Page 15 of Deviant Desires

Mateo doesn’t even bother to reach out and grab the ring box. He maintains eye contact and I can feel his dark gaze burning holes into my soul. “That includes you, Bambi. That ring,” he shoves his finger at the box, “means that I’ll do anything to protect you, too.”

“I used to think I wanted that kind of protection. When we first started dating, I liked that you were a little bit dangerous. I didn’t mind that I found a gun in your glove box once or that I found a bunch of fake IDs in a shoe box when I was helping you pack up to move in with me.” An invisible hand wraps and tightens around my throat. “If you were robbing banks or defrauding the government or something crazy like that, it was something I could live with. I wasn’t happy about it,” I allow, “but it was practically a victimless crime.” I didn’t consider predatory banks or the government victims.

I spent years overlooking his red flags. I even kept a few little details to myself instead of sharing them with Catherine. I didn’t want her to know that I was both terrified and turned on by Mateo’s dark and depraved side. I told her about the sex we had and the wicked things he did to me in bed, but somehow that felt easier than admitting that my boyfriend was a shady character.

“I can’t be with someone whose answer to a problem is to kill someone.”

Mateo’s eyes slowly fall from my face to the box I’m shoving in his direction. He looks at it for a long while in silence. “What if I told you that he threatened my parents? That he said he’d kill them if my brother didn’t do what he wanted?”

I almost lose my nerve. If someone threatened to kill my parents, what would I do? I don’t know if I’d even be able to function. “What did he want your brother to do?”

“Allow him to sell drugs at a very particular spot,” Mateo admitted. “He wanted to post up at a park near the high school, but Raniero said it was off-limits. When the guy sent some muscle to put pressure on Raniero, my brother gave the order for anyone found in possession of drugs near the high school to be shot on sight. It almost started a war.”

Why don’t I remember any of this? I can’t recall any shootings while the two of us were dating, at least no more than usual. On rare occasions, Manhattan locals got into fights with the soldiers from the nearby post. Sometimes it resulted in a gun being drawn and shots being fired, but that was usually in the bar district late at night.

Mateo finally reaches forward to grab the ring box. I feel his large, warm hand cover mine for a few seconds before he pulls away. He runs his thumb across the top of the black velvet and breathes out a heavy sigh. “I was supposed to have a meeting with him a couple of days after you were supposed to help me move, but that night, he showed up at my house with a gun. He waved it at me and threatened to shoot me in the face if I didn’t let him in. So I did.”

He can’t make eye contact with me, so he just stares at the box. “All I could think about was you showing up. What if you came through the door and he shot you? What if he hurt you in some way? I wasn’t even listening to his wild, drug-fueled rant until he mentioned my parents in Sicily.”

I never met Mateo’s parents, not officially. They were at his trial, but it wasn’t the time to introduce myself as the girlfriend that turned him in to the police. I had to settle for meeting them from afar and enduring their angry looks as I testified on the stand.

“That’s when he claimed that if I didn’t convince my brother to back his plan, he’d send someone to find them. They’d pay for our stubbornness, he claimed. Snot was coming out of his nose and his eyes were wild; he was dipping into his own stash and I knew it was only a matter of time before the gun in his hand went off.” Mateo slips the box into his pants pocket and meets my gaze once more. There is pain in his eyes now and it makes me shift my weight from one foot to the other. “I did what I had to do to protect the people I loved. My parents, you, my brother,” he frowns, “I killed him to protect you, B.”

Tears prickle the back of my eyelids and suddenly my face feels hot and wet. I open my mouth to tell him that I understand now, but I can’t get the words out. I’m overwhelmed by all of this new information.

I thought he was going to tell me something stupid like the guy didn’t do his job right or he’d hit his car or something. I should have known that Mateo was a better man than that. I should have known that I never would have walked in on him strangling someone if it wasn’t for a good reason. If I would have talked to him that night, perhaps everything would be different.

I’m the reason we’re both broken right now; I’m the reason for all of this.

13

MATEO

Bambi collapses on the couch. She opens and closes her mouth like a fish gasping for water and then walks over to the couch and flops down. Tears burst from her eyes and she buries her head in her hands. I just stand there looking at her dumbfounded.

I wait for her to say something, but she can’t stop crying. And for some reason, it plucks a nerve. After all these years, after everything I did for her, she doesn’t see me as a human. She sees me as this person who killed another for no good reason. And knowing she thinks of me like that is the final straw.

I storm out of the house without so much as a goodbye. With my hand still fingering the engagement ring box in my pocket, I half consider pulling it out and throwing it as far as I can. But I make it back into my house before I can fulfill the deed.

I throw the ring into the living room instead. It hits a painting on the wall and both fall to the floor. All of my years of anger management classes come back to me, screaming at me to calm down before I do something I’ll regret. But I can’t hear their words over the fury barreling through my head.

In the kitchen, I destroy everything I can pick up. The kitchen table is tipped over and the chairs and thrown at the stove. The cabinets are battered under my anger and the glass oven shatters. I tear plates off of the open shelving and throw them at the wall, watching the ceramic explode into a million little pieces.

Something catches on my face and stings my cheek. When I reach up to touch it, I bring my hand back down full of blood. A piece of glass must have reverberated back at me because there’s a gash in my cheek now.

I stomp into the downstairs bathroom and use the hand towel to stop the bleeding. The white monogrammed towel will be ruined forever. The cut isn’t very deep, but it bleeds like a stuck pig. The skin around it puffs up and the pain kicks in as I roughly wipe away the blood.

I slam my fist into the wall in frustration. My knuckles feel like they break when they come in contact with the drywall, now throbbing with their own self-inflicted pain.

Each thing I do, everything I destroy, only makes the pain inside of me burrow even deeper into my soul. “She didn’t want you,” I tell the reflection in the mirror. “She thinks you’re scum.” When my reflection doesn’t say anything comforting in response, I break the mirror. Luckily the hand I use is wrapped in a bloody towel and only a few shards of glass cut the skin.

My chest heaves up and down as I try to slow my heart rate. I need to calm down and control myself. One deep breath in, one deep breath out. I tell myself that it’s over. It’s finally time to move on.

That’s when my body starts to mechanically move for me. I leave the bathroom in a state of disarray and head upstairs, finding myself in the master bathroom next. I wash the blood off my hands and clean up the mess on my face. I find a rogue bandage in one of the drawers and put it on the cut, careful to cover as much of the center as possible.

The next thing I know, I’m lying in bed. The sun is high in the sky and my drapes are wide open, but I fall into a fitful slumber. I dream about Bambi, about letting her go. And when I wake to my aching body and even deeper aching soul, I realize that my dream was prophetic.

Cleaning my house is no easy task. I work for maybe an hour and see no discernible difference, but I can’t keep working. My fist is swollen and turning purple. Though the sun set a few hours ago and the clock says 2:00 am, I call Raniero.

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