Old Flame: Dante’s Story by Sam Mariano
15
Dante
It’sa long night and I don’t sleep well. Every time Colette so much as shifts in my arms, I wake up to check on her. At least she seems to sleep soundly, despite all the movement. Come morning, I ease out of bed, careful not to wake her, and get started on my day. I had a few things planned today work-wise, but every time I think about leaving Colette here by herself, I consider delegating those tasks to someone else and just staying home.
Well, she won’t be entirely by herself, but Sonja’s not the best company. I’ll warn her to be nice to Colette before I leave, to make sure she makes her some breakfast and doesn’t hassle her, but I still don’t feel right about leaving. I never left Colette alone when she was sick, I kept her company and took care of her. Not that she’s actually sick, I guess, but whatever the fuck she is, it’s my job to fix it.
Much as I hate to leave, there’s a meeting I can’t miss this morning regarding our conflict with the Castellanos family. Even Adrian is going to be there to fill us in on some stuff, and he doesn’t work for us anymore.
So, I have to go to my brother’s house.
Ordinarily these meetings don’t take much longer than they absolutely have to, but today when I sit down with a cup of coffee at the dining room table, it’s not just the usual men gathered around it. Vince brought his fucking girlfriend over, and inexplicably she’s sitting at the table like she belongs there. I saw her in the kitchen a few minutes ago, but I assumed she was here to visit Meg, not sitting in on our meeting.
“What is this?” I ask, nodding at the cute blonde seated beside my younger cousin. “We get a new recruit no one told me about?”
Vince slides me an unamused look. “Yeah, right. Mia needs to go grocery shopping. Figured I might as well bring her here for breakfast since Maria always makes too much and the fridge is empty at home.”
How fucking annoying. Normally I wouldn’t be such an asshole about it. Personally, I don’t know what it’s like to have to budget to buy groceries, but I do know since Vince and Mia moved out of Mateo’s house—and out from under his thumb—he cut them off financially, except for the paychecks Vince earns doing work for us like any other associate who needs to work his way up. It’s not much, and I’m sure Mia doesn’t make much helping out at our family bakery either, so they probably don’t have grocery money. That’s the part Vince isn’t saying, since obviously it would embarrass him to admit in front of Mateo that he’s failing to provide for his woman.
Today I don’t give a fuck about their financial woes though, I only care about getting back home as quick as I can to check on Colette. Hell, I’ll slide Mia a fifty myself and tell her to go shopping if she’ll just leave so we can get down to business.
Now that Vince is finished critiquing Mia’s shopping skills, she turns back to Mateo to resume their conversation rather than eat her fucking food.
Mateo is seated at the head of the table like always, his dark eyes trained on the babbling blonde seated to his left. Now that I know we’re just waiting for her to finish eating, every moment she spends talking to him instead of shoveling food into her mouth annoys me as much as it seems to annoy Vince.
And boy, does he look annoyed. Of course he’s annoyed. The little fucking genius brought Mia around Mateo on purpose. He should’ve left her at home to starve because now even once she leaves us here to do business, the kid’s gonna have a chip on his shoulder. Mateo will probably bait him, and even if Mateo doesn’t, someone else will rib him about it and he’ll get all pissy. This whole thing is going to devolve into a pissing contest before we ever even start talking about Castellanos.
Fucking fantastic.
Shit like this is exactly why I didn’t want to meet at the mansion when Mateo summoned me here, but he didn’t feel like going out. So, here we all sit, assembled around the dining room table, but with a plus one no one told me about who completely fucking blocks any business we might have wanted to discuss.
Basically, this is an enormous waste of my time.
It’s a waste of his time, too, but Mateo idly stirs his coffee, nodding his head at Vince’s girlfriend, not seeming to mind at all. There are a few reasons this is ridiculous. One: Mateo doesn’t need to stir coffee because he takes it black. But Vince’s idiot girlfriend wanted to help Maria out in the kitchen since there are so many of us this morning, and she put cream in it. He should’ve made her dump the coffee and get him a new cup—he certainly would’ve if Maria had fucked up his coffee—but he just stirs it like he’s actually going to drink it. Two: this girl is actually trying to convince him—a fucking crime king—to donate money to some do-gooder organization whose interests align firmly against our own. Three: Mateo is not customarily amused by morons. I would say maybe he’s less bothered by them when they have nice tits and a low-cut top, but that has not historically been the case.
“So anyway, I figured you probably already donate money to charitable organizations for your legitimate business interests, right? For the tax breaks or whatever?” she’s saying now.
His lips curve up just slightly and he gives a faint nod—almost encouraging, if I didn’t know any better.
Mia shrugs, taking a sip of her orange juice. “That’s what I figured. And, yeah, I understand you guys aren’t Boy Scouts, but there are worse criminals out there—there are people who do stuff like this. I mean… that’s truly horrible. Anyone who could do something like this to human beings just to make money…” She trails off, glancing at the table like it’s just too dark for her to wrap her head around.
This is fucking hilarious. I cannot believe she is asking the monster himself to help protect the victims. I nearly smile at how fucking stupid she is. I expect Mateo to be privately amused, too—he doesn’t give a fraction of a fuck what people think about him, but I figure it will amuse him that this little nobody is unwittingly telling him right to his face that he’s the worst kind of monster her innocent little mind can conjure.
But there’s no glimmer of amusement in his eyes. The hint of smile is gone. I don’t expect him to whip out his poker face to mask amusement—that’s not really his style.
Discomfort moves through me, but the idea behind it is too ridiculous to consider. There’s no way he cares what this girl thinks about him. That’s too absurd to even consider.
Brightening slightly, Mia concludes, “So, yeah, that’s my pitch. If you’re looking for a good cause, you should definitely give your blood money to this one. You should check out that book, too—I’m not even a big reader and I couldn’t stop turning the pages.”
“I will certainly look it up,” he assures her.
She nods and smiles pleasantly, finishing off her orange juice. “Well, I’m going to go see if Meg’s awake yet.”
Mateo’s brows furrow and he nods at her plate. “You haven’t finished your breakfast.”
“I wasn’t that hungry,” she insists, pushing back her chair and rising. I doubt that’s true, but I get the feeling she knows she’s intruding now. Rather than continue to hold us up, she just won’t eat anymore.
Too fucking considerate, but I’m glad. Now we can get on with the business portion of this fucking business meeting.
Mia leans over to give Vince a kiss. “I will leave you gentlemen to your… whatever. Have a good day.” She offers a smile and wave to the assembled men, smiling lastly at Mateo before heading back into the kitchen with her dishes.
Once she’s gone, Mateo looks into his cup of coffee. Finally, he lifts it to take a drink. Predictably, he grimaces and sets it back down.
I glance around at the other men, expecting them to be similarly annoyed. They’re not. Many of them live here, though, so they’re more accustomed to her presence.
I glance at Vince across the table. “Where the hell did you find her?”
“Heaven,” Adrian answers, without hesitation. “She was clearly sent by God Himself to punish every last one of us.”
“Did he send her without a brain on purpose, or was that an oversight?” I ask.
Vince glares from me to Adrian. “Hey, don’t be assholes.”
“She just earnestly asked a human trafficker to donate money to an anti-fucking-trafficking organization,” I state, dumbfounded.
“She doesn’t know we’re into that shit,” Vince defends. “How the hell would she know the details of what we do?”
My eyebrows shoot up helplessly and I gesture to Maria, approaching the table now to get Mateo some drinkable coffee. “How does she think Maria came to be here? Why does she think Adrian had to work for us to have Elise? Seriously, how fucking dense can a person be?”
“She doesn’t ask questions,” Vince states, glaring at me.
“You know who doesn’t ask questions?” I offer back. “Fucking morons.”
“That’s enough,” Mateo says, leveling a significantly less pleasant look at me. “We’re not here to discuss Mia.”
I nod my agreement, checking my watch. “You’re right, we’re not. We’re all here to talk business, but you let her come to the table so we’ve all wasted our morning listening to Elle Woods launch her anti-trafficking campaign. I don’t have all day, you know. Some of us actually have important shit to do.”
“Then go do it,” he challenges, holding my gaze.
I give him a mild glare, but I cross my arms over my chest and settle back in my seat. I’m pissed I had to leave my house in the first place, but I’m more pissed that he’s okay with wasting my time. Maybe if he would’ve been the one who told Mia to get out of here so we could work it’d be okay, but I don’t like that he sat back and let her get in the way. Gives me a bad feeling.
With the girl gone, we can finally get down to the meeting. I’m impatient the whole time, waiting for it to be over from the moment it starts, but despite the current crisis, the meeting is brief. I’m fucking glad. We all push back from the table, leaving our respective coffee cups for the maid to clean up, and everyone heads off in their own direction. Alec slips out first. Adrian hangs back to talk to Mateo. I turn my sights on Vince, who is about to leave without so much as a goodbye.
“Hey, I need you to do something for me.”
Vince halts and looks over his shoulder uncertainly, like he thinks I got the wrong guy. “Me?”
I nod, reaching into my back pocket and drawing out my wallet. Vince scowls at it, but looks back at me wordlessly to see what I want.
“I need some Valium,” I tell him, pulling two crisp fifties out of my wallet.
“How much do you need?” Vince asks, looking at the cash.
“Just a standard bottle, like someone would get if they had a prescription. Colette had one at her aunt’s house but I didn’t bring it when I took her. You can go to her aunt’s house and retrieve that bottle, if you feel like it. Then you can keep all the cash for yourself. I don’t especially care how you get the job done, I just need the pills today.”
“Is her aunt home?” he inquires, since he’s pretty good at picking locks.
“No idea.”
Pulling out his cell phone, he opens it up and hands it to me. “I’ll find out. Give me her address. I can let myself in and grab Colette’s medicine. Need anything else while I’m there?”
“For an additional fee?” I ask knowingly.
Vince smirks. “Hey, guy’s gotta eat.”
I shake my head. “She doesn’t need any of her old shit. Just get me her pills.” I start to put my wallet away, then I stop, remembering the horrible thought that crossed my mind somewhere around 4am. Opening my wallet back up, I draw out another fifty. “Actually, on second thought, I do need one more thing. Not from Colette’s house, but you can pick it up at a drugstore on your way to drop off the pills.”
Vince takes the cash and looks up at me. “What’s that?”
“A pregnancy test.”
