Chapter Ten
Meg
“What were you like as a child?”
I cut Rafe a dirty look. He sits in his chair outside my cell, watching me like the way I peel this orange will shine light on some hidden corner of my soul. “What were you like as a child?” I shoot back.
He doesn’t hesitate to respond. “Observant. Curious. I’d say I was born that way, but I think I just learned young. My mother and father had a volatile relationship. Had to pay close attention if I wanted to know what kind of day we were going to have. As time went on and I got better at figuring people out, I realized I liked the power it gave me, so I kept honing it. Now here we are.” He nods his head at me. “Your turn.”
I ignore his request and use my nail to cut into the skin at the top of my fruit. “When are we going to circle back to what matters?”
“Doesn’t your past matter?”
I roll my eyes. “No. And to be honest, I’d strongly prefer we spend less time talking about the bad haircut I had in fifth grade and much more time discussing Dante and your dealings with him. If I’m going to be part of this, clue me in.”
After I gave Rafe the phone and invested every last hope I had in him, I waited. I waited and waited and waited. If I thought the hours passed by slowly when I was bored, I learned the actual meaning of slow when every minute that passed held the possibility of Mateo coming downstairs, telling me I failed his test and it was time to die.
Only, that didn’t happen.
Rafe came back.
He gave me my cell phone and an orange. It wasn’t as well-received as the cookie, but he told me it would do more to preserve my girlish figure than a cookie.
He’s such an asshole.
But he’s an asshole who is, for whatever reason, helping me, and I need to know what that reason is. I’m still having some difficulty trusting this, but it’s the only option I have left at this point.
“You’re on a need-to-know basis at this point,” he informs me. “Dante is sure your sense of self-preservation is adequate incentive for you to turn on Mateo, but I like to hedge my bets.”
“And what do you hope to accomplish by playing ’20 Questions’ and feeding me?” I ask him, peeling off a slice of orange and popping it in my mouth.
He shrugs. “Gotta pass the time somehow. Mia’s mad at me. I got bored drinking alone.”
My eyebrows rise and I cut him a look of surprise. “Mia’s mad at you? Why?”
“I keep telling her things she doesn’t want to hear. Gotta get her ready for her new life.”
“Her new life?”
“How loyal is the nanny?” he asks, flicking a piece of lint off his shoulder. “Is she loyal to Mateo, or the kids? Would you keep her on or replace her?”
“What are you talking about?”
He sighs, sparing me an impatient look. “You’ve lived in this house for five years. If you don’t know the way of things, you’re useless to me.”
“I know the way of things,” I say, defensively.
“The housekeeper’s going to have to go. I don’t know why, given her position here, but she’s clearly loyal to him.”
“Maria?”
“The nanny, though, I hadn’t thought much about. I’m not too keen on keeping all these kids, to be honest, but I want to keep Mia and Dante wants to keep you, so I guess we’ll have to for the time being. At least the older ones are girls. Even if Mia has a boy, it’s just a baby. As long as we raise him right, he won’t grow up with dreams of vengeance. Ordinarily,” he advises me, “you don’t leave the kids alive. Opens you up to problems later on.”
My mind races as it takes in everything he’s saying.
He isn’t talking about a rescue mission.
He’s talking about a takeover.
“What do you mean, Dante wants to keep me? What does that entail, exactly?”
“There may be a few bumps during the transition,” he tells me. “Mia doesn’t know shit, but seems like Mateo may have talked to you more. We’ll keep you on to ease the transition. Once everyone is settled in, you’re free to go if you want to. Personally, that’s my preference; I’ll feel better with fewer of Mateo’s kids on our roster. Take the baby and the two girls, we’ll give you a little cash to get yourself started, and you can make a new life, far away from all this.”
Regardless of good and common sense, my hopes cling to this image he presents. This is exactly what I need. Sure, it’s lacking the opulence and excessive security of life as a Morelli baby mama, but it includes the most crucial detail. Even after I deliver Roman, there will be no bullets in my head. Maybe I won’t have a large sum to work with, but I’ll be able take all my babies and leave the hell of Chicago behind, to escape the Morelli family and live a completely normal life somewhere else.
“What about Mia?” I ask.
“Hm?”
“What happens to Mia once you’re all settled in? Do you give her money and she gets to leave with her baby, too? What about Bella? She’s really the only parent Bella would have left, and you don’t need girls, right? Does Bella get to go with Mia?”
I should be watching him more carefully, but I’m trying to sort through the flood of new information that’s just rained down on me. Had I been a little less overwhelmed and a little more organized in my processing up to now, I would probably be less surprised when he states, “Mia isn’t going anywhere. Like I said, I’m keeping Mia.”
“For what?”
His eyebrows rise in mild disbelief, and I flush, realizing I’m a fucking idiot.
“Oh.”
“I think she’ll make a good pet,” he tells me. “And who knows? With the stress of losing Mateo, maybe she’ll miscarry and I won’t have to deal with Mateo’s spawn after all.”
My blood runs cold. “It’s not Mateo’s baby.” I don’t know if that helps, I don’t know if anything I say actually alters his plans, but I look up at him, sort of hoping it does. The circumstances surrounding Mia’s pregnancy may have been awful, but she wouldn’t be able to handle all this. Losing Mateo and then losing her baby? She would probably literally kill herself. Another woman in a long line, taken down by the machinations of the Morelli men.
Rafe frowns, briefly showing his confusion. “What?”
“The baby isn’t…” My stomach roils. I can’t eat this orange. Why do people have to bring me food and then ruin my appetite? Seriously. “Vince raped her in Vegas. Mateo isn’t the one who got her pregnant. It isn’t Mateo’s baby.”
Now his gaze drops. His eyes are hooded, his face not terribly expressive. I don’t have the mental capacity for this anyway, but this is definitely news to him. Given the heinousness of his own plans, it’s probably nothing that horrifies him, but I should at least tell him. If he’s planning to keep Mia as his pet, I could at least try to convince him the baby isn’t a problem, even if it is a boy.
Jesus Christ, is this really where we’re at?
What a fucking mess.
Rafe suddenly stands and my gaze jumps to him.
“Are you leaving?”
“Yeah. I have to go have pre-dinner drinks with my dickhead cousin,” he states.
“Well, wait. When is all this happening? I’m due in just over a week and I still have no monitor down here. Who do I reach out to if I go into labor?”
“My number’s in the phone,” he tells me. “If you feel it coming on, shoot me a text and I’ll find a reason to come down and visit so I can ‘discover’ you’re in labor.”
He still didn’t tell me when to expect this, but he’s clearly done giving me information. Now he has to go above stairs and play the happy houseguest.
This is un-fucking-believable.
This is not what I wanted at all.
Once Rafe is gone, I sit down on the bench and finish eating my orange while I ponder my new future. If Mateo didn’t find the money I stashed when I wasn’t sure what our break-up meant, I’ll have more money than whatever Rafe and Dante plan to give me.
Still, there’s part of me that doesn’t want to do this. Mateo hasn’t exactly left me with many other choices, but as I finish my orange, I check to make sure Maria hasn’t come, then I go dig my hidden phone out. It’s sort of funny, all these years later, that I have a secret phone. Francesca framed my ass with a fake secret phone the first time; now I have a real one.
Actually, it kind of bums me out. The first time I got relegated to this dungeon, I would never have had a secret phone I used to betray Mateo. Now here I am, near to bursting with his baby, and I’m going to sit down here by myself while Mateo’s fucking cousin and treacherous brother plot to overthrow him and take his power. To kill him.
I don’t want him dead. I can’t even imagine that reality. I know I had a life before Mateo, but it’s difficult to imagine it now. What does that look like? What does it feel like? When I’ve escaped Chicago with my life and my kids, when I have to assemble a whole new life for myself somewhere else on my own, will I lie awake at night, haunted by these memories? Will every cup of black coffee I pour at the restaurant I will inevitably work at remind me of Mateo? Every time I see a less impressive man in a suit, will I think of the overwhelming presence that was Mateo Morelli? How do I go back to a normal life and act like none of this ever happened?
And what happens to Mia? She always manages to land on her feet, but what about the baby? Rafe wants to fuck her—he doesn’t want to raise her baby.
Everything sucks.
All of this sucks.
At least it gives me something else to think about, something to focus on other than the loneliness. I picture a little house in a little town, somewhere thousands of miles away from any Morellis. Lily will miss Isabella. She’ll miss Mateo. When Rodney died, she was little. She’s never missed him, but she’ll miss Mateo. Rosalie will miss Mia and Mateo. Life with a single mom is going to be a real shock to her system—she’s spoiled rotten with her monstrous playroom, her nanny, two moms. She’ll miss Bella and West. She’ll adjust, but how will I explain what happened to all of them?
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.