by Sam Mariano
This is a fucking disaster.
I can’t believe this is happening.
Mateo has always kept an eye on Dante, so how did this happen?
My eyes go to the keypad on my phone, my eyes running over the eight, the six, the one, the seven. My eyes caress all the numbers that would connect me to Mateo. For years I’ve had his number memorized. I could call him right now and put an end to all this. Warn him of everything Rafe has told me. He could dispatch Adrian and have the threat neutralized before dinner is over. Mia did tell me to surprise him. He wouldn’t expect that. He leaves me to rot in the dungeon until I can pop out his baby so he can kill me; I give him a heads up about an overthrow attempt.
But what if his side is the wrong side? I have no idea how many people are in on this takeover. Surely if Dante is approaching the point of action, there are many other pieces already in place. He’s the one who’s giving me a chance, letting me out, not Mateo. If I tip Mateo off and Dante has bugged the phone or someone moves on Mateo anyway, I’m biting the only hand that wants to feed me.
I wish I remembered Mia’s number. I wish Mateo would let her visit me. I want to tell her not to trust Rafe—of course, I don’t know that it would do any good. That goddamn girl and her Morelli whisperer abilities. She would manage to attract one of the assholes who wants to overthrow her husband.
His pet. Ew.
She’ll be all right. I mean, losing Mateo is not going to be pretty. I don’t even want to think about that. Ugly flashes of when we thought Mateo killed Vince come back to me, but it will be worse because it’s Mateo, and he’ll actually be dead. There will be no surprise ending, no more of Mateo’s mind tricks, no more twists. He won’t be able to bend reality to scare us into line anymore, because the men who take the easy out will have usurped him.
I hate the idea of a world where Mateo Morelli is usurped. I hate the idea of playing any part in making that happen.
I hate it, and yet, what choice do I have?
Mateo hates me, and even if I warned him, there’s no guarantee it would change anything. Since Mateo has cut Mia off from talking to me, she would never have to know. He could simply eliminate the threats and continue with his plan to get rid of me. No one would ever know I helped him, and he would just kill me anyway.
Chapter Eleven
Mia
Two strong hands settle on my shoulders, competently working out the tension that’s been building all day.
I close my eyes and let my head fall forward, sighing happily as he kneads my muscles. “God, I love when you do this.”
The sound of Mateo’s low laughter rumbles in my ear, filling me up with affection. “Yeah? How much?” As he teases me, he lowers his lips to the nape of my neck and brushes them across the exposed skin. God, he drives me wild with the littlest things.
“You’ll be a very happy man tonight, let’s just say that,” I assure him.
“I’m a very happy man every night.”
After another minute of rubbing my shoulders, those big, strong hands move down the curve of my back, catching the hem of my sleep shirt. He hates when I wear clothing to bed, but I have not been feeling sexy tonight. Unaware or unconcerned, Mateo works the giant sleep shirt up my body and drags it off me, tossing it on the floor.
“Much better,” he announces. He’s still sitting behind me on the edge of the bed, but now that I’m naked, he turns me back to face him so I can watch his gaze rake over me. He still looks at me like I’m the most beautiful thing he’s ever had the pleasure to look upon, and it still makes my heart flutter.
God, I am a lucky woman.
With one hand firmly against my now-bare chest, he pushes me back on the bed and climbs on top of me. I’m not sure what to do with my legs for a second, but he grabs them and pulls them apart, shooting me a devilish smile before leaning down and leaving a hot trail of kisses along the inside of each thigh. He doesn’t waste time teasing me tonight; he latches onto my pussy and doesn’t stop until he’s wrung the first orgasm out of me and I’m writhing away from his skilled tongue.
No breaks, not with Mateo. Before I can catch my breath or recover my senses, his mouth is claiming mine in a hard kiss, one hand bracing his weight on the bed, the other caressing my breast.
When he breaks away to kiss my neck, I run my hand up his well-muscled back, holding him close. “I love you.”
He pulls back to gaze down at me and gives me an unguarded moment. They’re not so rare in this bedroom, but the tenderness reflected back at me in the eyes of this man is unmatched. No one has ever looked at me this way before—like I’m an honest-to-God treasure and he can’t believe I’m his.
It’s an even greater compliment coming from the man who has everything.
“I love you, too.” He brushes his lips against mine, giving me one more hit of tenderness before he gathers my hands at the wrists, rolls me over on my stomach, and fucks me like he hates me.
Afterward, the game is over and there’s only honesty. Only the love we have for one another, the tenderness, the gratefulness we both feel at having found one another.
“What do you think your life would be like if you’d never met me?” Mateo asks, suddenly.
I’m snuggled up against his side, absently running my fingers across his abdomen, but that question makes me look up at him curiously. “I have no idea. I don’t think about that. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
I snuggle closer, my hand stilling on his side so I can give him a squeeze. “It’s too terrible to imagine. There’s no reason to wonder about that.”
“I’m sure you’d have been all right,” he reasons.
“As all right as a person can be when they’re walking around without half their soul.”
He smirks, shaking his head at me. “Such a corn ball.”
“I’m lucky you love me,” I tell him, grinning.
“Only you,” he says, his warm brown eyes lingering on my face. “Only you think that’s luck.”
Raising my eyebrows with feigned haughtiness, I tell him, “Hey, it’s not easy being the only person in the world who isn’t wrong.”
Mateo catches my hand, twining our fingers together, and bring my hand to his lips for a kiss. “I can imagine.”
I nod. “And while we’re both in agreement that I’m right about everything, I think you should take the whole day off tomorrow and we can lock ourselves in the bedroom and only come out to go to the baby doctor appointment.”
“I wish I could,” he assures me. “I’m in the middle of a very involved business deal that I would have definitely scheduled for a later date, had I realized I would have a rat to deal with after our honeymoon ended.”
“Legit business, or family business?”
“Legit. Family business, too. Basically, it’s impossible to take a day off right now.”
“Will you be able to at least take a day off when Roman is born?” I inquire.
“I’ll try. He’ll mostly sleep a lot for the first few months,” he informs me.
Smiling faintly, I roll my eyes at him. “I know that. I know how babies work.” My smile droops and I add, “What happens to Meg then?”
With a firm shake of his head, he tells me, “Nope. I told you, we’re not talking about Meg.”
“I wasn’t appealing, I was just asking,” I defend. A couple seconds pass and he doesn’t volunteer anything, so I go ahead and add, “Rafe keeps yelling at me for caring about people.”
Faint amusement creeps across his face. “Rafe does? This isn’t even his problem.”
I shrug. “Neither was I. It doesn’t seem like he minds his own business.”
“He keeps an eye on all the business so he can decide what to make his and what not to,” Mateo supplies.
“Well, he has made it his business to tell me I shouldn’t be trying to keep Vince or Meg alive,” I state. “He’s a little mean about it.”
Mateo doesn’t appear to be surprised. “There aren’t many schools
of thought on how to deal with these things. We were all raised old-school, to take the most traditional route. I’m more creative, so as I got older and more nuanced situations popped up, I realized sometimes there were better ways than the traditional approach. A bullet to the head solves one problem, two at best. A well-woven plot can solve a half dozen with just a little more effort.”
“So, you’re cool with them living?” I ask, hopefully.
“No, I’d much prefer to go old-school in these instances and shoot them in the head.” He shrugs, like he just had to settle for wearing his second favorite suit. “But it’s not the only conceivable solution to a problem. When it comes to someone he can no longer trust, Rafe prefers the simple route of elimination. Me? I never trust anyone. That’s my default. If I killed everyone I didn’t trust, there’d only be you left.”
“And Adrian,” I add.
He rolls his eyes indulgently. “And Adrian.”
I smile up at him teasingly. “Doesn’t sound like a bad way to live life, if I’m being honest. Since Rafe isn’t included on the list of people you trust, I think you should send him away.”
Mateo smirks at me. “Because he’s scolding you?”
“Because he hits on me way too hard and he’s not one of us. Yeah, maybe he’s a Morelli, but he doesn’t fit in here and I think we’ll all feel better if he leaves.” I raise an accusing eyebrow. “By the way, he told me today you didn’t say anything to him about groping me.”
He shrugs lightly. “Wanted to see if he’d tell me himself.”
“Well, he didn’t. People who fail tests need to leave.”
Mateo smiles, shaking his head at me. “God, he gets under your skin.”
“He does not,” I argue. “I just don’t like the things he says. Not even just inappropriate things, but things he says about you. He’s not respectful of you and I’m fed up with him.”
“What kind of things?”
“I debriefed Adrian before dinner; he didn’t tell you?”
“Rafe had drinks with us; he probably didn’t have a chance. He must not have been too alarmed or he would’ve caught up with me afterward. I’ll catch up tomorrow.”
The thought of tomorrow fills me up with warmth. “Are you excited to find out if it’s a boy or a girl?”
“The doctor said we may not know until the next appointment,” he reminds me, trying to temper my hopes.
“I know, but he always tries harder to please you. He’ll spend an hour searching if he has to. I think we’ll find out tomorrow,” I say, confidently, before poking him in the side. “And you didn’t answer me.”
“Yes, I’m excited,” he replies, dutifully.
I dismiss his lack of enthusiasm. “You’ll be excited. Especially if it’s a girl.”
“I will be very excited if it’s a girl,” he agrees.
“We’ll go straight to the store and buy her 20 pairs of shoes to get her started.”
“Isabella has her heart set on a brother,” he says, rolling his eyes.
I nod my head. “The girls have very strong opinions about what I should have. Rosalie told me she’s hoping it’s a puppy.”
This causes Mateo to smirk. “Well, Vince is a little bitch, so I guess there’s a chance.”
“That’s not nice.”
“I don’t care,” he informs me.
I don’t want to talk about Vince, so I steer the conversation back to the girls. “Lily told me if it’s a girl, we have to name her Luna. I had to respectfully decline.”
He already knows the names I have ready. He’s had to take the baby name book away from me on multiple occasions so we could go to bed. “Our little Annalise.”
I smile, rubbing my belly. “I can’t wait.”
---
It’s a boy.
The doctor looks like he’d rather chew his own arm off than tell us that, but apparently our son is not shy; he’s waving his business around for all to see, proudly displaying his boy parts so we know not to buy him any pretty pink shoes.
“No chance it’s the umbilical cord?” Mateo asks, watching the monitor.
The doctor shakes his head. “I’m afraid not.”
Mateo nods his head, hands shoved into his pockets. “Of course.”
“I’ll schedule you for another ultrasound at your next appointment to be sure, but these things generally don’t disappear.”
Since he’s clearly not psyched that I’m having Vince’s son, I reach for Mateo’s hand and try to drag him into my happy bubble. “We’ll get him a little suit instead of shoes,” I offer.
Expression carefully blank, he nods his head. “Gotta start ‘em young.”
“He can rock baby loafers. Do they make baby loafers? I’m sure they do. I’ll look into it.”
I hate that he’s disappointed. This is the stickiest situation I’ve ever had to muck my way through with him, and that’s saying something. On one hand, I feel guilty for making him go through this when it’s not what he wants, but on the other hand… this is my baby, and I need my husband to embrace him. I know he will. I know he was just hoping—like I was—that it would be a girl. It’s not the end of the world that it’s a boy instead.
He doesn’t get pulled into my happy bubble the way I hoped, but now that the gender is no longer a mystery and my appointment is more or less finished, Mateo and the doctor step away to discuss Meg. I know he’s making house calls for this last appointment since Mateo doesn’t want to bring her in. I know they’re planning a home birth. That’s about the end of what I know.
The doctor is more Mateo’s than mine anyway, despite being my OB-GYN. I acknowledge realistically that I’m the third woman Mateo has brought in to see him, and the first whose baby isn’t actually his, so I guess I see why the doctor is dismissive with me. It’s still super annoying.
Whatever kind of shoes my son wears, he’s going to have more respect for women than his predecessors, that’s for damn sure. Even though I shouldn’t, even though it’s not even what I wanted, it’s difficult not to imagine what this appointment might have been like with Vince instead. He didn’t want kids at all, prior to his change of heart in Vegas. If he’d gotten me pregnant under normal circumstances and we could’ve raised him in the normal environment Vince tried to sell me on, I’m sure he would’ve been happy to have a son. A quiet life in a suburban house, far removed from Chicago, a big back yard where he’d teach him to do ordinary things like play catch.
That life would have lacked Mateo, though. That life wouldn’t have made me happy.
I don’t think Mateo will ever by the type of father to teach him how to play catch, but he’ll teach him plenty of other things. He’ll be a wonderful father, biology be damned. I know he will.
This time when we make it back to the privacy of the Escalade, Adrian regards both of us, then asks, “A boy, or won’t know until the next one?”
“A boy,” Mateo states, evenly.
“Look on the bright side,” I offer. “He and Roman will be so close together, this baby can have all his old clothes.”
Mateo rolls his eyes. “Yes, I was incredibly concerned about that.”
“Plus, ready-made best friends. You and Adrian are just a few months apart, and look at you two.”
“Oh yeah, two peas in a pod,” Adrian remarks, sarcastically.
I roll my eyes. “Whatever, you guys love each other. It’s going to be fine. You’re worried over nothing. It doesn’t matter that they’re both boys.”
“Of course not,” Adrian agrees, though I lack his sincerity when he adds, “Mateo’s son and Vince’s son growing up together…What could possibly go wrong?”
Chapter Twelve
Meg
“I’m not going to kill you because I’d fucking miss you too much…”
I sigh heavily, rubbing my burning eyeballs. Sleep is an elusive bastard tonight.
I miss Mateo.
Not the one I get now, not the one who hates me, but the one who didn’t. I don’t want
to be responsible for the removal of that Mateo from the world.
I consider getting up to grab my phone again, but there’s no point. I can look at and trace the numbers until the screen wears out—I’m not going to dial them. I won’t get a hold of the Mateo I want to talk to, even if I could convince myself to call. He doesn’t exist anymore. I killed him the moment I sent Mia to the bakery without protection, knowing full-well what lay in store in for her.
Ugh, what a shitty night.
Today was my baby doctor appointment. I had no idea if Mateo would be there or not—he didn’t even show up to the last one, he made Adrian do it.
He was there this time, but he didn’t speak to me once. He spoke around me, about me, but never to me. It was the worst. I tell myself it should make it easier to betray him, but it doesn’t. I still feel the way I feel about the bastard, even if he hates me.
Pregnancy is the worst. I can’t wait for it to be over so I can never do it again. It messes with my hormones and my emotions. I’m out of whack when I’m pregnant. I didn’t like pregnancy with Lily, but Rodney was there, sucking the enjoyment out of everything with his bullshit. I wasn’t overwhelmingly thrilled when I was pregnant with Rosalie, but Mateo threw sister wives at me, so it wasn’t a great time to be an emotional funhouse. Roman should have been the one pregnancy I endured without all the bumps in the road, but I had to go and help Vince steal Mia from Mateo.
So many poor decisions.
Now I get to put the icing on the cake and keep my mouth shut instead of helping when the stakes are even higher—it’s not just Mia who might be killed this time, it’s Mateo, and there’s no might. He isn’t giving up his crown to retire; they’re going to kill him so they can take what he has.
Dante wants his power. Rafe wants his woman.
It’s a fucking disaster.
So is trying to sleep when you’re nine months pregnant and in a fucking dungeon.
