Chapter Fourteen
Meg
Nobody speaks during the ride home.
When Colin first dragged Mia out of the house, I didn’t understand what was happening. I watched Mateo storm into her house like a bat out of hell. Several minutes later, Colin had to physically remove her from the house. Mia was screaming, but it didn’t click. I figured Mateo and Vince were fighting—that was probably long overdue.
But then she had a nervous fucking breakdown.
Then Adrian refused to help Vince.
Then when he went outside to talk to Colin, I strained to overhear their conversation, and I picked up Adrian telling Colin he would have to stay behind to clean up.
And then Colin drove us home. So, there was something to clean up.
And judging by the look of Mateo’s hands and clothes, and Mia’s rabid emotional state, it’s Vince.
I don’t know what to be more horrified about.
First there was Mateo talking to Mia on the phone in front of me, going over things she clearly said to him during sex. Him demanding to hear she loved him more than Vince. Him refusing to let her go, by the sounds of things, when she asked him to.
And then, in a blind fucking fury, he came over here to beat his competition to death.
There’s a lot to choose from. I’m horrified by a lot of things right now.
It’s one thing knowing you’re engaged to a murderer. Understanding when treacherous dinner guests just simply stop showing up. This is quite another.
Mia falls asleep in the car. It’s a godsend, because that girl is a fucking mess. Her face is red and tearstained, her girlish polka dot dress now stained with Vince’s blood from where Mateo picked her up off the ground. It’s probably getting on the seat. That’s a weird thing to focus on, but suddenly I’m so aware of the blood everywhere—on Mateo, on Mia, on the seats. It’s revolting, but that’s not even what makes this real. What makes it real is Mia’s pain. I wanted to hug her, to comfort her, but she was feral. When Mateo tried, she actually hit him. His jaw locked, his body tensed; clearly it pissed him off, but he let her do it.
Which I get. After what he just did to Vince, she has every right to be a mess.
Mateo doesn’t speak to me, either. I’m only half worried. I’m also half relieved, because I don’t really have anything to say to him right now.
I told him once I knew he did horrible things, and that I’d be there at the end of each day anyway, but this was a lot. This was a side of him even I’ve never seen before.
I don’t think he got that angry when he thought I betrayed him with Salvatore.
This is the thing that gets to me. This is the thing that hurts my heart. Because I don’t know if love is the right word—I don’t know if he loves Mia; I don’t know if he loves anyone, because now I’m a little worried that he’s a legit psychopath—but he wanted her enough that he wouldn’t let her go. He wanted her enough to literally kill for her.
He let the guy who framed me marry his sister.
It’s a little hard not to take away certain conclusions from that—such as, maybe my fiancé wants Mia more. Maybe that’s why he proposed this whole sister wives thing to begin with. Maybe he realized he fucked up and wanted Mia back, but he’d already knocked me up. Whatever his reasons, Mateo clearly still wants kids—little sociopathic heirs to carry on his evil empire.
Seeing him sitting here covered in Vince’s blood, I now realize on a whole new level, not just an academic one, that this man is fully capable of cold-blooded murder. This man who once had his hands wrapped around my throat, who affectionately cuddles my child in bed each night when we read bedtime stories… they’re somehow two sides of the same person. I wonder if there are more sides I haven’t seen. I wonder if Beth saw him like this, thus solving the great mystery of why she stopped loving him.
Did she even really stop loving him? What if that’s just the story he tells? What if he actually stopped loving her? Maybe he decided he didn’t want her anymore; Mateo doesn’t like to set women free once they know this much about him, so he killed her instead. Made up a lie to justify it—he’s certainly not above lying—and ran with it. Mateo isn’t one to play the victim, but he manages the people in his life. Since Beth was his partner and lived in his home for years, she probably had relationships with the people in his life. Maybe he just gave them a story to make it all easier to swallow. Maybe I don’t know him as well as I think I do. Maybe I don’t even know him as well as Mia does.
What if he doesn’t want me anymore?
Is he even planning to keep me on after I give birth, or will I be the next Beth?
These are the things that keep me up tonight.
Also the fact that I’m alone in his bed. He was supposed to be mine tonight—not that I’m in the least bit amorous, and if he is after what he just did, that would worry me—but he doesn’t come in. The girls are already in bed, since we were on a date night and it’s late, but he doesn’t even come in to shower or change out of his bloody clothes.
I’m terrified to imagine he’s with Mia. I know she doesn’t want him right now. She wouldn’t even let him lay a hand on her in the car, and he obviously wanted to. Once they’re alone in that bedroom, Mia has no protection from him. Even with all of us around, she only has a semblance of it. We’re all practically his minions, bending the world in whichever way we’re able to suit his ever-evolving needs and desires.
I’ve already had to come to terms with that fact that my intended husband is a homicidal maniac, but the possibility that he uses sexual violence against Mia has always floated just outside the realm of things I can accept as real. Lying in bed alone, though, it’s all I can think about. I didn’t see whatever she saw inside that house, but she’s traumatized to the point of lashing out at him. Mateo hits back—not physically, but if she lashes out at him in pain and says the wrong thing, he’ll retaliate. He has hot buttons, and I don’t know if she knows that. I don’t really know anything about their relationship. I didn’t mind before, but now it scares me.
He already punished her in grand fashion for the crime of trying to leave him, doling out a death sentence to the man she tried to stay with. In that way, he’s already forcing himself on her.
I can’t handle the prospect of him doing it physically, too.
I don’t need anything else to be horrified by right now.