“Rafe was buying; I figured you’d want a cookie.”
Now his confusion clears and he nods. “Good call. Should’ve ordered a whole dozen.”
“You’re eating with us, right?”
“Nah, I’m planning on hanging out by the door. I need to make a couple phone calls and keep an eye on things.”
“Is Rafe one of the things you’re keeping an eye on? ‘Cause I feel like he should be.”
He subtly glances behind me where Rafe must be returning to the table. “He say something?”
I shift my weight, shaking my head. “Not really, I just… I don’t know.”
“He makes you uneasy.”
“He’s too…” I don’t know exactly how to finish this sentence, especially to Adrian, so I just trail off and hope he manages to read my mind.
As if he can, he nods his understanding. “Just keep an ear open. We’ll talk later.” A few decibels louder, he raises the cookie and an eyebrow. “Thanks for the cookie.”
“Anytime,” I tell him, turning back toward the table. Apprehension moves down my spine, but Rafe isn’t even looking at me now; he’s busy unwrapping his sandwich.
I approach my side of the table, sliding my purse off my shoulder and hanging it over the back of the chair. I bend down and pull out my phone before I sit down. Being here with Rafe, watching his shenanigans, it makes me miss Mateo. Before I even touch my sandwich, I tap out a quick “I miss you” text and send it to him.
“Who’s the other one for?” Rafe asks.
“The other what?” I ask, glancing up from the screen of my phone.
“The other cookie. You said they weren’t for you. Mateo doesn’t like cookies.”
“Oh. I got one for Meg. The chocolate chip cookies here are her favorite.”
His eyebrows rise with surprise as he takes a bite of his sandwich. “Meg? You frequently buy treats for people who sell you down the river?”
“I’ve made a lifestyle of rewarding people who sell me down the river,” I inform him, placing the phone on the table and grabbing my sandwich. “What is this thing? You didn’t even ask what I liked.”
“It’s good. You’ll like it. I used to get these all the time back when I lived here.” He takes a drink of his pop. “So, you’re allowed to go visit Meg?”
“No. I’ll have to send it with Maria when she takes her dinner. Mateo doesn’t want me to, but sometimes I send treats down since I can’t go myself.”
Rafe shakes his head at me. “You’re too nice.”
I shrug, eyeing up the giant chunk of bread, stuffed full of deli meat and cheese. “I’m married to Mateo. I have to be nice for both of us.”
“You don’t have to be nice to everyone. If someone hurts you, you should let them feel your wrath. Remind them you have power and if they don’t respect it, you can step on them. Do you send Vince care baskets, too?” he inquires.
The mention of Vince sobers me a bit. My thoughts drift to the baby nestled in my womb, the baby I still can’t feel. I can’t wait for the doctor’s appointment this week so I can see the baby moving on the screen. “No, I don’t know where Vince is. I know what state he lives in, Sal slipped and told me, but Mateo keeps the details to himself. I hope he’s doing okay.”
Rafe clearly thinks I’m crazy, but he doesn’t remark that time.
I probably shouldn’t, but having a relative outsider here, someone who knows Vince outside of Mateo, I’m too curious to stop myself from prodding him for answers. “Have you talked to him since Vegas?”
“Vince? Nah, I don’t know where he is. I figured he’d be out of the country by now. That’s what I’d have done. Mateo’s not going to rest until he’s dead.”
“That’s not true,” I argue. “Mateo let him out before and he told me on our honeymoon as long as Vince stays away, he’ll let him live.”
Smirking at his sandwich, he shoots back, “And Mateo would never lie, right?”
“He’s not lying,” I say, forcefully.
“He can’t keep letting people betray him for you. He keeps letting people get away with this kind of shit, he loses the respect he’s worked his whole life to build.”
Adrian has said similar—though much less blunt—things to me, so anxiety knots up my stomach. “No one outside the family knows any of this.”
Lifting a pointed eyebrow, he states, “Threats can come from inside the family, Mia. You start making Mateo forgive everyone who wrongs him, that’s the natural progression of things.”
“I’m not making him forgive anyone. I just don’t want him to kill either of them. He can banish Vince all he wants, I just… there has to be another way.”
“He already gave him another way,” Rafe states. “He blew it all to hell. Chances are if it didn’t work the first time, it won’t work this time, either. Think about it. How’s he gonna live on the outside when this is all he’s ever known? How do you go from this—” He indicates us, then Adrian standing guard by the door. “—to some mundane nine-to-five existence? Even if you hate this life, you keep doing it. It’s just what you do. And he’s already come back once. He says it’s for you, but was it really? Vince will come back again, and when he does, Mateo has to kill him. He’s out of other options.”