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I didn’t ask if he was ready to talk. I didn’t think pushing him would help, so I waited silently. If he couldn’t talk to me today, hopefully he would eventually.
A few moments later, he began to speak, his voice so soft I had to strain to hear him at first.
“The cartel leaders were furious that you’d escaped. I tried to assure them you wouldn’t make it far, but they wanted to see your body as proof. I was terrified they would order me to help them hunt you down, but instead they chose to test my loyalty in other ways. They threw me and the men I’d been working with in an underground cell. There was no light at all, and they left us there for days with no food or water. I thought I would die there, but at least it wouldn’t have been for nothing. I’d gotten you out, and there were people watching over you.”
Waves of nausea had me nearly bent double at the thought of him trapped in some hole in the ground, thirsty, hungry, and suffocating. “If I’d known, I would’ve come for you.”
“I wouldn’t have wanted to leave because that would have put you in more danger.”
“We would have figured something out. Together. Just like we’re going to now.”
“The whole situation seemed insurmountable to me. Sacrificing myself was the only way to help you. My family didn’t have any resources like yours. I didn’t know how to even conceive of a world like that. Growing up I often went without meals. My dad drank too much and didn’t give a shit about me or any of my half siblings. All my mother cared about was keeping us quiet so we didn’t piss him off. I got out as soon as I could. I didn’t expect to ever have resources or people on my side.”
“Didn’t you think you had me? If not, why would you have done all that?”
“I knew how I felt about you, but I couldn’t be sure you felt the same.”
“Jesus. I guess we should’ve talked a little bit more in between all the fucking.”
He chuckled, and after another a few moments of silence, he said, “Eventually, the cartel leaders let us out and gave us each a single bottle of water. They sent us on a mission and told us we’d get food if we succeeded. We hunted down three men and slaughtered them. I still don’t know if the men deserved it. I don’t know who they were. I don’t even know if they had families, but I was so out of it and so desperate for food, I just did what they told me.”
Matteo was shaking. I wrapped my arms around him, holding him tighter. “You did what you had to do. You were in a world of kill or be killed.”
“Before that, I always made sure there was a reason for any of the horrible things I did.”
“There was a reason then, too. You were undercover and you did that for me.”
“I’d kill anyone who threatened you, without question.”
“Same,” I told him, and that included members of my family. Maybe I should’ve just killed them years ago, but I would never have gotten away with it then, not like I could now.
“I wish I could say that was the only time I was sent on a mission where I didn’t ask questions, but it wasn’t. I told myself that anyone involved with the cartel was deserving of my wrath, but I knew plenty of people were forced to help them. I don’t know how to get over everything I did. The whole time I was with them, I felt like I wasn’t myself. I was as much of a monster as they were. My memories of you were the only thing that kept me human.”
“Why didn’t you have your handler contact me? For God’s sake, Matteo, I would’ve found a way to get you out.”
“Would you have believed anything the CIA told you?”
“I believe you now.”
“Yeah, but you had to fuck the hell out of me before you would even listen.”
I snorted. “Do you think I wouldn’t have done that a year ago? Six months ago?”
“I wasn’t sure you’d even speak to me again until I saw you walk into the cell you put me in looking like you wanted to fuck me at least as much as you wanted to kill me.”
“I never wanted to kill you. I wanted to want to, but I knew I never could.”
“I wasn’t sure how you would react to me. I thought I might not be the same person I was before. I thought I might have truly become like the men in the cartel. That I wouldn’t be able to be civilized.”
I smiled at him. “You’re doing a damn fine job. You even remembered how to wash dishes.”
Matteo laughed, but there was no real humor in the sound.
“The things they made me do…some of them were almost as hard as shooting you.”
“And what would have happened if you’d refused them?”
“They would’ve killed me. They were suspicious of me from the beginning, and why wouldn’t they be? If they’d gotten any hint I wasn’t fully in with them, I would’ve been dead.”
