Chapter 82 Mateo #2
“I’ll see what I can do, Lobito.” She reached up on the tips of her toes and placed a kiss to his cheek before he turned around and walked into the mass of leather vests congregated in a circle.
I’d kind of miss the bastard.
And I’d never fucking tell him that.
From the outside looking in, it reminded me of when loving parents dropped their kid off at college and stuck around that first day just to make sure they were settling in okay.
Now César would be packing up and heading thousands of miles back to Grimm’s Reach, because she had proved she could make it on her own.
“What do you need?” I turned her towards me, wiping a rogue tear that fell from the corner of her eye.
“I need to change out of these clothes, I need a torta like nobody’s business, and I need to squeeze the truth out of that ugly pendejo,” she said, looking up at me. “In that order.”
“And the villa?” Zerkos asked.
“Let it burn, there’s another home further south, away from the city. It’s smaller, but since The Diablos are gone it’ll be just big enough for us all,” she explained. “There’s another villa adjacent to the property and the Crows can house there.”
“Send me the address,” Ronan said, casually tossing the keys to Santos.
“Where are you going?” he asked him.
“To get the lady her torta. I’ll meet you there.” He smirked, and she leaned into him and pressed a kiss to the corner of his lip before turning to Santos and changing her expression into a frown.
“You had to blow up the fucking Mastretta?” she chastised him, flicking her hand in the air to wave him off.
“You ran off like you have no regard for your own safety.” He scowled, raising his voice back at her.
Oh. This was going to be an actual argument.
“Because I knew if you went in there, I’d have to worry about whether or not you were going to come out alive too,” she yelled back, stepping up to him and getting as much in his face as she could, considering her height.
“So that’s how this works? You get to decide whether you live or die while you put us on a shelf to look at us, and keep us safe?”
I spaced myself from them, unsure if this was a “we” thing or a “they” thing. I saw both sides of the argument, and for that reason alone I knew I needed to get the fuck out of here before either of them tried to drag me into their corner.
“At least then I don’t have to go through the pain of thinking I’m going to lose any of you all over again. If you’re waiting for an apology, it’s not going to come from me Santito.” She emphasized the nickname like she wasn’t happy to be saying it at all.
“Kane, are you not going to say anything?” Santos called out to me, ruining my plans to try to stay Switzerland for this entire thing.
“Uh, well… I mean…” I scratched my head anxiously, “She was handling herself pretty well all on her own. She didn’t need me.” He didn’t like that, scowling deeper at my response. “What? She doesn’t need any of us dude.”
She laughed, forcing the expression on his face to harden and the scowl on his forehead to deepen.
“Let me remind you of the week she spent in that Bratva cage. Let me remind you she was drugged, starved, and sold twice. And maybe you forgot but I had to spend an entire week watching her get mouth raped by my own fucking cousin. When it comes to the four of us, the three of us die before she ever gets hurt, that shouldn’t be a hard rule to follow.
” Santos was rarely the type to yell, hardly the kind to verbalize so clearly why he was upset.
He never talked about what happened in that basement.
Chalked it all up to it being her experience even though he was the one bearing most of the visible scars.
She’d been marred by it too, but they were both processing it on such opposite ends of the spectrum that it was easy to forget they went through it together.
Like everything that came her way made her who she was, no matter how awful or painful it might have been. While for him it was ripping him apart. He stormed away, heading towards the several options of cars that had been left behind. Her expression had deflated to one full of pain and remorse.
I sighed heavily, dropping my shoulders before pulling her in again to place a kiss on the top of her head.
“Where the fuck are you going?” she asked as I turned away from her.
“I’m gonna see if Zerkos is still around for me to catch a ride with him. You should go with Santos,” I told her, knowing damn well I was risking sliding onto her bad side.
Her nostrils flared and she stared up at me through furrowed eyebrows.
“I’m not good at saying the right things. I don’t even know how to fix this,” she confessed, making me chuckle.
“Sunshine, you’re hot as hell and twice as stubborn, but you’re right, your communication skills are shit. Get in the car with Santos if you want a ride to your new home,” I told her, dropping my tone into that serious one I rarely took with her.
“That’s not fair.”
“Tough, you wanted three guys, you gotta take care of the fragile little egos that come with them too.” I pushed her in the direction he’d walked off to before I ran off to find Ronan, hoping he hadn’t left me behind yet.