Chapter 43 Mateo #2
I ripped my shirt off and tore it to pieces to bandage up these asshole’s legs and Cecilia bit her lip at me from across the room at the sight of my abs on display.
I smirked knowing that my shirt died for a good cause, if it gave her that reaction. Though I wouldn’t call becoming a bandage for fucking Villalobos a good cause, you couldn’t win them all. I still hated the fucking guy for all the shit he put her through in those videos. All those years.
As much as Cecilia was putting on a badass fucking front for Cézar’s men, I could see there was actually worry etched into her expression for him.
By my guess, she’d probably be upset if we just let him die.
If he was important to her, then unfucking-fortunately for me, he was somehow important to me too.
Ronan looked shell-shocked for the first time in his life and his jaw was practically spilled out on the floor in awe from the entire exchange we just witnessed.
I knew a mood would follow along with that, because he couldn’t handle the thought of not knowing every single part of what made Cecilia, Celia.
It was time he got over that and realized he needed to get to know every version of her, as she was, right now.
He was dwelling on a long-lost idea of a damsel in distress he had put on such a high pedestal over thirteen years ago.
She was damaged as fuck, but she wasn’t a damsel, and she wasn’t in distress.
If anything, she was a harbinger of terror and madness just like the rest of us.
It was just one more reason why I knew we were bound together by so much more than just my feelings for her.
She walked over to a console table pushed up against the wall.
There was a photo hung of what looked like the Virgin Mary, but a skeleton took place inside the dark robes instead.
There was a statue replica of the same photo sitting in the center of the table, with some trinkets and bones scattered around it along with a few black candles.
She poured a shot into one of the glasses, leaving it on the table next to the bony lady before she grabbed a matchbox and lit one of the candles.
“Sit him the fuck up, get him off the floor,” she commanded as she walked over to him holding a bottle of tequila in one hand and the two-shot glasses in another while Calaveras hoisted him up onto the couch.
She lifted his legs and moved a nearby chair under them, elevating them to help reduce the bleeding.
I came in behind her and wrapped each bleeding hole with the bandages I fashioned, and he let out a loud groan as I tightened and applied pressure.
Cecilia poured two more shots and handed one to her second in command, he accepted it willingly though the scowl never left his face.
“Salud,” she said, raising hers in the air before shooting it down her throat and slamming the glass on a nearby counter.
“Lighten up, Lobito. If you’d kept your mouth shut, none of this would be happening.
If it was up to me, I’d be drinking expensive wine somewhere in Seville right now, but unfortunately, this is what happens when you put your faith in men. ”
“You didn’t have to shoot me princesa. I would have agreed to it without the bullets in me,” he gritted through his teeth like he was having a hard time dealing with the pain, and she could clearly see it. She laughed and poured him another shot that he grabbed without hesitation.
“I didn’t shoot you to convince you to help me, you know better than that. One bullet was for leaving me behind fifteen years ago. The second bullet was for the loose lips. Rafa would have killed you for both,” she snorted a laugh.
“You think he’d be proud of me?” She raised her eyebrows in question at the thought of her father and his opinion of her but Cézar just groaned a response.
It was hard to figure out if she loathed the guy, or if she idolized him. Hell, maybe it was both.
A parent could do a number on a kid.
“What’s next then?” He raised an eyebrow at her before turning his shot over, seeming completely unaffected by the burn of the alcohol, and the holes she put through his body.
“The Black Crows have a Russian Mafia problem.”
I could see the tips of her fingers turning white from her grip on the shot glass tightening, and the look in her eyes told me she was reliving some of her time in that basement.
“Consider it my problem too.”
She shuddered as she snapped out of it, “And now I’m making it yours.” She narrowed her eyes at him as she crossed her arms over her chest waiting for him to deny her, but he didn’t.
Suddenly a kid in scrubs came bursting through the door, nearly knocking me aside as he rushed to Cézar’s aid.
But the dutiful president waved the young, blonde doctor aside and forced him to tend to the other guy Cecilia shot.
I mean, to be fair he looked way worse off, and he was starting to turn white from the blood loss.
“That’s your doctor?” Cecilia nearly laughed out, earning a less than intimidating scowl from the young doctor donning a leather cut over his hospital scrubs just like the rest of the men here. Except his said “MéD”.
“I’m a first-year medical student,” he narrowed his eyes at Cecilia, and she threw her hands up sarcastically in defense.
“My apologies Médico,” she fought a smirk as she turned back to Cézar and murmured loud enough for me to hear. “Should I be concerned for you?”
“Believe it or not, without you around, life-threatening injuries were pretty few and rare for me. Even in a one percent club. But Méd can handle it, his dad had him patching us up before he was even out of high school. His old man would have been proud.”
Before I realized it the doc finished up with the other guy, had an IV drip going and everything in the corner of the room. He was fast, but Cézar was officially looking worse for wear, and Cecilia moved to sit next to him, holding his hand in hers and talking quietly between them.
I guess if he ended up dying, they might have some things to air out between them.
I could understand that. Villalobos was too tough and too ornery of a bastard to die so peacefully.
He had too much chaos in him, just like I did.
Guys like us needed to die wild. Not on a fucking leather couch, in a remodeled farmhouse with fucking oak floors.
“Hey. Open your eyes asshole,” I shook his shoulder, my eyes darting over to Cecilia who bit her lip nervously and looked at me with a flash of fear in her eyes.
“He’s gonna need blood, he’s lost too much. He shouldn’t have let me patch up Rico first, I didn’t realize he’d been shot twice,” Méd glared at Cecilia, realizing how important he was to the room and allowing it to make his balls grow twice as large.
He probably wouldn’t be so gutsy had he been here five minutes ago.
“I’m gonna need to run some quick tests to find a blood match.” The doc said and Cecilia immediately tisked him, rolling her sleeve past her elbow, practically shoving it in the doctor’s face.
“No need, we’re a match,” she said plainly, gathering the entire room’s interest.
“It’s not the first time one of us has drained the other of nearly all their blood,” Cézar explained with a grunt as the doctor began to clean Cecilia’s arm with antiseptic and poke her with needles. “We found out we were a match pretty early on.”
“Rafa nearly shit when he realized all he needed to do was keep Cézar around in case I lost too much blood,” she said it too casually like she was telling childhood memories, and maybe it was.
Perhaps it was too hard for her to see how much fucked up trauma lived in her past, Rafael Flores somehow normalized it for them.
Seeing who she was around Cézar was a glimpse into a piece of her I didn’t think I’d ever know.
This was her…Celia Flores.
The real her.
“Can you ask Emory to make the drive out here? I’d feel better if she checked on him,” she looked up at Ronan with puppy dog eyes that would no doubt get him bending to every one of her whims, but I didn’t blame her. She just wanted to keep the little bit of family she had left alive.
I would have given anything to be able to do the same.
He nodded in response and pulled out his phone as he stepped outside.