Page 9 of The Doctor's Twins

Can you believe it? I was more worried about the fucking rug than I was about the fact that my husband had just assaulted me. And why? Because it was somehow my fault that the cleaning staff broke his precious vase. According to Mateo, I should have kept an eye on them, as opposed to lying around all day doing nothing.

What the fuck!

My husband stormed off while I lay there… bleeding and speechless. It took me a while to get up. What had just happened? How did we go from, “Hi, babe. How was your day,” to my soulmate throwing a punch in my direction? Who was this man?

I heard the front door slam and assumed it was safe to get up and go to my bathroom to assess the damage the brute had done to my face. I thought about the interview I had with the head of the resident department at the local hospital in two days. How was I going to explain this?

I hardly recognized my reflection in the vanity mirror above the bathroom sink. I fell back instantly on my medical training and checked if my septum was broken. Thank God it wasn’t, although I knew I was going to be sporting a shiner where the blood vessels under the skin had shattered.

“Ouch! Son of a bitch!” I yelped as I touched the tender area.

I made a decision right there and then to cut my losses and get as far away from Mateo Garcia as possible. I cleaned my face, took a few Ibuprofens for the pain and swelling, and threw some clothes into a bag. That was the easy part. The hard bit would come later when I’d have to make a decision about my disastrous marriage.

Twenty minutes later I grabbed my car keys and headed for the front door. That’s when the depth of the shit I was in sunk in. Mateo had locked me in. To say that the security system at our home was advanced, was an understatement. The place was locked up tighter than a miser’s asshole.

I tried several exit routes but to no avail. I was worse off than Rapunzel, and there was no knight in shining armor to save my sorry, beaten ass.

Worst of all, I couldn’t even call the cops and report the maniac. Mateo and the commissioner were tight, so tight in fact that the latter was a VIP guest at our wedding. I knew instinctively whose side Pedro would be on.

I didn’t want to call my parents or Alyssa because I would never live down the humiliation of admitting that I’d made a terrible mistake by marrying a man I barely knew. Could I have been a bigger idiot?

All that was left was for me to take myself off to the spare room and suck it up. I’d have to wait until Mateo came to his senses and then make a move. When the shock of what had just happened wore off, I started crying. Not out of self-pity, but out of pure anger.

I wasn’t sure at what point or hour I fell asleep but when I opened my eyes, it was morning and Mateo was nowhere to be found. I got up and went to the bathroom. Yup. There it was. A shiner of note. I looked like I’d had my butt whooped in a boxing ring.

Mateo was MIA that whole day and, frankly, I wasn’t too upset about it. Okay, that wasn’t entirely true. I was half expecting a truckload of roses to arrive with a gold leaf-bordered card attached that read,

‘Please, I beg you for forgiveness, Peyton,’

or at the very least,

‘My love, I have no excuse. I’ll explain later’,

or some such thing. But, there was nothing—nothing but silence and a locked house. I made spaghetti with butter and black pepper for dinner and went to sleep.

I woke up the next morning to the sound of Mateo’s voice coming from downstairs. He was talking to someone on his phone. His tone was as normal as it used to be when he and I had first met. It was unnerving, to say the least.

What was I to do? Stay there and pretend I was asleep? Get up and confront him about not only hitting me but also locking me inside our home for two nights and a full day? I heard footsteps coming up the stairs. My whole body went rigid. I’d never been fearful of anyone before, but this was new territory for me.

“Good morning, my love. We’re joining Pedro and his wife for dinner at 8 pm. I have to work late so I’ll fetch you just before then,” he said, cool as a cucumber, and went to the bathroom.

What! Was he nuts? Great. I married a fucking psychopath!

I didn’t know what to say—so I said nothing. When he was done in the bathroom, he walked across to me, kissed me on the cheek, and then went to his closet. Once he’d changed into fresh clothes, he turned and faced me again.

“It’s okay. I’ve let it go. But, please, be more attentive the next time the cleaners are here. What time are you going to the hospital?”

I had to suppress a hysterical outburst. A screaming shit fit was bubbling far too close to the surface for comfort. Was he mad?

He started walking toward me again, and I must have flinched when he raised his hand to move a strand of my hair out of my face because he looked genuinely surprised.

“What’s wrong?” he asked me.

“Are you fucking joking?”

“What do you mean?”

“Mateo, you punched me! Look at my face. How can you act as if nothing happened?”

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