Chapter Five
My blood freezes in my veins.
“What?”
“Don’t do that,” he says, suddenly pushing me off his lap.
The car pulls to a stop, and I realize I haven’t been paying attention to our surroundings, since I was too busy basking in the post-orgasm bliss with Mateo’s arms wrapped around me. My face flushes as I crawl back into my own seat, looking out the window to see where we are. My heart sinks, seeing an abandoned building with men gathered under a stretch of well-lit cement.
Oh shit.
They shuffle around, glancing up as our car stops, obviously waiting for Mateo.
Mateo grabs my arm, nudging me toward the door the new driver has opened.
I climb out of the car on shaky legs, stumbling a little when Mateo gives me a light shove to get me out of the way so he can step out behind me.
Swallowing hard, I try to contain the wild thoughts whipping through my head, most of them centered around one clear understanding: Mateo Morelli is going to kill me.
My carefully selected heels weren't meant for grassy patches of wet dirt, so I stumble and wobble a few times as we head for the men. Mateo stays right on top of me, probably waiting for me to run.
I want to, I just don't see the point. Me in heels, Mateo right beside me, a squad of likely well-armed goons up ahead of me…where’m I gonna go?
Unless Antonio’s backup followed us here, I’m fucked.
“Mateo,” I say tentatively, glancing back at him.
“Walk.”
As we draw closer, I realize what the men are crowded around—a lidded wooden crate, large enough to fit a woman of my size.
Ice water drizzles through my veins and I think for a moment I might pass out. What are they going to do to me?
"Mateo...please," I say weakly, somehow not convinced of my fate even as I approach it.
"Who sent you?" he asks again.
I can’t tell him. Antonio warned me about exactly this. I won’t accept that I’m going to die here. I don't know how, but I’ll convince him to spare me. I have to. If I die, what will happen to Lily? Lily would be lost without me. Her whole life would be derailed. She wouldn't stand a chance.
But if I rat out Antonio Castellanos, she won’t have a life at all.
"No one sent me," I insist.
He scoffs, coming to a stop. "So, you got bored one day and decided you would single handedly take me down? That's what you expect me to believe?"
I know what I have to say, but I hate to say it. I force myself to meet his gaze as I say, "You killed my husband. I wanted justice."
His eyebrows rise, a fleeting glimpse of surprise crossing his features. "Husband? What was his name?"
"Rodney Gellar."
He thinks about it for a moment, then his expression clears. "Ah, Rodney." Then, changing to a curl of disgust, he adds, "Wow, really?"
My face flames. "Yes, really."
"Terrible poker player, that one. Eyes told his every bluff. He owed me a lot of money. I didn't kill him. I did issue the hit," he adds. "But I didn't get my own hands dirty, no."
"Like there's a difference. You took my daughter’s father from her."
He shrugs as if unconcerned. "You ask me, I did you both a favor. That fucker was a train wreck."
He’s not wrong, but I can’t exactly agree with him and justify what I tried to do tonight. “Yeah, I somehow doubt our three-year-old sees it that way."
Again, he shrugs as if he gives zero fucks. "We could ask her.”
“Leave my daughter out of this.”
“Give me the lipstick.”
I hesitate a second, then I clutch my purse, reaching inside and digging around. My fingers close around the second tube, the lipstick I’m actually wearing, but it isn’t cylindrical, it’s boxy, with edges; if he actually noticed the shade on my lips is a different color from the one I’d flashed him for a split second back at the bar, he’s smart enough to know if I give him the wrong one.
It won’t serve me to piss him off any further, so I release it, finding the lipstick Antonio gave me instead.
He takes the tube and drops it on the ground, smashing it with the heel of his loafer. When he lifts his foot, we both see the white residue of the powder on the ground. He looks almost disappointed.
“I’m so sorry,” I say quietly.
He manufactures a look of surprise. “Are you? I thought you wanted to avenge your beloved husband? Over that already?”
“I changed my mind.” I shake my head, wishing I could just tell the truth. “I really didn’t want to, after tonight. I wasn’t going to go through with it.” I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I want it to be.
“Right,” he says, clearly not believing me.
“If I die… My daughter… You killed her father. If you kill me, too, you’re orphaning my little girl and she will be truly and completely alone in this world. I’m not asking for me, I’m not asking because I deserve it, or because my own life is so valuable, or because I believe there’s good in the world. But I am just begging you, please, no one can hear us, there are no witnesses to you changing your mind, please do not kill me. If you let me leave, you’ll never have to see my face again. I’ll never say a word about or against you to anyone else, I swear to God. Please, just please let me out of this. I know I fucked up, I’m sorry.”
Despite my best efforts, he is visibly unmoved by my plea. “If you’re not, you will be.” Then he puts a hand at the small of my back to nudge me forward, and my heart slams forward in my chest.
An image of my honey-haired little girl crosses my mind, memories of her as a baby, lying in my lap, grinning her toothless grin. The first time I fed her green beans and the awful look of betrayal on her adorable little face as she tried to shove them back out with her tongue. Her first, excited, unsteady steps. Her face the previous Christmas when she saw the presents I had busted my ass working two jobs to put under that tree. The way she would trick me into reading her favorite bedtime stories three times by insisting, “Wait, just one more” with her cute little finger extended so convincingly, even though I knew she’d insist on one more all night if I let her.
God, how I wish I’d let her.
I’d give anything for another night of baby cuddles and bedtime stories. To hear her tell me she wanted to hug my tummy.
Tears spill over the rims of my eyes, moving down my cheeks. I sniffle, my breath hitching as I think of how I didn’t even get to put her to bed tonight; I’d been too busy getting ready to do this stupid, stupid fucking thing. My mother had her, and she definitely wouldn’t have read her a bedtime story. Lily wouldn’t know what happened. She wasn’t going to understand why Mommy left and never came back.
I should’ve run. I should’ve never come here tonight. I should’ve put Lily in the car, abandoned everything, and just disappeared. Maybe Castellanos would’ve found me, but maybe he wouldn’t have.
I’m outright crying at this point, scrubbing at my cheeks with the palms of my hands.
“Momma!”
My whole body seizes at the sound of my daughter’s voice. Mateo slows to a stop behind me. I look across the dark patch of land, see the men standing around the concrete slab, note the yellowish light pouring down on them, illuminating everything…including my daughter’s face, lit up with pleasure at the sight of me.
I can’t breathe. I can’t think. Nothing makes sense. Why is Lily here? Fear grips me, and my body kicks into motion. I’m flying toward her, stumbling, twisting my ankle and not caring, not slowing down, but I’m not fast enough.
Adrian’s holding her, and as I start running, he turns his back to me.
Then I watch him lower my three-year-old daughter into the wooden crate. Her arms fly up over her head, barely visible over the tall side of it, asking to be picked up. My mind can’t make sense of it—why did they put her in my crate?
Adrian peers inside at her, says something I can’t hear to make her put her arms down, and then he drops the lid on top of the crate, securing it with a latch.
“No.” My stomach pitches. “No!” I scream mindlessly.
Adrian glances in our direction, then shoulders his way past another man, out of sight.
That’s when I realize what the other men are doing. Three men, three gas cans, two red and one orange. I watch a red gas can lurch and liquid spill out of the yellow nozzle, and it still takes me two full seconds before I understand what’s happening.
My legs give out, my body dropping.
No. This can’t happen.
He can’t be this much of a monster.
I grab at the ground desperately, trying to find purchase, to stand, but I can’t; my whole body quakes, my stomach churning violently. My mouth opens and the noise that comes out is something beyond a wail, piercing and high. My throat burns from the sound’s eruption and I crawl until I can get to my feet again, finally hitting the pavement. I shove the man nearest me, still dousing the wooden crate with gasoline. I shove him, then shove him harder, all the while screaming, “No!”
A pair of arms fasten around my waist and yank me back against a slightly protruding belly. I kick, still screaming. My arms swing wildly and I try to dig my fingernails into whatever they connect with. The bastard holding me swears, barking at me to stop. I bring my heel down as hard as I can on the inside of his leg, pushing down with all my weight and gouging into his leg.
“Jesus Christ!” he screams.
I never stop screaming. I can’t control it. A red haze clouds my vision, and breaking free, I fling myself against the crate, grabbing the latch, but there’s a padlock and I can’t get it off.
“No!” I scream again, fingernails digging into wood. I fling around to look at Mateo, my body draped protectively across the crate.
Appearing somehow indifferent, he slowly opens what I realize is a book of matches. Ripping one off, he turns it over and swipes it across the rough patch on the bottom.
From inside the crate behind me, my daughter cries. “Momma, where are you?” she asks accusingly.
“Oh, my god.” Another sob tears from my body, and I began to whimper uncontrollably. I thought I’d felt desperation at other moments in my life, but I haven’t, not until now.
If he’s going to set that crate on fire, he’ll have to have to set me on fire, too, but I’ll sell my soul to Satan himself to keep it from happening.
I start toward him slowly and he doesn’t move, not until I fall on my knees in front of him—then he takes a slight step back.
I crawl that step closer, tilting my head back and looking up at him, tears still streaming down my face. “Please, Mateo. Please don’t do this. I’ll do anything. Please.”
He doesn’t say anything, so I grab onto his leg, leaning my forehead against his thighs and sobbing as I chant, “Please, please, please don’t do this. Please. Please. I’m so sorry. Please, I’ll never betray you again. Please,” and other various debasing pleas for him to spare my daughter.
He doesn’t speak, and his silence terrifies me, but at least he’s still holding the lit match. I’m sick with dread at the mental image of him dropping it, of the crate catching fire, and me losing my goddamn mind as I try to rip it open.
Finally, he squats down to my level, looking me right in the eye. “Do you realize you were very foolish tonight?”
My head bobs forward, tears still dripping from my face. “Yes. I’m so sorry.”
“But are you sorry enough?”
“Yes,” I say, the word launching out of me with the velocity of bullet. “Yes, I am. Please, I’ll do anything, I’ll give you anything. You want my body? You can have it. You want my soul? I’ll give you that, too. I’ll do work for you. I know it’s usually men who do it, but…I’m a woman, there are things I can do that men can’t.”
His eyebrows rise a fraction of an inch and he tilts his head just slightly to the side.
He rises. “Stand up,” he says calmly.
My eyes flicker to the match between his thumb and index finger, but I rise, my knees still wobbling.
“I own you now,” he informs me, his empty eyes peering into mine.
My eyes widen, and I nod my head vigorously in agreement.
“Adrian,” he calls out, his eyes not moving from mine.
The man with the burned face comes around the back of the crate, scowling at Mateo.
“Open the crate.” With one expelled breath, he extinguishes the tiny flame between his fingers and signs the metaphorical deal we just struck.
Gratitude oozes from my pores, relief bubbling up inside of me and streaming down my face. Adrian lifts my daughter and hands her to me, and I sink to the cement pad with her in my arms, sobbing uncontrollably as I place kisses on every spot my lips can reach.
Lily throws her arms around my neck so tightly it almost hurts, murmuring something about witches. My head is spinning and I can’t focus. I never want her to let go.
I’m vaguely aware of bodies moving around us, Mateo moving in to speak with Adrian. I hear, “Get her a sedative,” and Adrian’s grunt of assent. As my daughter’s small arms squeeze tightly around my neck, I breathe in the sweet scent of her baby shampoo and close my eyes. I’ve just sold my soul to the devil, and I’m afraid to find out what kind of hell awaits me the moment my daughter lets go.