Chapter 36
chapter thirty-six
Mateo
It was four in the morning when Angelo finally stumbled out of the Las Vegas police department where they had booked him. His hair was a mop of tangles, the buttons of his wrinkled shirt undone to the center of his chest, golden Catholic cross hanging down. He rolled his neck, yawning, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and got one good look at me.
“You look like shit, brother.”
It was telling that he was the one dragged out of a nightclub by security, thrown against a wall by Metropolitan police, and arrested for assault, yet I was the one with the haggard wherewithal of a man who got mugged and kidnapped at gunpoint. It also could have been that Tally and I had spent six hours on a bench outside waiting for the bail money I put up to clear and Angelo to be let loose.
She sprang up and threw her arms over his shoulders, rocking him back and forth. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, Ang. What were you thinking?!”
“Guy had it coming.” He hugged her back with one arm. The other held a plastic baggie filled with his belongings. The knuckles of his right hand were still inflamed.
“You didn't have to do that,” I said. “I would have taken care of it.”
“And ended up in the slammer at your bachelor party? No way. Besides, your record is clean, and mine is like a McDonald’s bathroom. What’s one more splash of piss on the seat?”
I shook my head, giving away a grin for the first time in hours. “Thank you, I guess.”
“Where is everyone?”
“Sleeping, probably,” Tally said. “They went back home. Everyone’s flights are at different times today. After what happened tonight I’m pretty sure the entire mood was killed and the weekend was ruined, so I don’t exactly blame them.”
I’d spent every second since we got to the station thinking about how I would approach this conversation with Angelo. It was awkward as hell for Natalia, and the words that guy used to describe her made me sick every time I replayed them in my head. The scumbag would be fine; he was assessed by EMS outside the club, blubbering like he hadn’t been asking for someone to clean his clock, and from what I could tell a little cosmetic dentistry would do the trick. It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it. I was more disappointed that I hadn’t been the one to do the damage. It was probably a good thing, because once I started I would have done a hell of a lot more harm than that. Angelo saved my ass by stepping in.
My brother looked up to me, though. Not that what Tal and I did for work was anything to look down on, but it was taboo, and he was allowed to be hesitant about it. Pike had decided what I did in my free time with my girlfriend was none of his business, and we were better for it. I just hoped that Ang would react the same. As we’d figured out, Natalia's sisters were much less inclined.
“This is a bit awkward.” I cleared my throat, scrubbing my hand over the dusting of hair on my chin.
Angelo looked from Tally to me, sliding his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “Look, I don’t need to know anything. If that’s your gig, that’s your gig. But I do dabble in the fine arts, so we’re going to have a problem if I accidentally scroll past a Reddit post of my brother's dick and balls while I’m trying to relax. Capisce? ”
“Jesus Christ.” I pinched the bridge of my nose.
Tally’s hand flung to her mouth to conceal a laugh. Her chilled pink cheeks blossomed into a darker shade. “Got it.”
“You don’t have to worry about me flapping my gums to Mom and Pop, either,” Angelo said pointedly. He reached into his plastic baggie and pulled out a crushed box of Marlboro, putting a cigarette between his teeth. “Nobody needs to know my brother splashes his little soppressata all over the internet. They’d tell the priest, and you know Father Aldo loves his church group gossip. What happens in the confessional most definitely does not stay in the confessional. I’m a son of a bitch, not the devil.”
“Nothing little about my soppressata,” I argued.
Natalia looked about ready to cry again and Angelo pulled her back in for another hug that made my chest tight. “You’re gonna be fine, sis. It’s all gonna be fine.”
I took a deep, grateful breath. I spent half my adult life ignoring my kid brother, while the other half I thought he was a directionless punk. He deserved more than that; they both did. I was as guilty as Natalia’s older siblings, but I wouldn’t make the same mistakes. My feet scuffed the pavement and I circled my arms around them both, dropping my forehead to my brother’s. Natalia’s frizzy hair tickled the underside of my jaw.
“Can we go home now?” Angelo said, the unlit cigarette muffling his lips. “I gotta take a fucking shit so badly it’s about to sprout legs and walk out of my ass.”
Natalia wiggled herself free of our embrace. “On that note…”
The house was quiet when we got back. We crawled into bed and managed less than three hours of sleep, though I’m sure Natalia was wide awake for all of it, before the first snick of a door closing on the floors below us rang out. The footsteps that followed were trailed by a rolling suitcase and then another. Tally had been listening, too. She unfurled from my arms and hopped off the bed in a panic, throwing a sweatshirt over her tank top and rushing out the bedroom door.
The early sun rippled through our curtains and slanted orange squares of light across the white duvet. I tossed it off my legs, pulled on my sweatpants, and followed her. Tally’s family needed to know that she and I were united in this, and if there was anything they wanted to say to her, they’d have to say it to me, too. We were adults. We did an adult job, and we’d continue doing it as long as Natalia wanted to. No one would make her feel like that wasn’t an option.
Her sisters were dressed for the airport, bags in a pile at the door. They had the earliest flight but part of me wondered if they would have slipped out without a goodbye if Tally hadn’t come down to meet them first.
“I know this is a shock,” Natalia said. Her fingers dawdled on the kitchen countertop. “It’s not new, and it would have never come out if this hadn’t happened. All I’m asking is for a little bit of understanding. Let me explain it, and I promise you’ll see it differently.”
Camilla let out a deep sigh. She looked tired, but still overdressed in a long sweater dress, heeled boots, an expensive designer watch, and her hair slicked back into a bun. “How? At the end of the day, you’re doing one thing, no matter how sophisticated you make it. You have to see that.”
“Did you need money or something?” Bella questioned. “If you needed money, Talia, all you had to do was ask us, or ask Dad. We would have helped you.”
“I didn’t need the money,” Tally shot back. “Even if I did, I’d never ask Dad. Because then I have their favor hanging over my head. I can’t owe them anything, don’t you understand? If I took money from our parents it would mean they have control over me. They’d use it to guilt me, and make me feel ungrateful and unappreciative. They’re fucking narcissists, and you three know that. You’re not immune either. You’ve just learned to take their abuse, but I wanted out.”
Mia crossed her arms, shoving her tongue into her cheek.
“But, sex ?” Camilla remarked, calling me out across the room. “Aren’t you a business owner? Aren’t you afraid of the repercussions? Someone could plaster you all over the local pages. You have neighbors and family who didn’t sign up for this. Did you not think about those things?”
“Sure we did.” I joined them under the dim kitchen lights, beside my wife, laying a soft hand at the small of her back. “We’re careful, we don’t use our real names, and there’s nothing tracing back to our home or personal lives. We vet every individual client. There’s clear and concise rules, contracts, and consent. It’s a business, and Natalia is remarkable at what she does. Would you have had any idea at all, if that hadn’t happened?”
Camilla’s mouth twisted. Her shoulders rose and fell but there was no argument. Apart from this hiccup, our career had never posed an issue in our personal lives. And let’s face it, a man being publicly splashed for doing porn meant nothing. I would still be a business owner, I would still carry clients, and hell, I might even gain a few. The double standard was insane.
“I’ve been doing this for years,” Tally confessed. “Despite the stigma surrounding it, I feel more respected and admired than in any other job I’ve ever had. Sex sells , and you’re naive to think it doesn’t. I’m taken care of with or without a man in my life, and isn’t that the whole point? Isn’t that what the three of you strived for and accomplished all on your own, just like me? I’ve been taking hits from our entire family since I graduated college because you all assumed I wouldn’t figure it out on my own, and that I started dating Mateo and got engaged because I’m desperate for a man to keep me afloat. I let you think that, because my pride is less important than keeping the peace. Let’s not disrupt it any further.”
A car horn honked outside. Isabella flicked her wrist out, checking the time on her smartwatch. “We don’t know what to think,” she said. “All I know is that we need time, Talia. It’s a lot at once, and I don’t think you can blame us for needing to process it. You’re asking us to keep a huge secret here, too, you know.”
“But you’d do that for your sister, right?” I looked at each of them. It wasn’t a threat, it was an expectation. A loaded question. “You’d do that for someone you love.”
There was a flash of guilt in all of their eyes. That, or they’d really had a number done on them by male authority—their father, presumably—because the smallest bit of contention out of me rattled something loose. “I want to make something clear, too,” I said. “I have never given this woman an order or made her do anything she didn’t want to do. She has control over me in every aspect of our work life. I support her with my entire chest.”
A corner of Natalia’s lip twitched upward at me and she turned to her sisters again. “I understand if you need time. That’s perfectly fine. Just…don’t do anything that might?—”
“Ruin the family?” Camilla tossed out.
“That would be far from what ruined it,” I shot back. “There’s already plenty to blame.”
Mia picked at her cuticles with her head down, her lack of an unsolicited opinion entirely out of character. There was no way she had nothing to say, and yet it was like her lips were sewn together. The hangover couldn’t have been that bad. Even my headache was mild and I’d outdrank every woman standing in this room.
The car honked again and we all looked to the door.
“Let’s revisit this when we’re all home,” Bella suggested. “Clear our heads.” She threw a carry-on over her shoulder and gripped the handle of her suitcase so hard her knuckles lightened a shade.
“I think that’s best,” Camilla agreed. She followed her younger sister toward the door, pulling her own suitcase.
Mia was the last one to grab her bag and she stalled with her foot keeping the door open in the threshold. “I have to show some properties this afternoon,” she said. “Buyers are really persistent.”
“Okay.” Tally tilted her head. “Yeah. Good luck.”
“But I’ll see you soon.”
My eyes twitched. She was hesitating, stuck on what to say. Then it occurred to me Mia might have wanted Natalia to know she was leaving for a work commitment, not a personal reason. She was cracking a window, casting a line, leaving the dialogue open. Tally took a few steps to meet her.
“If someone’s going to bring Mom and Dad into this, can you at least convince Cami and Bella to let it be me?” she asked. “I swear I will, but they should hear it from me first.”
Mia nodded. “I think they’ll agree with you on that.” Bella called out to Mia from the driveway, and she rolled her eyes. “I have to go. Tell everyone I said bye.”
“Safe flight,” I said.
Mia pulled the door closed behind her, and Tally stayed in the thin window watching the SUV pull away on the dusty desert road.