Chapter 12 – Matías #3
Is Magdalena a comfort to her or the opposite? Her presence alone is a reminder of the weight of our name. How had Tomás done it, I wonder—stomaching our mother at this table, in the ranks with these creatures, the designated successor of the seat our father had held?
A single piece of paper rests at the center of the table. One of the surveillance photos. Noa’s face, captured in grainy black and white. I don’t need to pick it up to know what it shows. The timestamp. The location. The proof of her defiance, her recklessness. My wife, slipping away.
Toribio leans forward, his gaze like ice. "Explain this."
"A photograph with shitty resolution," I answer calmly.
Salas’s laughter echoes through the vaulted ceilings, an expulsion poisonous enough to rot stone. It is a mirthless, cruel sound.
The cathedral may be holy ground, but nothing about this room is sanctified.
The walls feel like they are closing in, bearing witness to the scrutiny leveled against me.
The men seated at the long mahogany table are older, harder, men who have built their lives upon blood and war.
They do not ask questions they do not already have answers to.
"Matías," my mother warns.
My fingers twitch against the carved armrest of the chair, the only outward sign of my irritation. I force my face into a mask of indifference. "It’s nothing."
Herrera, hands steepled, leans back in his chair.
The candlelight glints off the gold of the chunky signet ring on his hand, enormous and gaudy.
"Nothing?" he repeats, tilting his head like I’m an amusing animal at his disposal.
Then he laughs too, a dry coughing affair.
"You call it nothing when your wife meets outsiders in secret? When you’re already going around reacting like a rabid dog at our soirees? "
A muscle ticks in my jaw. My fingers flex against the armrest again, knuckles pressing into the wood. Don’t break, I demand. There is no point in defending myself.
Noa is seated beside me, her body poised. She doesn’t flinch under their scrutiny, though she should. She should be terrified. These men do not take kindly to weakness. If she were any other woman, she would be trembling under the bulk of what is being implied.
I can feel the weight of their eyes on me as I look off, waiting for more probing, digging, taunting—waiting for the moment I snap. I never have to wait long.
“We overlooked your instability after Tomás,” Salas says finally, his tone assuring me this apparent grace period is now over and done with.
“After your face. We said, ‘He will control himself. He knows what’s at stake.’” He leans forward, his rheumy eyes pinning me to my seat. “But you are proving otherwise.”
I don’t blink. My hand twitches once, a single muscle betraying the fire raging beneath my skin.
“Nothing to say, Castillo?” Herrera leans back in his chair, wretchedly long fingernails drumming against the polished mahogany table in a click, click, click.
“Tell me, then—” each word is a cold, cutting thing.
“If you cannot control one woman, how can we expect you to control the entire fucking cartel?”
A breath. In. Out. I school my expression, keeping my rage contained, pulsing like embers beneath a layer of cool ash. They want me to lose it. To lash out. To prove them right.
Another voice cuts through next. "I warned you, Matías," my mother says, her weary sigh carrying through the cathedral, settling like dust in the bones of the walls. "Everyone can see it now."
I’m surprised she waited this long for her turn. I don’t bother to ask what she means. I know. I feel it like a blade slipping between my ribs, cold and merciless.
“See what?” Noa splutters beside me. “I—I went to have coffee with my friend. I finally had sex with my husband, and I wished to speak to my best friend about it. Not everything is so nefarious all the time. You’re all why he’s so insane.
Do you forget that my father died with Tomás?
I will grieve them both forever, but there was nothing for Matías to control here! You’re so—”
My head snaps towards her, shock turning my blood to ice.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Whatever she sees on my face seems to remind her where she is and to whom she is speaking to. It shuts her up right away. Like it isn’t too fucking late. Fuck.
Every single eye in the room is on her, and I don’t have to take a look around the fucking round table to know it. If I couldn’t already feel it, I’d know it from the way her face floods with color and her chin drops to her chest, muttering, “I’m so sorry. I—”
“Noa,” I sigh, and it coaxes her eyes back to mine.
She meets my stare, shrouded in shadows of doubt, of realization sinking into the marrow of her bones.
For the first time, she has the grace to look terrified.
As I sit there, the burden of this unwelcome monarchy hanging like a sword over my head, my fucking mother’s words emblazoning themselves in my head, a single thought lodges itself in my skull, unshakable, undeniable:
Noa will be the end of me.