by Sam Mariano
Undressing feels like an awful lot of work, so I don’t. I walk around to my own side of the bed and lie down in my spot, fully dressed. I regard the empty space where Mia should be. She should have come up to bed with me after dinner tonight. She should’ve walked ahead of me, stepped into the closet and taken off her shoes. I should’ve come up behind her and dragged down the zipper, kissing the gentle curve of her neck. She would’ve smiled shyly and ducked her head, that waterfall of blonde hair falling in her face. Maybe she would’ve turned and wrapped her arms around my neck. I could’ve helped her out of her dress and taken her to bed.
This is miserable.
This bed is fucking lonely.
I’m sorely tempted to storm into Vince’s bedroom, rip Mia out of his bed, and haul her ass back here. I gave her a chance to make the right choice and she made the wrong one. She’s 18; of course she made the wrong one.
Only I can’t get her voice out of my head, begging me to leave her alone.
If Mia wanted to be in this bed with me right now, she would be. She struggled to get used to being in my bed, to let go of Vince even after the incident in the hallway, but she didn’t struggle one bit to leave me at the dining room table.
I’ve already forced one woman who didn’t love me to stay here, and look where that ended up. Maybe it’s good Mia broke away from me now, while she still could. Before I could get attached.
If this is what unattached feels like, anyway.
I lie here longer than I should, lonely in the bed that felt warm just a night before, but my curiosity gets the better of me. My imagination gets away from me, conjures up possibilities. What if she had second thoughts, but Vince wouldn’t let her leave? What if they went back to his room and realized it didn’t feel right?
I’m latching onto frankly ridiculous notions, and the bed is lonely anyway, so I finally go back downstairs to my study. I pour myself a drink and head for the security room. There’s little chance this is going to end with me not being depressed, but I’d almost rather see Mia on the screens, even if she’s with Vince, than go back to my room alone anyway.
At least, that’s what I thought. Until I watch the fucking tape.
I didn’t want him. Doesn’t that count for anything?
I’m so fucking twisted up between the two of you.
He asks her why she stayed with me—he doesn’t realize I had Adrian guarding her, but she doesn’t even tell him. Doesn’t even defend herself. She tells him she didn’t think he wanted her to come back and she didn’t have anywhere else to go.
It only gets worse.
Then I want to go up there and rip one of them out of bed, but it’s not Mia.
Rage vibrates through me, helpless fucking rage. He jerks her dress up, shoves her on the bed. I’m overcome with dread. It’s too late now, but I could have stopped this. Why am I just now watching this footage? Why didn’t I send Adrian after him when he dragged her away from the table? Why didn’t I go myself?
She panics. She cries.
He’s angry. He ignores her pleas to stop.
I bury my face in my hands.
I try to bury the rage that burns in my gut.
I’m going to kill that little bastard. He takes Mia away from me and then treats her like that?
Goddammit.
I don’t want to watch any more, but I have to make sure she’s okay. I throw back the rest of my drink and sit forward, watching Vince emerge from the bathroom and sit on the edge of the bed. I watch him get on the bed behind her and wrap his arms around her. She doesn’t look happy, to say the least, but she lets him hold her the way she let me hold her.
I’m empty. I’ve fucked everything up. All I want is to go back to my bed and find Mia there. All I want is to wrap my arms around her and fall asleep with her in my bed.
Instead, I return my room alone.
I strip off my clothes and lie down alone, my eyes on the depression in the bed that Mia left. Tomorrow morning Maria will come. She’ll change the sheets like she did before Mia. Put the whole bed to rights, tightly tucked corners, a mountain of decorative pillows.
But it will still be emptier than it ever was.
Tomorrow Mia will wake up and leave for school, having been hurt by both of us today.
And she’ll talk. She would have to be crazy not to, at this point.
One more day, I thought.
I was right, in one respect. I only had one more day. I just didn’t realize I only had one more day with Mia.
---
I’ve never felt much for thunderstorms one way or the other—never feared them as a child, never saw the relaxing pleasure of them as an adult. I don’t have time in my schedule to curl up under a blanket with a book or loved one on a rainy day. I probably wouldn’t even if I did.
But now, as I lie in my bed awake, abandoned by the possibility of sleep, I loathe the roar of thunder in the distance. I despise the blue flash that lights up my window as lightning strikes. The rain pelting the side of my house enrages me.
I want to be the lightning. I want to wreak havoc. I want to destroy something.
I already have though, haven’t I?
I want to destroy something else. Something that deserves my destruction.
Fuck it. I’m not going to fall sleep, I may as well get up and do something with my time.
Throwing back the blankets like it’s their fault I’m alone in this bed tonight, I rise and go to my closet. Like most days, I select a suit and tie. Today I grab a crisp white shirt—the one at the back with the fucked up stitching along the side seam. I snagged it on something—I don’t know what or when, I just noticed it when I took it off one day. It’s not even visible since I always wear a jacket, but it bothers me so I don’t wear the shirt. I meant to throw it out, but I never wore it again and forgot about it.
It’ll do just fine for tonight.
Once I’ve put myself together, I grab my gun and head for my study. I hit the surveillance room first to check in on Mia and make sure she’s okay. If Vince has hurt her again, maybe I’ll just let Adrian sleep and go put my gun in his mouth. He’s the one I’d like to feed a bullet to, to be honest. I can vent my anger and dissatisfaction on some other unfortunate fucker, but that’s the one I want to kill. Not maim. Not shove out of my way.
I want him dead.
I don’t want Mia to have been hurt again, but as I rewind and go back through the footage, I almost hope he did. She can survive one more offense against her; then I have an excuse to murder him.
Probably not a good excuse, but it’s good enough for me.
Of course he lets me down. Of course all I get to watch is footage of the little asshole holding her afterward, trying to make amends. He goes about that wrong, too. She lets him hold her but he doesn’t reach her. It’s nothing like any of the times I had her in my room. Now that I’m watching it a second time, I see that.
She’s not happy.
I should just kill him.
Maybe she only went back to him because of her fucked up sense of loyalty. For someone not raised in my household, she seems to accept ownership over her person without much trouble. The only reason she wasn’t Vince’s anymore was because she thought he dumped her. Despite the days we had together, of course she took the opportunity to escape me and ran right back to that asshole’s side as soon as he said he still wanted her.
Goddamn her guilt.
Goddamn my self-sabotage.
Now I’m itching with aggravation again so I pull up Adrian’s room and check the monitor. He’s sleeping, naturally. Most people are around 2am.
I head to his room next. If I can’t sleep, he can’t either—not tonight. I slip inside fairly easily. He’s still asleep. He’s not as light a sleeper as I am and I can be a stealthy fucker anyway, so while he slumbers, I retrieve the guns he’ll reach for once startled to make sure I don’t accidentally get shot. That would be a hell of a thing. I wonder if he’d even try to stop the bleeding, or if he’d just
accept his good luck, go retrieve Elise, and leave me here in his room to die.
Softly depositing both guns on the dresser, I head back to the red tufted chair beside his night table. I take a seat, recalling that night long ago when he sealed his own fate in a similar situation. The slimeball he killed tried to harm the girl he loved. He didn’t love her then, I suppose, but he must have known he would. In order to do something like that, to make the sacrifice he made, he must have felt it.
A flash of Mia in my bed just yesterday flashes to the forefront of my mind, her soft blue eyes, her smiling face, her arms around me.
I roll my shoulders, stretch my neck—try to ease the tension out of my body. It doesn’t work. I’m so fucking dissatisfied. I feel like every tendon in my body is tied in knots and I’ll never be comfortable again.
I can’t remember the last time I felt like this. This is a horrible feeling. I wish I could escape myself. I wish I could abandon my own body and get the hell away.
Unfortunately, more than anyone else, I am quite firmly stuck with myself.
I need a distraction so I lean forward, resting my elbows on top of my legs, and call just loudly enough to wake him, “Adrian.”
He jumps, his hand going for the gun no longer stashed behind his headboard.
“Just me,” I add, as he finds the spot empty.
Sighing heavily, his arm drops like a rock over the side of the bed. “Jesus fucking Christ, Mateo.”
“I can’t sleep. Let’s go out.”
He sighs again, rubbing his eyes and groaning with annoyance. “I was sleeping.” He grabs his phone, squinting at the display as it lights up and tells him what time it is. “Seriously?”
“Quit bitching and get dressed,” I tell him, leaning back in the chair. “We need to go grab supplies. I want to go after the boyfriend.”
“Which boyfriend?” he asks, still a little foggy from sleep.
I roll my eyes at the stupid question. “Shelly Mitchell’s old boyfriend. Which other boyfriend do I care about?”
“Vince,” he mutters, pushing up off the bed and crossing to the dresser to retrieve his weapons.
That drags my mood down a little. I hate Vince. I want to punch him in the throat, then shove him head first into a toilet and hold him there until he drowns. His last moments would be terrifying as he struggled, sucking shit-laced water into his lungs.
That makes me smile. That’s a nice thought.
I sigh with pleasure. I want to do that. Less supplies anyway.
“What do we need?” he asks.
I glance up at Adrian as he pulls on a shirt. Recalling who we’re actually going after, I consider. “We’ll take him to the warehouse. Joey just cleared the place a couple days ago. We won’t need too many supplies—our handguns, some rope, some plastic, some duct tape. I want to make him suffer, but we don’t need to get too creative.”
“All right. I’ll call a couple people.”
“We don’t have to go to all that trouble.” I extract my phone, shooting Alec a text message. “We’ll take Alec along in case we need help, but I’m sure we can handle it on our own. It’s one middle-aged pervert, not Rambo.”
“You’re going to do heavy lifting?”
“I have some aggression I need to work out,” I state, eyes on the phone. Alec is still awake so he takes no time at all to respond. “Alec’s in,” I tell Adrian, deleting the message and tucking my phone away.
“Why can’t you sleep?” His tone is even enough, but my defenses rise and I ignore the question.
I stand and grab the book off his end table—a ratty old copy of Oliver Twist. “Still reading this? Hasn’t anyone written a better book by now?”
“Slick,” Adrian states, rolling his eyes.
“I’m just saying, there has to be something more recent that would interest you. At least buy a new copy, for God’s sake. This one’s falling apart.”
“I like that one,” he states, as defensively as I felt when he asked why I couldn’t sleep.
He likes this one because Elise bought it for him. When Adrian was stuck in the dungeon, she asked Maria to stop at a used bookstore on the way home from grocery shopping. She wanted to get something for him to read so he didn’t go crazy down there alone. It was a cheap, scratched up copy from the 50’s. Adrian treasures it like a mint first edition.
He’s such a fucking sap.
“Tell me something,” I say, my tone casual. “How do you know you love a girl you’ve never fucked?”
“No.”
“I’m just curious.”
Adrian grabs a jacket out of his closet and tugs it on. “Tell me why you’re dragging my ass out of bed in the middle of the night to go fuck up Mia’s old abuser and I’ll consider talking to you about Elise.”
That’s a bad deal. I’m not that curious.
He knew I wouldn’t be, so he finishes getting ready in silence and we head downstairs to meet Alec. He’s still dressed in a sharp wine-colored suit with a black dress shirt and shiny black loafers. He must’ve been at the club. His dark head is down, eyes trained on the screen of his cell phone when we approach. He quickly ties up whatever he’s doing and slips his phone into his pocket.
“Where are we going?” Alec asks.
I don’t stop walking, so Alec follows Adrian and me to the door. “Got some trash to take out,” I tell him.
“Enzo?” he guesses.
Adrian takes that one. “Nah, Enzo’s been handled. This one isn’t business, it’s personal. Mateo’s pet project.”
Faint curiosity laces his tone. “That so? Is this about Mia?”
I sigh, rolling my eyes and stepping outside. Adrian moves ahead of me, looking around by instinct as we head for the Escalade.
“I didn’t mean it that way. I wasn’t ragging on you. I think it’s nice you found a pet. You’ve been a damn sight more pleasant to be around the past few days. Shouldn’t have let Vince take her back.”
Adrian frowns, glancing back at Alec. “Have you been drinking?”
Alec grins, holding his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart. “Little bit. Don’t worry though, I’m okay.”
Adrian turns his unamused stare on me. “Are we really going to take a half-drunk Alec as our back-up?”
I shrug, opening the side door and sliding inside. “You only live once.”
“You live a lot longer if you bring sober men to help you work.”
“If this limp-dick, out of shape asshole kills us, we deserve to die,” I state.
Adrian’s head rocks to the side. “That’s true.”
“Who are we killing?” Alec asks cheerfully.
“Some dickhole named Leroy,” Adrian explains.
Alec climbs in beside me and reaches for his seatbelt. “What’d poor old Leroy do?”
“Got handsy with a twelve-year-old,” I state.
Alec’s dark eyebrows rise in surprise. “We’re playing vigilantes now? Is this like when we used to play Batman and you assholes always made me be Alfred? I don’t want to be Alfred.”
Adrian doesn’t hide his faint amusement. “We’re not doing good deeds. The twelve-year-old was Mia.”
“That makes more sense,” Alec acknowledges, nodding his head.
“And Alfred is awesome,” Adrian adds.
“It’s boring to be Alfred. I could have been Robin!”
“I didn’t need a Robin,” Adrian states. “I had it handled.”
His head lolls back against the seat. “Are we killing this guy or just fucking him up? You guys are assholes, you could have told me to change clothes. This is a new suit.”
“Your suit will be fine,” I assure him. “We’ve got the guy handled; you’re just coming along for extra assurance.”
“I don’t want to be Captain Obvious, but wouldn’t it have been better to bring Vince on this mission to avenge his girlfriend’s honor?” Alec asks. “I know he doesn’t like you right now, but he wouldn’t like this guy either. Killing him together could’
ve been a bonding experience.”
“I don’t want to bond with Vince,” I mutter. I still want to drown him in a toilet bowl, but I don’t add that.
“Maybe you should run a train on Mia and bond that way.”
“Jesus Christ,” Adrian says as Alec busts up laughing.
“Yeah, he’s fucking drunk. Oh well.”
“I’m fine. I’m good. I got this,” Alec insists.
By the time we grab supplies and get to Leroy’s place, Alec is passed out in the car. Adrian shakes his head as he walks around back to grab his bag. “This is why I never let him be my Robin,” he states.
I crack a smile as I climb out of the car. “Maybe you would’ve defeated me more often if you’d have brought a sidekick,” I suggest.
“Nah, you cheated. You would’ve just lured him over to your side and defeated me from within.”
“Hey, it’s a solid strategy,” I inform him.
“All of your strategies were pretty solid,” he says, throwing a length of rope over his shoulder. “Unfortunately, you’re a better villain than I am a hero.”
I give him a slap on the shoulder, drifting away from the car to check out the points of entry on the house. “Don’t feel bad. I’m a damn good villain.”
Closing the back of the car as quietly as he can manage, he hoists the bag on his shoulder and comes to stand beside me, looking at the house. “At least we’re on the right side of things tonight.”
I nod, then glance over at him. “On that, we can agree.”
Adrian reaches into the bag for his black leather gloves and pulls them on. “How should we play this? Good cop, bad cop? Give the asshole some hope before we rip it away? I’d kind of like to hear him ‘fess up to his crimes.”
“You don’t think Shelly lied?”
Shaking his head dismissively, he says, “No, I just want to hear him say it.”
I don’t personally give a single fuck if he admits it. He made his way into my crosshairs and now I just want to torture, terrify, and kill him. But if Adrian wants an admission of guilt, I can get it for him. Nodding once, I say, “All right.”
