Once Burned (Morelli Family 3)

I don’t.

The following morning I wake up before her. I realize I forgot to check her assignment yesterday, so I go ahead and look it over.

While I’m out today, write about something you want to do someday. Something you want to experience, whether you want to do it with someone or alone, and why.

I want to go see my mom and dad.

I don’t want to go alone, because I wouldn’t feel secure, but I want to see if they managed to turn things around. If giving me up was worth it.

Huh.

That wasn’t what I was expecting.

Makes me a bit uncomfortable, actually. Elise never told me the story of how she came to be Mateo’s, and I never asked him for the specifics, so I decide to make that today’s homework.

I don’t know if I’m ready for that story. He told me her father gave her to him in exchange for a debt, but for the sake of having to coexist with him for the next five years, I didn’t dig much deeper. I head to the shower, already anxious at the prospect of having to read about Mateo from Elise’s perspective. Not only that, but opening up the possibility of reading things about him that will make me less keen on protecting him, which is my job right now.

Mateo’s transactional treatment of human beings is one of the harder things to handle—and it’s not like he’s an easy package to begin with. Women might be drawn to him, but as a human being, he leaves a lot to be desired.

I’m tempted to wake her up and make her get the story over with now, but I have to go to his house next, so I should probably wait.

—

It’s a long day. A long, boring day full of fruitless perusal of surveillance tapes and talking to people with nothing useful to tell me. I end up staying later than I intend, and running late getting home. Elise is curled up on her couch with her journal when I get back, but she puts it aside and heads to the kitchen when I walk in.

“You should’ve told me you were on your way,” she says, turning on the oven. “I’ll just warm it up, it’ll be a few minutes.”

I don’t even feel that hungry anyway, but it may be the anxiety I’ve had gnawing away at me all day. I pick up her journal, glancing down at the cover, dreading opening it.

“Oh,” she says, approaching me with trepidation. “I did the homework, but I was very detailed. I didn’t mean to be, I just started writing and got carried away.”

“You can be as detailed as you want,” I assure her.

“I didn’t want to—I know you can be…” She trails off, her big blue eyes trailing down the arm of my sleeve. “I didn’t want to make you feel weird.”

“I don’t want you to worry about that. Especially not when you’re journaling. I’m not going to judge you.”

She raises an eyebrow as if to say, “Come on, now.”

I scowl. “I don’t judge you.”

The eyebrow climbs even higher, and she adds in a pair of pursed lips.

I open the journal, clearing any emotion from my face, and begin reading.

Tell me about the night you were sold to Mateo.

I was upstairs in my room when Mateo and his men showed up. I could hear my mom yelling at my dad downstairs, and he was telling her to shut up, that he would handle it. I was in bed, but I climbed out and crept to the edge of the stairwell. Mateo himself was downstairs, and I’d heard of him, but all bad things. I was expecting a monster. I was expecting some old, ugly gangster-looking guy with slicked back hair and a puffy, sour face. When I finally worked up the nerve to sneak down to the edge where I could sneak a peek, what I saw instead was Mateo. He seemed at ease, untroubled, despite my father’s evident fear. One of his men had a baseball bat, and he kept twisting it, waiting for Mateo to tell him to use it.

My father spotted me on the stairs. Mateo turned to see what he was looking at. My dad told me to come down, and I was so scared, but I did.

Mateo’s gaze must have lingered on me long enough for my father to notice. He didn’t say anything, didn’t even address my coming into the room, just turned back to look at my father.

“You like her?” my father asked.

It made me feel cold all over. I was inexperienced from a practical perspective, but I wasn’t so young that I didn’t understand what he meant.

Mateo stared at my father, but his whole face was empty. He still didn’t speak, and he’d been talking plenty before I came down, so it made me uneasy.