Chapter 40 Mateo
MATEO
Icouldn’t fight the shit-eating grin plastered on my face once I came out of the shower to find Cecilia sitting on Ronan’s lap.
There was a settling peace that came from seeing them no longer at arms against each other.
The little bit of right in a world that had gone so wrong, if anyone deserved a happily ever after, it was him.
“So, what’s on the agenda for today?” I chirped as I walked into the kitchen, scooping a donut off of Cecilia’s plate and giving her a wink that encouraged a frown from Ronan.
Just because I was confident that Cecilia wouldn’t pick between the two of us, didn’t mean I couldn’t have some fun with him in the process.
He was too easy, and it was too entertaining.
She got up from his lap, and I realized I might have completely misread the mood in the room.
I shrugged it off, pulling up a stool and sitting down while interrupting whatever it was they’d been going through.
If they couldn’t sort this out, the least I could do was try to keep it from getting worse.
Ronan was good at digging his graves deeper than they needed to be, and if he couldn’t own his shit with Cecilia, it wasn’t just him who’d be losing her.
I didn’t see a possible outcome where I’d get to keep her if he didn’t.
“We’ve got a traitor problem to deal with, urgently,” Ronan’s eyes burned with intensity as they met mine and I nodded at him.
“One of your guys are feeding intel to the Bratva?” She asked me, biting her lip like she already knew the answer.
“That’s how they took you, someone told them we’d all be gone, and they came from the top,” I told her point-blank.
“Well, who’s getting greedy about power? Who’s acting like they want more?” She asked, not bothering to hide how good she was at this, and it was so obvious how deep in this life she was. Ronan and I shared a look again and this time he answered.
“I have a pretty good idea. It’s an Archer, I’m sure of it. I just don’t know if it’s Junior or Senior making waves.”
“Or both,” she added, and we nodded in agreement.
“But I can’t just go off executing one or two of our founding members. It could cost us a lot of support if we went into this without concrete evidence,” Ronan sighed heavily like he wished he could.
“Well, what if we could get this concrete evidence?” She looked between the two of us with a mischievous look on her face.
“What are you suggesting?” Ronan asked, but I had a feeling I already knew where she was going to go with this one.
“What if we set a rat trap? Give them the kind of cheese that they can’t resist,” she said casually as she shrugged her shoulders.
“You’re not playing bait. I just got you back,” he growled out clenching his fist and pounding it on the marble countertop.
“It’s my decision, not yours,” she said with conviction powering her vocal cords.
“Why would you agree to that?” He narrowed his eyes at her suspiciously.
“Because your rat problem became my safety concern. In case you’re oblivious,” she rolled her eyes at him in a dramatic gesture that had him scoffing.
“What if we tagged her?” I suggested, earning a wicked glare from him. “We should have tagged her anyway, the minute she signed. If we had, it might not have taken us this long to get her back,” I pointed out.
“You mean like a tracker?” She asked, scrunching her eyebrows in the middle, and I nodded. “I’m not opposed to it, there’s probably at least two or three in me right now anyway. My papá was crazy paranoid that my uncle would kidnap me or my sister one day.”
“You’re okay with it?” Ronan asked her, the surprise in his tone hard to miss.
“I mean, I just spent the better portion of a week starving in a dog crate, and I wasn’t even kidnapped by the asshole I’m running from. I’ve kind of resigned to the fact that I need help,” she shrugged her shoulders awkwardly.
“And you’ll let me help you?” he asked her quietly, and I smirked at this gentle side of him that showed up out of nowhere.
It was as if there was a completely different version of Ronan that had been dormant since she betrayed him, and he had finally woken up.
However, this rendition of him could still put nine bullets in me in under three seconds.
She eyed him suspiciously like she was still adjusting to this version of him as well, one that wasn’t so sharp and full of hate. I was too. It was like this guy had been hiding under a mountain of pain and somehow, she was able to pull him out of it just by being back here again.
“Am I free from the kennels?” she asked. “Free from that box?” Her eyebrows pulled together like she was thinking about keeping that grudge just a little longer.
I wouldn’t blame her for it either.
He pulled her back onto his lap and wrapped his arm around her waist, keeping her pressed to him, giving her no option but to straddle his legs.
“You’re not a free woman, because I’m never letting you go again, Cecilia Gomez. Or Celia Flores, whoever the hell you wanna be. But I’ll never lock you up again. I swear it,” he looked her way, the blazing burden of regret burning in his eyes with the weight of an apology he had yet to give her.
“Good, because if you try, I’ll have my boyfriend over here kill you,” she laughed, looking at me and I shrugged in agreement.
I wasn’t going to correct her.
“You wouldn’t have to ask him. You want me gone, I’ll drain every ounce of my blood in my veins and let you bathe in it.
You want to make me pay? I’ll give you the knife myself so you can cut me open as slowly as you want.
Call it nothing short of eternal bliss to meet my end by your hands, as long as It can stop this pain, gnawing at me from not having you. ”
“Fuck,” she whispered before pressing her lips onto his briefly, “I’m still not staying with you tonight.” He frowned, realizing his words weren’t enough.
“If he’s your boyfriend, what am I?” Zerkos asked, breaking away, glaring at me.
She moved her head to cover my face and force his attention back to her, “You’re my sunrise, and my sunset.
There’s no distinction of where you end or where I begin.
You’re the only home I’ve ever truly known, the only home I’ll ever need.
” Her tone changed drastically before she continued, “But that doesn’t mean I’m just going to forgive you. ”
He burned his stare into me again before he turned his chin away from us.
She grabbed his face with both hands to force his gaze back to her, “Hey, don’t do that. Don’t make this about something it isn’t.”
“How can I not? How can I not feel like there isn’t something missing in me that makes you want him?” I could hear the hurt in my brother’s voice, and while I never intended to fall for her, I didn’t have any intentions of letting her go.
“Because how I feel about him has nothing to do with you. It’s not because of you, that I care about him, it’s because of how he makes me feel,” she pressed a soft kiss to his lips again and slid off his lap as she stood up.
“And I can’t make you feel that way too?” He asked with a pained look on his face that nearly split my heart in half.
“No, but he can’t make me feel the way you do either,” she said, caressing his cheek with her thumb before lowering her hand to her side and looking at me.
“You’ll have to choose one of us eventually,” he threatened, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Not if you don’t make me,” she whispered, shaking her head at him before looking at me with those hopeful eyes.
I wouldn’t ask her to choose.
I’d never had anything good in this life that was mine, I meant it when I said that I would take as many pieces of Cecilia that she’d let me have. Maybe he wasn’t as desperate as I was.
Maybe he was just greedier.
Either way, I got it. If I could have all of her, I would. But I knew better than to think my brother wouldn’t always have a piece of her heart. I was just the lucky bastard that ended up worming my way in there too, claiming a sliver of it for myself.
Would she let me go, to keep him, though?
That, I didn’t know.
“Let’s go get you chipped then,” I said, trying to avoid letting my mind fall into a dark place where my insecurities would bury me alive. I stood, reaching my hand out to her.
“I thought we were on lockdown. Where are you going?” Santos’ voice cut through from behind us as he emerged from the hallway, his eyes not missing the way Cecilia’s fingers entwined in mine.
“Nowhere outside the building,” Ronan answered first, making the decision to keep him out of the loop, probably waiting to see if he could prod the moody bastard to tell us what was stuck up his ass the last few days.
“That’s all you’re gonna say? So much for equals,” he retorted, narrowing his eyes at him.
“You’ve been brooding,” I said, and I noticed the way his glare cut to her but she averted his stare and shifted her gaze to the ground.
“Fuck this,” he spat out. The clanking of the decorative cast iron vase hitting the marble floor rang loudly from the force of his kick before he made his way to the middle elevator.
“Hey!” Zerkos shouted out at him.
She took a sharp, stuttered breath, causing Ronan and me to make eye contact, a kind of silent message between the two of us.
It was agony to see her feeling any hurt or pain.
There was something inside of me that wanted to do everything I could to keep her from ever feeling that way, ever again.
The way Ronan looked at me let me know he felt the same.
She’d had so much sorrow in her life.
I just wanted to take some of it away.
I wanted to experience how she could be if just a little of her burdens were lifted. And I would, I’d stand there all day carrying the brunt of them if it meant she would feel even the smallest bit of freedom.