Mateo #2
Loved. Past tense. Mateo turned his head, the motion sending a fresh wave of blinding agony radiating from his chest outward, and looked at the man he had spent years building a duplicitous relationship with.
José stood with the gun still raised, the barrel a dark eye aimed at a man already on his knees, and his expression held no more regret than if he’d just stepped on an insect.
Mateo gripped his chest, his fingers pressing harder against the wound, reaching for his weapon with his other hand—a reflex, a final calculation—as José stepped forward and kicked it from him with ease.
“Your game is over.” José sounded confident and satisfied as he smiled down at Mateo. “You couldn’t just listen to me when I handed you everything on a plate? You were in charge of Nox in name only, but you couldn’t marry my daughter and then you fucked that white bitch instead.”
How dare he call her that … Listening and thinking were both proving to be difficult now. Mateo was struggling to think of a coherent question, something to keep José talking instead of shooting, but the best he managed to say was the word, “Why?”
The older man tsked. “You’re pretty stupid Mateo. And here I was worried that you had me all figured out. Truth be told, I thought you would have pieced it together a long time ago. You’re a sharp one with most things. I have to admit,” José said with malice, “I am disappointed in you.”
Pieced what toge—
The realization exploded through Mateo’s thoughts. José had said, “Handed everything on a plate.”
No, he couldn’t be …
Fucking idiot. The self-recrimination arrived with a savagery that cut through even the pain of the gunshot. Years and I didn’t see it. It was right in front of me the entire time and I was so focused on finding Obscura that I never stopped to look directly at the man holding my leash.
Mateo turned, the movement causing a bright, searing wave of agony that greyed the edges of his vision, and stared up at José from the floor—really looked at him, looked past years of accumulated familiarity, performative deference, and careful management of this man’s ego—and truly saw him for the first time.
He struggled to draw in a ragged breath, blood seeping between his fingers in a slow, warm, inexorable tide. “You? It’s been you?”
José laughed once more—that same boastful, room-filling sound. “Yes, Mateo. It’s always been me. You were never truly in charge of Nox. I still was despite the men listening to you. Obscura doesn’t even know who you are …”
The realization detonated through Mateo with a force that rivaled the bullet.
Years of his life wasted in pursuit of gaining access.
Every calculated move, every sacrifice, every act he’d committed in the dark to earn his place inside the elaborate machinery of this organization—all of it, every single fragment of it, had been leading him to a man who held access he’d been standing next to the entire time.
I was never there. The thought was devastating. I should have killed him years ago, not bargained with him to marry his daughter for access then spent all that time, did all of those terrible things … looking past him for someone else.
His self-loathing was a physical thing that burned in his chest alongside the bullet wound, almost indistinguishable from it. He had failed. He had been thorough and patient and careful and he had still failed.
And Gabriella is alone in that room right now, trusting me to come back.
José stepped past him to look out the window and cursed under his breath, a short, vicious sound nearly drowned out by the growing noise of gunfire.
“It’s a slaughter out there. It’s like they know exactly where to go?
” He looked back at Mateo, his eyes narrowing.
“You wouldn’t have anything to do with this, right? ”
Mateo stayed silent. Fuck him. Let him wonder.
That petty vengeance was all he had left—that, and the pressure of his own hands against his wound, the warmth of his blood spreading through his fingers, and the shrinking, stubborn insistence of a body that had refused to stop.
Without another word, not even sparing a moment to gloat, José opened the door and disappeared into the chaos of the compound.
Mateo’s brain was still functioning with some semblance of order while the rest of him was occupied with the business of not dying.
Each breath was a negotiation, a careful, deliberate expansion of the chest against a pressure that grew steadily worse.
The floor beneath him was gritty and cold, biting through the fabric of his trousers.
He could smell his own blood—copper and salt.
Stay conscious. The instruction was all that remained. Stay conscious. Gabriella is alone.
A pair of black military boots entered his field of vision, moving with the unhurried, ground-eating stride of a man who owned wherever he stood.
“Well, well. We meet again, friend.”
Fuck, I had hoped never to hear his voice again. Mateo looked up.
Gil towered over him like a mountain—vast, immovable, casting a shadow that seemed to have its own climate.
He was dressed in tactical black that should have made him look like every other operator Mateo had ever seen, but somehow didn’t.
As if Gil’s uniform had been custom tailored specifically to his lean, functional muscle.
A cigarette sat at the corner of his mouth, unlit, and as Mateo watched, he produced a lighter from his breast pocket, touched the flame to the tip with a relaxed leisure, as if he had decided the chaos erupting around him was simply not his problem, and drew the first long pull with his eyes locked on Mateo’s.
“From the size of that wound, you should be dead.” Gil crouched down to his level—a single, fluid drop that brought those winter-blue eyes level with his, close enough that Mateo saw the complete, total absence of urgency in them.
“Fuck off,” Mateo managed to grit out, pain lacing his words with a set determination.
“I suppose I could. Your girlfriend will be left alone, never knowing what happened to you,” he mused, clearly amused by the whole life and death Mateo was teetering on.
Mateo struggled to breath, shooting icy daggers towards the man above him. “Save her,” he managed to drag out painfully.
Gil took another pull from his cigarette, then blew the smoke directly into Mateo’s face. “Shall we make a deal, friend?”
The cigarette moved to the corner of his mouth again. One hand, now free of the cigarette, perched under his chin while the other dangled between his legs.
“Here’s what I’m offering, and I’ll only say it once because I find repetition tedious.
” He tilted his head, studying Mateo with the same dispassionate focus one might assess livestock.
“I patch you up. You find José, kill him—which, given the look on your face right now, I’m guessing you’re already motivated to do—and then you take over his operation for me for a bit until someone I like can handle it.
Clean, documented, useful to both of us.
” A beat, perfectly timed. “In exchange, I save your girl and you work on and off for me when I ask.”
Your girl.
Gabriella. He knew about her, but now he’s adding he knows how important she is to me. Leverage.
Mateo struggled for a breath. “How did you know?” The words scraped out of him, rough and low.
Gil’s expression shifted into the ghost of a smile, the expression of a man who found a particular satisfaction in being several steps ahead but had the grace not to make too much of it. “About your location? Oh, lucky guess.” He let that sit for precisely one second. “Now. Do we have a deal?”