how off-script I’d gone. But, for the first time in weeks, I felt like things were the way they were supposed to be. This felt right.
“I promise. I swear to you, Alverita.” I gathered up her hands the way she had with mine, holding on to them tightly as I looked up at her. “We’ll never let him go.”
27
Oliver
After we left the hospital, we’d found somewhere neutral to kill time while we could arrange the meeting. We figured Miss Penny wouldn’t be open so early, and either way, wouldn’t ask questions even if she did happen to arrive early enough in the afternoon to catch us there.
Marcos fiddled with his phone, taking notes as I went over the plan once again.
“Delete those notes before we get there,” I said, taking my attention off the road for a moment to side-eye him. “They’re legally discoverable if things do go wrong.”
Marcos nodded while still looking down at his phone, and then started furiously whispering to himself as I drove, probably memorizing the details he’d found key enough to write down. Once he was done, he swiped his fingers over the screen, and I supposed he was deleting the notes as I had told him to. Strangely, he seemed much more nervous about the phone call he was supposed to make then the actual meeting, but I guessed lying didn’t necessarily play to his strengths. Seemingly intimidating, however… He had that in spades.
“It’s alright if you sound nervous,” I said. “It actually might help you sell it, you know? Considering you’re a first-time client, it makes sense you’d be a little nervous. Don’t worry about that part so much. It’s going to be fine.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw him nod and take a deep breath, so the reassurance definitely seemed to help.
“And don’t worry about using the right words. You want to see the selection, or the line-up, or whatever. I guess that’s typically what people ask for on their first call. Obviously, most clients are going to want to see the omegas as soon as possible. Then you can either work the code word into conversation or, like I did, you can just tell him your friend said the code word was… What’s the code word again?”
“Boo-door,” Marcos said, decisively.
“Um… Boo-dwar,” I said, trying to correct as gently as possible.
A couple of dry runs later, Marcos dialed the number, delivered his lines to Rob, said “boudoir” perfectly, and hung up having scheduled a meeting for a few hours from then, in Charlotte, at Rob’s office.
“Perfect. That was perfect. Thank you. I can’t thank you enough, Marcos,” I said, trying to sound casual even as a cold sweat broke out over my neck at thinking we were actually going to go through with this.
“Thanks,” Marcos answered. He must have heard the nerves in my voice though, as he put his hand on my shoulder and gripped it gently. “It’s going to be fine.”
I felt a pang in my chest at the feel of Marcos’s hand on my shoulder, and at how easily we’d slipped into some of the habits we’d only started to develop within our relationship. Marcos needed reassurance, I reassured. Then, when we moved away from my comfort zone and into his, without skipping a beat, we immediately switched.
“I know,” I said, patting his hand with mine as neutrally and platonically as I possibly could. And I did know, or at least I believed everything would be fine, as long as Marcos was here.
When it neared time to meet Rob, we made the trip to Charlotte—a similar trip I’d once made when I was lonely and desperate for nonjudgmental human company, the same trip that led me to Mitch, and eventually, to meeting Marcos.
We arrived at the nondescript office where Rob operated out of. Part of the appeal of Rob’s method of doing business had always been that he made you feel like everything was being handled with extreme professionalism. Obviously, after resorting to these tactics, it was clearly becoming obvious he didn’t at all mind using underhanded, unprofessional methods of getting what he wanted. But, once, before we had a reason to confront each other, I had appreciated the fact that Rob worked out of an office that could have easily accommodated any sort of small business or booking agency.
At least, Rob’s location and Rob’s bearing hadn’t felt shady at the time.
And for a moment, as Marcos and I sat in Rob’s lobby and Rob emerged from his office proper, he wore that same casual yet business-like demeanor I thought helped make him so successful, so apparently trustworthy. He only wore it for a moment though, since, as soon as he saw me, he dropped the act almost entirely and broke into a wry, smug smirk.
“Mr. Acosta,” he said, extending his hand to Marcos for a handshake that Marcos only accepted out of politeness but with poorly concealed distaste. “I have to say,
I hadn’t put two and two together. When you mentioned the friend who gave you our code word, I didn’t realize the friend was Mr. Munoz. I wish you’d said something. Mr. Munoz and I go way back, don’t we?”
Having mentioned me, Rob turned his attention my way, though it was clear that’s where he’d been focused the entire time. He offered me his hand to shake, which I also accepted, if for no other reason than to avoid revealing our intentions yet.
As I endured Rob’s weak grip, his eyes seemed to glisten, and his smirk curled ever so slightly higher.
“That’s usually the issue with these longer-term arrangements, isn’t it, Mr. Munoz? Part of the allure of this business is the sense of mystery, and once you’ve taken them home, and lived with them, and seen them in the morning… Well, it’s easy to get bored again, isn’t it?”
Rob smiled coldly, and in return, I smiled coldly, both of us with the kind of stony, corporate smiles traded across conference room tables. Marcos, on the other hand, had no natural inclination toward that kind of politesse, so he launched straight into our purpose for being here.
With two steps, he brought himself almost nose to nose with Rob. It wasn’t enough of an invasion of personal space to be strictly considered assault—no part of Marcos actually touched Rob—but it was still a clearly threatening gesture. It definitely communicated the possibility of physical contact, and not the nice kind.
“Mr. Acos—” Rob took a few steps back from Marcos, his eyes suddenly going wide. Rob looked from Marcos to me with a question in his eyes as he tried to understand what was happening.
“I don’t think we understood each other last time, Rob, so we’ve come up to try to explain things to you in person. Maybe that way, things will be clearer,” I said, from behind Marcos as he sort of glowered over Rob with his arms crossed and quietly seethed.
“You’ve misunderstood, you see,” I said. “I haven’t grown bored of Mitch, I could never grow bored of Mitch. I love him. I intend to marry him. Right now, he is carrying my child, as I’m sure you know.”
“Our child,” Marcos added.
Oh. Well. That was interesting. We hardly had time to unpack what exactly Mitch having “our” child meant right now, but I could certainly tuck that away for later.
Rob’s face had contorted itself into a moue of fear and incomprehension as he looked between Marcos and me.
“Let me clarify,” I explained. “You attempted to threaten my livelihood, the stability of my family, the family I’m forming with Mitch, the family Marcos helped build. So, in attempting to bully Mitch, you’ve pissed off Mitch’s entire support system. That may be a shock to you, since the people you rope into working for you probably don’t enjoy the benefits of an extended network of people, but Mitch does. Mitch has a family.”
“Mr. Munoz,” Rob said, suddenly growing a touch braver and forcing a small, faltering smile. “You’re really mischaracterizing how I do my business. I don’t typically rope—”
“No, of course not,” I said, practically spitting my words at Rob. “You’d never prey on someone with a difficult and unstable family life, and you’d certainly never try to disrupt the first taste of stability that someone has been able to find, right? You wouldn’t resort to underhandedness like that, would you?”
“Feels like if you weren’t scamming people into working for you, then you wouldn’t have to do this much to keep them from leaving,” Marcos said, in a completely false tone that was at once both very polite and utterly terrifying in its icy calmness. “You wouldn’t have to purposefully fuck up people’s futures to keep them isolated targets. If that’s really not how you handled your business, I mean.”
“Now, gentlemen, it was never my intention to interfere in your…arrangement?” Rob’s snide insinuation was so full of malice it was impossible not to take it any other way than a dig at my relationship with Mitch and Marcos.
“In our family,” Marcos declared, taking one long step closer to Rob and forcing Rob to maintain what little distance they had between them with two nervous little backward paces. “What kind of level of engagement are we looking at here, Oliver? Like, just in theory, what level of violent am I aiming for?”
Our family. Marcos had called it our family. Yeah, we definitely had some unpacking to do after all this was done. We definitely had to talk about whether all this “our baby” and “our family” assertions meant Marcos had decided in our favor. We also had to talk about the little thrill my heart gave each time he’d done it. I fought down the insane desire to pull out my phone and text Mitch about it immediately, though the impulse definitely motivated me to wrap up business with Rob as quickly as possible. Of course, Marcos and I hadn’t discussed actually hurting Rob. We were just aiming to scare him. But there was no need to show our hand about that, just in case Rob wanted to be less than cooperative.
“Probably nothing permanent, I’d say. No killing or maiming. But, short of that? I’m flexible,” I said with a shrug.
Rob’s gaze traveled to Marcos involuntarily, as if he expected whatever Marcos had planned to begin immediately.
“So, this is how things are going to be going forward,” I said, continuing my explanation. “You’re going to stop contacting anyone at my firm, you’re going to ignore their calls if they reach out to you, and you’re going to leave Mitch alone, forever. And… To keep you from pulling this with anyone else, you’re going to make sure every omega who works for you has Mitch’s number, just in case they want to leave the business. That way we can help you run your completely above-board, coercion-free business, right, Rob?”
Rob hesitated and once again looked uncertainly between Marcos and me. He didn’t, however, say anything, which gave Marcos the hint that he needed to step in to tip the scales.
“And if you don’t,” Marcos said, peering down his nose at Rob. “Well, you can probably guess I served, right? That means I have brothers-in-arms who would be totally willing to come down here and repeat the instructions for you, does that make sense? Rob?”
Rob’s eyes shifted around the room. He seemed to be trying to come up with something that might help him extricate himself from this situation. Eventually, after his gaze had roved over the lobby, Marcos, and then me, Rob must have concluded that punishing Mitch for leaving the service wasn’t worth personal injury or worse.
“Fine,” Rob said, letting his shoulders sag. “Fine. You can have him. You can have Mitch. Just don’t…interfere with me or my business ever again.”
“We weren’t asking you to let us have Mitch, you piece of garbage, we were telling you exactly how it’s going to go. And if it doesn’t go down that way? You’d better belie—”
“Marcos. Marcos. Hey. It’s fine. Mr. Callahan seems to know better than to mess with us anymore. As long as he minds his own business, we can definitely mind ours. Come on,” I said, calling Marcos back from the edge of doing something illegal to Rob.
Marcos stepped back in response, Rob breathed a little easier, and I just turned on my heels and walked out of the office door.
Marcos followed. We left the parking lot of the office behind, and were only five minutes down the road before Marco started chuckling, which made me smile. Marcos saw my smile and laughed a little harder, which made me laugh, and pretty soon we were cackling with relief and a little pride that it seemed like we’d been able to pull this off.
“I can’t believe that fucking worked,” I said.
“I know!” Marcos agreed laughingly before growing serious all of a sudden. “I mean, I was going to do it, regardless, but I kind of thought this could go wrong in all kinds of ways, you know?”
“Yeah. I thought long and hard before asking you to do this because it seemed crazy. I would have done it alone, obviously, but it’s better as a team effort, and I just couldn’t think of anything that had a better chance of working. Even if the chance was like…next to nothing.”
“Yeah. Never engage an enemy on your own,” Marcos answered. “Still, it was for
Mitch, right? We had to do something even if it was crazy. The only thing crazier would be for you to do that on your own. You’re skinny and you’re short. No one’s scared of you.”
I laughed again, but as the laughter faded, the smile on my face shifted from something triumphant to something gentler, something enamored to what he’d just said, what he’d been saying throughout this whole errand.
“We, huh? We had to do something. Our baby. Our family. You keep talking about us as a unit. Does this mean…” I arched an eyebrow, hoping Marcos would take the hint and fill in the blanks for me about whether he’d come to any sort of decision about us.
Marcos’s mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water for a second. It looked like he was trying to form different sentences, deciding against them, and trying to form a new one. Just when it looked like he was going to take the plunge and say something, a phone buzzed distantly.
“Hang on, it’s my mami. I have to get this,” Marcos said, his tone suddenly heavy and full of worry.
Goddamnit, I thought.
“Uh-huh. Yeah, just out getting food. Uh-huh. Si, Mami. I’m fine. Did Mitch come over? Oh. Oh. Why? Okay. Okay.”
Marcos’s half of the conversation played on as background noise while I tried to hide my disappointment and frustration at the interruption, but then Marcos’s tone shifted, becoming strangled and tense.
“Yeah. Yes. Sure. Of course. Okay. I’ll see you there.”
I took my eyes off the road just long enough to notice how stony-faced Marcos had gone. Clearly something was wrong.
“Um, is everything—”
“I don’t know, man, I guess we’ll find out. Head for the house. Your house,” Marcos ordered simply.
I glanced at him again, confused about why we wouldn’t be going to the hospital to drop him off.
