Chapter Nine
Mateo had never decorated a room in his life. He had never gone furniture shopping. There were people he paid to handle that kind of business. Yet, when it came to Terry’s room, he didn’t want anyone else handling it.
So, he and Ella, along with Terry, painted the room in three different colors.
At first, Terry was insistent she wanted a blue room.
So, she chose the color, and they started painting.
Two walls in, she whispered to Ella that she didn’t like it.
So, it was changed to pink. This time, they were only a single wall in, and she hated it.
It was settled on yellow. A sunshine, happy yellow.
They painted the whole room yellow, and Mateo kept expecting her to say she hated it, and she never did.
Terry loved the yellow. She also opted for yellow blankets on her bed.
Ella picked out the furniture, which was a lovely white.
Mateo understood it. The room Terry had been forced to stay in had been dark.
This hadn’t even been the closet, but he inspected the whole house.
The walls had been painted black. The furniture had been a dark brown.
There had been no true light. Nothing to make a little girl feel happy.
Terry didn’t want darkness. She wanted it to be light and happy and free. He created a room just for her.
Mateo also noticed that Terry rarely ate anything.
She was terrified of asking for food. Even if she was starving.
So, he made sure to load up her plate. It didn’t take a genius to work out that she would get punished for asking for food.
In his home, there was food readily available to her.
All she had to do was take. He made sure every room had a jar of chocolate, cookies, or snacks.
Anyone could help themselves, and yes, he had seen guards sneaking a cookie or two. The truth was, he didn’t give a fuck.
The first month Terry was home with them, she woke every night, screaming. He and Ella worked tirelessly to take care of her. She would fall asleep in his or Ella’s arms.
They also knew they had to get her into school. Instead, he opted for a tutor. He had no problem finding one who was more than willing to come to his home to teach Terry. Ella was always there, keeping an eye on things, making sure Terry was taken care of.
His home life was a crazy, happy mess, with a child he was taking care of. He also handled the latest problem within the Bratva.
When it came closer to home, Luca had sworn his loyalty to him, and he didn’t want to sever ties. He was also told that the other capos were the same way. They didn’t necessarily like the way he did things, but they were not going to get in the way of him doing what he needed to do.
Mateo and Ella had been married over three months, and he knew she was not menstruating.
After one of his meetings with Eric, he stopped at the pharmacy and picked up a pregnancy test. Ella had also started to wake up in the mornings feeling a little sick.
At first, he put it down to the stress of dealing with Terry.
Now, he had to wonder if it was due to pregnancy.
Just as he was about to climb into his car and head home, his cell phone rang.
He saw it was Luca calling, and he didn’t want to answer it.
He wanted to just go home and spend time with his girls.
Mateo paused. Every evening, after dinner, they would go into the cinema room and watch an animated movie with Terry.
He’d make sure there was popcorn, candy, and soda.
Ella called him a bad influence, but the truth was, he just like to make Terry happy.
Also, he enjoyed sitting down with his family and watching movies.
He had never done it, not even with his mom.
All his life, he had been so focused on his training, he hadn’t even taken time to enjoy the little things in life.
He got to do that now. He knew that taking this call meant he might not get his movie.
Everything in his gut was telling him to ignore that call, but he clicked “accept.” After all, Luca had been the one to vote for him. He wanted him as head of the mafia, and Mateo was starting to like the idea of it finally being called the Cole Mafia.
“What is it?” he asked.
Luca sighed. “I’ve just killed Mario.”
This got his attention. “Do you want to tell me why?”
“Look, Mario had been acting strangely for the past few weeks. He was talking about overthrowing you. At the time, I figured he just had too much to drink, but then I just, I got curious, and I followed him. He was meeting up with Hans.”
“I killed Hans,” Mateo said.
“I know, and Mario decided to take Hans’s place. He was making deals with the Bratva, and he took a shipment of girls and cocaine.”
Mateo rubbed his temples. “Do you know if any of the other capos are involved?”
“None, but before he died, he said you and your little family of nobodies were going to suffer. I don’t know what the fuck that is, but he said someone close to you was going to poison you. Your wife and your new kid.”
Mateo thought about his wife and that she had been sick.
“How?” Mateo asked.
“I don’t know how. I wasn’t able to get who it was either,” Luca said.
“Thank you,” Mateo said, and he hung up his cell phone.
Someone was at home, potentially harming him and his wife. Someone who could give them poison. There was only one other person who would be able to poison him and his family.
Climbing into his car, he dialed Ella’s number and hoped she hadn’t eaten anything.
****
Ella put the cell phone down and looked over at Terry. She couldn’t quite believe what she had just heard.
They were in the sitting room as they colored in one of the many coloring books Mateo had brought for her.
Ella hadn’t realized how much she had enjoyed the simple process of coloring, but it was rather therapeutic.
Only right now, she felt a little afraid.
That fear traveled down her spine as she reached out and tucked some of Terry’s hair behind her ear.
What the hell was she supposed to do? Mateo had told her to not leave the sitting room. He believed Lewis would attempt to kill them all, and was worried he might have put some kind of poison in their food.
Ella knew she had been getting sick in the morning, and she figured it was because she might be pregnant. With Terry and the life she was building with Mateo, she hadn’t really kept an eye on her menstrual cycle. She hadn’t had one since she had married Mateo.
“Are you okay?” Terry asked.
She forced a smile to her lips. “Yeah, honey. I am okay.”
When the knock came on the sitting room door, she closed her eyes for the briefest of seconds. This was not what she wanted.
“Come in,” she said.
Mateo told her to stay in the sitting room. To not go and seek out Lewis, and that he would be home when he could. This was not good.
Lewis stepped into the sitting room. She had laughed with this man and enjoyed his company. She had even considered him a friend, and she couldn’t believe Mateo thought he was going to kill them.
“Hello, Ella, and little Terry,” he said.
She looked at him and wondered if it was true. Would this man poison them?
“Hi, Lewis,” she said.
“Dinner is nearly ready. Do you know when Mateo is going to arrive home? I cannot seem to get him on the phone.”
Ella looked down at her cell phone, and smiled. “He said he shouldn’t be much longer.”
That wasn’t exactly a lie. She couldn’t believe this was happening.
“Do you want to come through for dinner?” he asked.
Her heart raced. She felt so sick and glanced down to look at Terry. The young girl had her hands covered in crayon from the hours spent coloring.
“Honey, why don’t you go upstairs to your room and get cleaned up?” She pulled Terry in for a hug. She was tempted to whisper words to keep her in her room, but instead hugged her tightly. Terry ran out of the room, and then Ella got to her feet.
“Are you all right?” Lewis asked. “You look a little shaken?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” She offered him a smile. “Dinner, you say?”
“Yes, I’ve also made one of your favorites. Chicken parmesan.”
Ella didn’t know what to do, so she took her time cleaning up the coloring books, along with the crayons.
Glancing around the room, she couldn’t help but look for a weapon, but there wasn’t one.
Not one she could use without him getting suspicious.
All she could do was wait for her husband and hope she didn’t show Lewis how afraid she actually was.
Turning toward Lewis, she offered him a smile, and she just couldn’t believe he was going to attempt to kill her, Mateo, and Terry.
He’d been great with Terry. They had even baked cookies together, so they could place them in random jars.
It just didn’t make any sense to her that he suddenly wanted to kill them.
“What’s wrong?” Lewis asked.
Ella didn’t get a chance to answer as he suddenly tensed up, his eyes going wide, and then fell to the ground. She pressed her hands against her face and looked into the eyes of Steven.
The guard had thrust a knife into Lewis’s back. At first, she thought Steven had come to help, but then he held a gun aimed right at her.
“Where’s the brat?” Steven asked.
“It’s you?”
He shrugged.
“Why?”
“Simple, I was given an opportunity to make my life and my family’s life, better. You think I’m going to sit around and not take it? I’m not fucking stupid.” And then he held up the gun. “Where’s the brat?”
“I thought you and I were friends?”
“No offense, sweetheart, but our friendship is not worth several million dollars and a place at the table.”
“A place at the table.” Ella laughed. “You do realize that Mateo will kill you? He will kill all of you.”
“No, he won’t.”
She couldn’t help laughing, but it wasn’t an entertaining sound. She was in a state of shock. “Do you even know why the mafia is the way it is today? Why it doesn’t have a name? Why it has reduced members?”
He still held onto the gun and had it trained right at her.
“Because he killed them all. They took his mom away from him, and he killed them. You can kill me and everyone in this house, but you won’t get far.”
Ella looked at him and wondered what the hell she should do. She didn’t have anything to defend herself, so all she could do was run. She stared at him for what felt like the longest time, and without a second thought, she ran across the room.
The gun fired, and she didn’t know if she felt it, or if the bullets were even close to her. She kept running.
Fear raced down her spine, and she was able to get out of the main sitting room, and silently thanked Mateo for having a house with so many freaking doors.
When she first moved in and explored his house, she had gotten lost with all the doors leading somewhere, but now she knew where every door led, and that was exactly where she ran to make her escape.
Running across the hallway, she couldn’t help but scream as she heard the bullet whizz past her head. She let out a scream and quickly took the stairs, hearing more bullets ring out.
Ella went straight to Terry’s room, grabbing the young girl in her arms, and running her toward one of the other bedrooms. She went to the en-suite bathroom and flicked the lock with Terry inside. She quickly ran back to the main door and locked it.
Looking around the spare bedroom, she went into the closet where there appeared to be a baseball bat. She didn’t care why in a random bedroom there was a baseball bat. Grabbing it, she moved toward the main door as she heard him advancing.
He tried the doorknob, and Ella stood there, heart pounding, feeling like she was going to throw up, holding a baseball bat.
It had been a long time since she held a baseball bat.
Wrapping her hands around the base, she held it tightly, and he kicked the door over and over again.
He didn’t seem to stop, but the door was not giving in, even though she saw it moving beneath his onslaught.
Mateo had gotten some good doors for this house.
If this was any other kind of situation, she would have been laughing, but right now she couldn’t think.
All she could do was react as the door suddenly sprung open, and Ella started swinging.
She knew she was hitting his flesh, but she also couldn’t stop.
She had to keep hitting him, to find the strength to overpower him.
She didn’t care where she hit, as long as she connected with his flesh.
At first, she thought she might actually be winning, but then he grabbed the bat as if he had a burst of strength. It was pried out of her hands, and Ella didn’t have time to react as she felt the burning pain spread across her cheek as he hit her.