Page 31 of The Marriage Debt

They’ve been interrogated. Not questioned. Broken.

The front door is cracked open. I step inside and smell it before I see it. Blood, heavy and metallic, hanging in the air like steam. There are faint streaks across the floor—someone’s boots dragged something heavy, or someone, across the tile.

I find him at the bathroom sink, shirtless, washing his hands. There’s blood up to his elbows, more on the inside of his forearms, and a thin red line across his collarbone like someone got close enough to try scratching their way out. The blood mars his skin and tattoos, making him look fiercer than ever. He scrubs slowly, back curved toward the mirror, the muscles in his shoulders tense under the light.

He doesn’t look at me.

“They came to the back gate,” he says.

There’s no further explanation. No who or why. Just that.

His hands are clean by the time he reaches for the towel. I'm almost shaking, I'm so mad. If this had been afternoon pickup time from school, or if it had been a Saturday… This man has no sense.

“What if Lev had been outside?”

He stops, turns his head just enough to meet my eyes over his shoulder. “Then I would’ve killed them slower.”

“You say that like it’s something noble,” I tell him, voice steady, flat. “That you’d make them suffer more if Lev had been here, like that’s the solution.”

Mateo doesn’t turn his head. “If Lev had seen them, I’d make sure the fear stayed with them longer than the pain.”

“And that’s supposed to protect him? Watching you do that? Knowing it happens just outside the house?”

“No,” he says. “He wouldn’t watch it. But he’d know what happens when someone gets too close.”

I move in front of him, forcing him to look at me. “He’s five, Mateo. Not a soldier. He doesn’t need lessons in fear.”

His gaze doesn’t shift. “Then keep him behind the glass. You think I like doing this?”

“I think you like control.” I'm seething, ready to smack him.

“And I think you only hate this because I did it without asking you first.”

I don’t wait for him to say anything else. I walk away before I lose what little control I have left. My hands shake by the time I reach the hall. I keep walking until I’m out of sight, past the stairs, past the study, into one of the side rooms where the walls don’t echo and no one follows.

I don’t see him for the rest of the day.

Lev gets dropped off just after four. He barrels through the doors like he always does, arms full of drawings, voice carrying all the way through the foyer. I keep my smile in place long enough to greet him, feed him, and help him with the parts of his homework that don’t make sense yet. He goes to bed without asking for mine. No talk of nightmares. No fear in his face. That should be a relief. It isn’t.

By the time I slip into Mateo’s room, he’s already in bed. The light from the hallway spills across his side of the sheets. He doesn’t say anything when I slide in beside him. I don’t look at him, either. My pulse is steady, but I feel the shift the second he turns toward me.

He brushes my hair back, fingers grazing my neck. His mouth follows the path, slow at first, then deeper, warmer, more certain. I don’t stop him. I let him kiss me like none of it matters. Like the blood on the lawn was already forgotten. But what can I do? This is his home, his rules, my sentence.

And now my mind is searching for a way out.

16

MATEO

The call comes just after nine. I recognize the voice before he gives a name. He’s one of ours—old local, embedded years ago. Kept his badge clean enough to be useful, dirty enough to pick up the phone when I call.

“Three men pulled in this morning,” he says. “Trionfale precinct on a weapons charge. Light—two pistols, no resistance, clean vehicle—but one of the phones hit on a flagged line… Yours.”

I already know which one he means. “The burner. The Varo trace.” I'm grumbling, trying not to wake Lila as I slip out of bed to get dressed.

He confirms it. “Outgoing call. Twenty-two seconds. Logged before that SIM was pulled. You wanted a heads-up if anything local pinged.”

I hang up without responding. Rafe’s already in the hall outside my office and I tell him what I need. "Someone made a call to Lila’s burner. I want him separated from the others and brought somewhere quiet. I don’t want a file. I don’t want paperwork. Just a body I can get answers from before anyone realizes he’s missing." Our detective friend will send me all the information, and Rafe will intercept that and handle it accordingly.

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