Chapter Forty-Three
Alexandra
The dimly lit, steel-and-concrete room in which my father and Mateo are keeping me prisoner smells like a rat died in a paper bag of dogshit and someone microwaved it. Except it’s not a bag with a rat carcass and dog feces, it’s an old storage shed attached to an abandoned factory far outside of Sacramento. I’m tied to a chair, and unable to even do the basic, life-saving maneuver of pulling my shirt up to cover my nose. Instead, I’m forced to inhale, unfiltered, the moldy, noxious air and exhale it as a hacking cough that makes me feel like, in another hour or two, an MRI of my lungs would be an identical match for a coal miner’s unfortunate organs.
There is only one moment where my coughing and the fear and outrage swirling in my gut subside: when my dad gets some alert on his phone and then shoves that phone in my face. His voice is a rough command. “Talk, or you’ll fucking regret it.”
I do as I’m told.
And receive what might be the happiest moments remaining to me in what I’m sure will be a very abbreviated life: the chance to tell Dixon once more that I love him. I wish it were under better circumstances, but it’s something, and it leaves me with happy tears streaming down my cheeks.
“Shut up,” my father snaps as he ends the call. “You have no fucking right to cry. This is all your goddamn fault.”
“My fault?” I barely mange to spit the words. There’s more I want to say, but all I can do is stare at the man who is supposed to be my father, the man who is supposed to protect me, who was supposed to protect my brother, too.
“You and Lucas. Poking your fucking noses where they don’t belong. Not knowing how the fuck to keep quiet. I thought I raised you better. Turned out, I made a mistake. Now, I’m going to correct that mistake.”
“What? By killing me? You do the same thing to mom, too?” I snap, rage boiling over. Our mom died of natural causes. Young, tragically, but naturally all the same. Still, it always ate at my dad. She was the love of his life.
His answer is to raise his hand and strike me with the back of it across my face. Once, twice, and, on the third time — I feel skin split and blood pour hot from a wide laceration in my cheek.
He pulls back for a fourth time, but Mateo steps between us.
“Rafael, no. That’s enough.”
“Don’t you fucking tell me how to discipline my child.”
“If you beat her too much now, how the fuck are you supposed to torture the other one by making him watch?” Mateo says. There’s a plaintive note in his voice. I understand in that moment that he is, and has always been, a coward. He doesn’t even say ‘we’ when talking to my father. He’s more than happy to have someone else do the dirty work, the same way he was happy to have Marquez be the one to kill my brother. In a sick, twisted way, I lose even more respect for him — he’s not truly evil, he’s just a frightened little boy unable to stand up for himself against the evil people who are just shoving him around and making him their whiny bitch.
I spit at him. “Fucking coward. Can’t even stomach watching me get hit, can you?”
My dad laughs. “She’s got a point.”
Mateo draws back a fist and strikes me in the stomach. It’s hard, and it’s enough to make me spit blood at his feet and feel like my eyes want to jump out of their sockets. But I can tell he’s holding back.
“Shut your mouth,” he bites.
“Fuck you, you pathetic little weasel. Lucas, even though he’s fucking dead, is still more of a man than you. Bet he’d still hit harder, too. You’re nothing more than some fucking dipshit parasite who plants his tiny little sucker on some bigger fish to survive.”
Anger — no, burning, feral rage — is my only option, my only hope. Maybe, if I can provoke Mateo or my dad to actually kill me before Dixon gets here, they’ll have no leverage and Dixon will at least have a chance to fight his way out of this mess, because you can’t have a trap with no bait.
Hell, Dixon would for sure kill Mateo. He’s nothing but a fucking benign testicle polyp.
But the moment my words land, Mateo’s face contorts into something so hideous, it takes my breath away. He’s not used to being called out, and the truth of my words slices through him like a knife. Before he can react, my father laughs again and grabs him by the wrist.
“My daughter may not have the sense to make the right decision when it comes to our business deals, but fuck, she’s smart enough to play you like a goddamn fiddle. Get yourself under control and save your rage for when it’s the right fucking time, got it?”
The right time doesn’t take long.
Soon, there’s the sound of a motorcycle approaching from a distance. A single motorcycle.
As I hear that, my heart drops in my chest; part of me had hoped that, despite everything I’d told Dixon, he’d come with backup. Yes, it’d mean I’d probably die, but he might survive, and if he brought the others from the Steel Reapers with him, my father and Mateo would definitely die. At least then, my brother would get justice. It wouldn’t be much, and if there’s an afterlife, he’d probably chew me out for being so reckless, but it still would be worth it.
When the bike stops, I hear footsteps — singular — crunch on the broken pavement and gravel outside. At the sound, my dad takes a knife out and holds the blade to my throat. His hands don’t shake, and there’s not a doubt in my mind that he’d gleefully cut my throat at the slightest provocation. I might be his daughter, but I’m a threat to something that he loves more: money.
“Mateo, open the door so our guest can see we’re not fucking around. Then grab some rope and get out there.”
Mateo”s steps are heavy and deliberate as he walks towards the door. He doesn”t look back at me, doesn’t even give me the satisfaction of eye contact. Instead, he wrenches the metal door open, revealing Dixon’s silhouette framed by the light of the rising sun.
Dixon freezes for a moment, taking in the scene, calculating the odds. His eyes find mine, and there”s a storm of emotions there — fear, anger, and something that looks like regret. I want to scream at him to run, to leave me and save himself, but with the knife pressed against my jugular, I dare not make a sound.
My father uses his free hand to grab a fistful of my hair, yanking my head back as a grotesque display of control.
”Come on in,” he calls out to Dixon with a twisted smile. ”We were just catching up on old times.”
Dixon steps forward cautiously, hands in plain sight to show he”s unarmed.
Mateo approaches him, holding the rope.
The air is thick with tension; you could slice it with a knife — like the knife that’s still pressed against my throat.
”Let her go,” Dixon says. ”This is between you and me.”
”But she’s involved now, and that’s your doing,” my father replies smoothly. ”You know I can’t have loose ends running around when we’re done here.”
I see Dixon’s jaw clench as he weighs his options; he”s outnumbered and outmaneuvered — any wrong move might be fatal for both of us.
Instead, he nods, extends his hands, and allows Mateo to bind him, and then he calmly sits in a chair while Mateo finishes tying him up. It’s a sight that makes me pause. After everything he’s been through to get to the truth, all the suffering, all the fighting, now that he’s face to face with the men responsible for all those years of torture, he’s so calm? Why?
The answer hits me just as quickly: because that’s how much he loves me. He’d give it all up and accept death peacefully if it meant there was even a chance to save me.
“I love you,” I mouth to him when his eyes find mine after Mateo finishes tying him up.
My father sees the silent exchange and his lips curl into a snarl.
”Don”t get sentimental, it”s pathetic,” he sneers. But there”s a flicker of unease in his eyes because Dixon”s calm is unnerving, even to him. He runs the knife along my throat; there’s not enough pressure to cut me, but enough to make me imagine the sense of my skin parting beneath the blade. ”You know how this goes down, right? You’re going to die, she’s going to die, and the only thing that’s up to debate is who gets to watch the other one die. You want to grovel for the right? Or do you want to let her watch you die?”
Dixon”s eyes narrow ever so slightly, but he remains silent.
My father”s grin fades.
”What? No begging for her life? No final plea? Fine, have it your way.” With shocking speed, my father takes his knife and stabs it deep into the meat of Dixon’s shoulder. Blood sprays in thick gouts, and I scream, surging and struggling against the rope tying me to the chair. I feel something give in one knot, ever so slightly. I pull on it further and nothing gives, and I soon give up, slumping into my chair while the man I love bleeds in front of me, his eyes still on my father, the only betrayal of pain and short grunt and a flicker of emotion that briefly crosses his face.
“Looks like he’s decided,” Mateo says.
My father shoots him a look that quiets him. “I don’t like it. I don’t like his face, I don’t like his attitude, I don’t like that he can just fucking sit there and think that he’s going to skate through this. Hit her.”
Mateo batters me, a blow that knocks the chair over and sends me crashing face first into the floor. The knots give a little more, but I hardly feel it. My head ringing with more pain than I thought possible. Dixon yells, my father laughs, and Mateo picks me up off the ground.
“I think he wants to watch,” my father says. “Again.”
I fight the dizziness swirling in my head, concentrating on the ropes that now feel just a fraction looser. My father stalks around us like a predator circling his prey, reveling in the control he believes he has.
Dixon looks paler now, the blood seeping through his clothes and pooling onto the floor beneath him. His breathing is steady though, measured even through the pain. My father kneels in front of him, his face inches away from Dixon”s, as if trying to draw out fear that simply isn”t there.
”You think you”re so tough,” he taunts. ”Let”s see how tough you are when she screams for mercy. Sit there, watch, know that you’re the one who’s responsible for her suffering.”
The blow seems to hit me out of nowhere, and my head rings with a deafening agony. The world goes dark, and when light comes again, I feel a fogginess that I know means I was just knocked unconscious. There’s a spare second for me to take a breath and to work my jaw to shake off the shock from Mateo’s blow before pain flares in my chest as he punches me in the midsection. I let out something between a gasp and a scream before I vomit from the intense pain.
Amidst the fog in my vision, I lock eyes with Dixon.
“Stay strong,” he mouths to me.
I try. But it’s hard when your childhood friend is beating the shit out of you.
Another blow makes my head snap back and blood fills my mouth. I don’t know how much more I can take. Even breathing seems a struggle for my malfunctioning body as Mateo beats me into nothingness.
Then there’s a ring.
Once, twice, enough that I know it’s not coming from inside my head.
It’s my father’s phone.
He makes no move to answer it, but the second it stops ringing, it starts again. Frowning, he checks it.
“It’s Delfino,” he mutters.
“The fuck does your money man want this early?” Mateo says.
“None of your fucking business,” my father answers. “I have to take this. You watch them. Hell, have some fun. Make yourself feel like a man by beating the shit out of my daughter.”
With his phone in hand, my father steps into the parking lot.
I see a small smile on Dixon’s face, a shade of that cocky smirk that first drew me to him… and made me want to kill him.
No sooner does he smile than I hear my father yell from the parking lot. “What do you mean, the accounts are frozen?”
“Looks like daddy’s having some money problems,” Dixon says. “You sure you want to hitch your horse to that broke bitch out there?”
Mateo whirls on him, eyes flaring. “Shut your fucking mouth.”
“What are you going to do? Hit me while I’m tied up? Fucking big man you are,” Dixon says.
Mateo does just that. Hard. Repeatedly. Dixon and his chair fall flat to the floor. Mateo doesn’t move to pick him up. Instead, he towers over the downed man. In the short second between one punch and the next, Dixon’s eyes meet mine and the message is clear: this is it. Fight.
With every ounce of strength in my body, I struggle against the knots holding me while Mateo pummels the man I love. They hold, at first; then, inch by inch, they give until my left hand comes free, then my right, and I turn my attention to the knots binding my feet.
In front of me, Dixon hollers at Mateo, taunting him, keeping his attention focused.
“You call this a beating? Fuck, I feel like I’m at a fucking petting zoo. What, did you get your only experience at being hard learning from Rafael in the bedroom?” Dixon’s words end in a sharp crack as Mateo snaps his head back with a right hand. The knot around my left leg comes undone. Dixon laughs. “Damn, you hit like a punk-ass bitch who never had the guts to pull the trigger himself. Oh, wait…”
That statement ends as Mateo uncorks a kick that makes Dixon’s head snap back and sends blood and spit flying to paint the wall.
“Not so tough, now, are you?” Mateo says.
The last remaining knot gives way and I stand up. I clench my fists.
“Hey, asshole. How about a fair fight?”
He turns. “Alex?”
“Yeah, Mateo, you backstabbing bitch. Let’s rumble.”
My brother’s fighting advice rings in my ears: Alex, if you ever get in a fight with a bigger dude, hit them in the dick with everything you’ve got.
I swing as hard as I can.
This cock-punch is for you, Lucas.