9. Marisol
9
MARISOL
“Marisol. My love. What the hell have you done?”
Behind closed doors with my mother, I finally let myself fall apart.
The question is harsh, but as soon as the tears start to flow out of my face, my mom makes a soothing sound. She comes over to pat me on the back, and I fall into her embrace. “It’s okay,” she murmurs in Spanish. “It’s okay, my love. Tell me everything.”
I pull back. I reply in Spanish, the language she taught me as a kid. It fits between us… our special, secret code. Spanish and Portuguese are similar enough, and I’m fluent in both, as well as English, but it still feels like some kind of secret code when my mom and I use it to talk to each other.
It feels safe.
“The girls are safe. They’re in the states, at their father’s home. ”
Her eyebrows skyrocket, and she swears softly. “Does he know?”
“He does now. But Gia… she’s…” I stop.
She’s not my sister-in-law. Saying that is just plain silly, even if it’s wishful thinking. Gia would be an excellent sister-in-law.
“She’s the friend who helped me escape the first time,” I add lamely. “And she’s married to his brother.”
My mom doesn’t need to know more. We’ve kept it this way, so that she doesn’t have too many questions, and she can maintain some kind of plausible deniability when it comes to things about the girls.
We try, as hard as we can, to make sure that the girls are safe. Protected.
And that my dad can’t find them as easily as he can us.
“They’re safe,” I finish, despite the fact that my mom’s eyebrows are pinching together with skepticism.
“And you trust these people because…”
“There were a whole crowd of babies and kids there, Mamá,” I clarify quietly. “They’re not going to let anyone in that they don’t want to.”
“And the security?”
“So tight, you couldn’t slip a credit card under it.”
She huffs. “And yet your father’s hound was able to find you just fine.”
“I volunteered. I told the girls that when you were able, you’d send for them. Then I walked out onto the road and he was waiting for me.”
She nods. “And their father? ”
I look away.
My mom sighs, pulling me close. “Oh, my sweet girl. Tell me what happened.”
“I just… I thought it wouldn’t matter, really. That seeing him wouldn’t be a problem because it was just so long ago, you know?”
“It is not such a long time,” she says with a little tilt of her lips. “I became a grandmother before I was ready.”
“I know. But I just… I thought that seeing him again wouldn’t do that to me.”
“Do what?”
I tuck myself smaller, burying my nose in her shoulder. “He’s basically a stranger, Mamá. We didn’t date. We didn’t know each other. There’s nothing there between us.”
“And you felt like there was?”
I nod into her shoulder.
She sighs. “Ay. Well. You did have his children, you know. You know him through them.”
“I never told them that he’s their father.”
“Does he know that?”
I nod again.
She clucks her tongue softly, squeezing me. “What a mess, my Marisol,”
“I know. I messed it all up.”
“You didn’t, my love. You didn’t even a little bit mess anything up. Is he going to watch over them? Does he want to be…”
“I don’t know.”
“Well. Did he ask you to stay?”
I pull back and wrinkle my nose at her. “Not really.”
She raises her brow again. “What does that mean?”
“Well, he didn’t ask. He just kind of… demanded.”
“Demanded?”
I nod. “Yeah. He told me that I was going to stay, and that he was going to… keep me there.”
She swears. “He sounds like your father.”
“No!” I say, a little too loud. My mom pulls all the way back and gives me a look. I shake my head and repeat myself. “No. Not like dad. It’s like he…” I stop.
The words that are on the tip of my tongue are it’s like he cared about me.
But that can’t be true.
I’m not anything to Dino. He’s not anything to me. We made two beautiful girls together, but only because we were so irresponsible that night all those years ago.
It’s not like we’re in a relationship. We literally don’t have one.
So he can’t care about me.
It’s kind of familiar. I have to remind myself of things like this a lot, because other than my mom… people can’t care about me.
I’m not someone to anyone. I’m Benicio Souza’s daughter. I’m a pawn, something that people move around on a board to get what they want .
I’m not just… me.
Well, except to my girls and my mom, I guess.
Still, the idea that Dino would be interested in me for who I am is silly. It’s a fantasy that I’ve entertained for way too long.
He doesn’t know who I am.
I keep that information under lock and key, and I don’t know that I’ve ever really been my true self around anyone…
Except Dino, that one night.
“Okay. So,” my mother’s voice interrupts my thoughts. “This man who sounds alarmingly like your father, he is protecting the girls.”
“Well, he’s definitely at the house…”
“Marisol,” she admonishes. “You think the girls can just— what? Wait for me there?”
“Gia will take care of them,” I add confidently.
She sighs.
“We need to get you out of here, okay? So let’s pack, and…”
She waves her hand at me. “Your father was going to let me go when you came back. I had already scared him into it.”
“Mamá!”
She shrugs. “You just walked in and negotiated this! I couldn’t stop and pause you!”
Ugh. “At least Moretti will keep the worst of them away, I guess.”
Another one of her scathing looks. “That boy wants more than just to be your father’s guard dog. Or yours,” she adds .
“What does that mean?”
Putting her clothes into a bag, my mom throws me a look. “Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed, mi Corazón.”
“I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She heaves a sigh, muttering in Spanish, then turns back to me. “Well, I think it will just have to stay that way then.”
“Stay what way?”
“Amor, I must go. I have someone waiting for me.”
I blink. “Who?”
“Don’t worry about that. But tell me how to find the girls, and I will find them.”
I go through the directions to the Rossi estate in New York. I also give her Gia’s contact information, which I memorized earlier, and my mom memorizes it as well.
Sometimes you learn certain things when you’re connected to this life.
Like how to memorize information before it disappears forever… or keep someone else from seeing it written down.
My mother confidently takes the information from me, then wraps me in a huge hug. “You didn’t have to bargain for me, mi corazón,” she whispers. “I would have been just fine.”
“Well I didn’t know that,” I grumble.
“After all this time, surely you know that your father and I will do many things to each other, but him coming close to hurting me is not one of them.”
“Again. I didn’t know that. ”
She sighs and pulls back. Her brown eyes are pinched with worry, and she lightly plays with a tendril of hair. “Did you really think he was going to do something to me?”
I nod. “How could I not? He stormed the house in Florida with basically an army. He took you from me, and there was gunfire and the girls…” my voice trails off and my lips tremble.
It was terrifying.
I’ve been through a lot with Benicio as a dad. I’ve been through a lot of stuff with my mom.
Seeing her taken at gunpoint from the house is not something I want to repeat.
Ever.
Nor do I want my girls to see that ever again.
“Even if that’s the case, my love, don’t you think that I would rather put myself in harm’s way so that you and the girls would be fine?” she says, her eyes kind.
“I won’t let him hurt you. I won’t,” I utter.
“Ay. So fierce. You might be named for sunlight, but I think sometimes there’s a storm in you that few understand,” my mom says with a smile. She holds me close again, and I spend a last second cherishing her touch.
She pulls back. “I have to go now.”
“You’re still not telling me who is coming to get you, are you?”
Smiling, she shakes her head. “No. But I think you should probably lay in the bed. No matter what you hear, don’t come out, okay?”
“Mamá… ”
She takes out a spray and sprays the air between us. The smell from the spray is sharp, and I sneeze against the harsh scent. “What’s that?”
“Oh, you know. Just something to make sure no one can blame you for this.”
“What?” I try to look at her but my head is starting to feel fuzzy. The air around me shimmers, like it’s having a hard time staying… real.
I go to move my lips, and they don’t seem to do it.
“If this man of yours, the father of your children, is anything like your father, he’s going to come here for you,” she whispers. It almost sounds like I’m in a dream, and my eyelids feel heavy and they start to droop. My mom gently tugs on my hand, pulling me toward the bed in her room. I follow her and flop onto it.
The covers smell like her. Patchouli and Dior.
“You’re going to have to make some tough choices, Marisol. Just make sure they’re choices for you, and you don’t make them for anyone else.”
Choices? “Ma…”
I can’t even finish the word.
I’m asleep before I can, and the last thing I remember is my mother laughing quietly, and the press of her lips on my forehead.
Someone is yelling .
I know that I need to wake up to figure out what’s going on, but I just… I can’t seem to. My head feels heavy, like it’s stuffed with cotton, and my eyes won’t open.
I have to get up.
Portuguese. Words flying around. Suddenly someone is banging on a door, and I manage to blink my eyes open.
I’m in my room. Not that the small space that is behind a false wall could be called much of a room, but it’s where I’ve been designated to stay when I’m here. The last thing I remember, I was in my mom’s room, so to get here…
The spray.
“Oh my God,” I whisper out loud. “She drugged me.”
Leave it to my mom to drug me and put me in my own room, then disappear.
Swearing, I swing my legs out of bed. The persistent fist slamming on my door continues. “I’m here,” I murmur, my voice not quite back online yet.
I swing the door open. It’s Paulo, one of my father’s head goons. “What?” I say, trying to play up my sleepiness as much as possible.
“Where the fuck is your mother?” he hisses.
I narrow my eyes at him. “How should I know?”
“You were with her! You made that bargain with your father for her safety. You two were planning something,” he snarls.
“If I was planning something, why would I know where she is now?”
“Because you didn’t want us to stop her!” he barks .
His words confirm that my father was not, in fact, going to honor his word with me.
Ice creeps over my features. “Go away, Paulo.”
One of his meaty hands slams onto the doorframe, and I wince.
“I’m warning you, bitch, that if you…”
There’s a strange, juicy noise. Like someone cutting into a steak.
Paulo’s face, inches from mine, contorts into a grimace and he looks up.
There’s a knife sticking out from the center of his hand, grown in the middle of it like some kind of sick mushroom.
I gasp and step back. Paulo goes to remove it, but a flash of metal reveals another knife, this one as his throat.
“I would not do that if I were you,” a cold voice slithers over his shoulder.
Paulo’s eyes widen. “Moretti… you fucking…” he grunts, but the knife, and the elegant hand that holds it, press deeper into his neck.
“I would not do that if I were you,” Andrei repeats softly.
I shiver. The threat in his words is palpable. It’s no wonder that he doesn’t talk all that often.
Andrei Moretti’s voice is as violent as any part of him, and it’s scary as hell.
Paulo is sweating. He tugs, yelping as the knife pinning his hand shifts slightly. “If I fucking can’t use my hand… ”
“You can. I made sure to only hit muscle, not a tendon. But if you keep bothering Marisol, I’m going to not only sever all the tendons in your hand, I will take this knife right here—” Paulo yelps and a thin trickle of blood starts to cascade down his throat “—and I will use it to peel the skin off your body. I will make you watch as I take your muscles apart, one by one, and you’ll have to hold them while I do. I don’t hear screams, Paulo, so no matter how much you yell, I will still keep going.”
“Fucking monster,” Paulo spits.
I can barely see Andrei’s face from where I’m standing, but as Paulo spits the words at him, I see a flicker of something surprising.
Disgust.
At Paulo?
I’m not sure, but Moretti’s lip curls in a sneer as he continues. “I am a fucking monster, Paulo. And I’m the monster who will rip you apart if you dare to bother her again. So will you fucking leave, or do I need to begin?”
Paulo swears in Portuguese. “You’re fucked up.”
“Marisol is my problem,” Andrei says.
The hair on my arms raises as he says it.
Because even though he called me a problem, it doesn’t sound like that’s what he’s saying.
It sounds like he’s saying Marisol is mine .
And I’m really not sure how to feel about that.
“Deal with your problem then,” Paulo hisses .
In a swift movement, Andrei steps back. He plucks the knife from Paulo’s hand, earning a fresh cry from Paulo. Paulo cradles his bleeding palm, giving both of us a dark look before he hastily scoots into the hallway.
My heart skips as I look at Andrei.
We haven’t been alone together since he brought me back. Since I found my dad and my mom at dinner.
Since I counted him in, and made him my… what? Keeper? Babysitter?
Guard dog?
Andrei is staring at me. Not for the first time, I notice that he’s handsome. However, it feels distant. He looks handsome like a sculpture or a painting, something beautiful to look at, but cold and distant.
He certainly doesn’t make my heart race like Dino does.
I take a deep breath. Between the adrenaline from Paulo trying to force his way into my room and the drug that my mom used, my system is panicking, and I have no idea what to do to get it to calm down.
Andrei tilts his head. “Are you hurt?”
“No. What happened?” I might as well start there.
“About ten minutes ago, your father went to your mother’s room and discovered that she was gone. Security footage shows you in her room last, but you were not in there. You were in here,” he says, gesturing to my room.
Unlike Paulo, he doesn’t try to enter.
“Yes. I was… asleep,” I say .
His eyes narrow slightly, and I know that he picked up on the hesitation in my words.
“I was really tired. The journey was hard, you know. And… the trauma. It’s just a lot.”
“I see,” he says. One of his weirdly well-groomed eyebrows raises. “The trauma.”
“Yeah. The trauma.”
“So you do not know where your mother went?”
“No,” I shake my head. I’m not even lying about that. I have no idea where my mother went, or who she went with. I know that she’s heading back to the States, of course, but beyond that?
Nothing.
“Interesting. I also found this, when I was looking through her room,” Andrei says.
I look at the small perfume bottle in his hand, and recognize the spray that my mom used on me to knock me out.
“She loves that perfume,” I sigh, like I’m missing her.
Andrei looks at me, studying me for another minute. He holds it out. “You should keep it then.”
I freeze.
It’s clear to me that he absolutely knows what’s in the bottle. It’s also clear to me that, despite that, he’s offering it to me anyway.
I look at the bottle in his hand, then look back up at him.
“You’d give this to me?” I whisper .
He nods. “Everyone should be able to use the gifts their mother left behind for them.”
His voice is so quiet, I almost don’t hear it. However, his answer confirms what I suspected.
Slowly, I take the bottle. Andrei nods, turning to head back to where my father is still yelling somewhere in the house.
“Moretti,” I say to his back.
He freezes and turns. “Yes?”
“Thank you. For this. And Paulo,” I whisper.
His eyes glitter, ever so slightly. “It was nothing, Marisol. I am your guard, after all.”
Then, he slips away.
I stare at the space he occupied for a minute. My mother’s words creep back into my mind. That boy wants to be more than just your father’s guard dog.
Suddenly, I have a terrible feeling that I know exactly what that means.
Even more terrible, I realize that at some point, I’ll have to address it. Because right now, if I use this weakness to my advantage, I’ll be manipulating Andrei Moretti.
Men like him do not take kindly to manipulation. And honestly, I’m not very good at it.
But if I tell him that I don’t feel that way about him…
I shudder.
He’s dangerous. Too dangerous. And who knows, maybe this could be a good thing .
Dino isn’t coming for me. I have to let that go.
Moretti, however, he’s here. He’s already kept me safe once.
Perhaps he would do it again. Maybe I could…
I shut my eyes. My heart feels heavy. No matter what, I’m in a position I don’t like. Nothing is as it should be.
I just want to get back to my girls. I need to figure out the fastest path to do that. Many women before me have pretended to be a happy wife for their own safety.
Maybe I need to do that as well.