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Her relationship with the cruel drug lord was very confusing to me, but we mostly avoided awkwardness over the subject. He made her happy, and that was what mattered. I was looking forward to standing beside her on her wedding day.
Even if it meant Mateo would be standing opposite me, taking his place as Adrián’s best man.
“I want to show you something,” Mateo said, his hands tense around the steering wheel. “I think I owe it to Adrián to do this before the wedding.” He cut his eyes over to me. “We’re going to have to be near each other for the ceremony.”
“It’ll be fine.” I waved away his concern, even though my anxiety had been building for days. I would have to take Mateo’s arm when we processed out of the church after the ceremony.
I could handle touching him for a few minutes just to make sure Valentina’s pictures looked nice.
“Maybe,” he allowed. “But before the big day, I’m going to try to make it so that you hate me a little less.”
“I don’t hate you,” I said truthfully before I could think about holding the words back.
“No,” he said on a low rumble. “I don’t think you do. You hate the idea of me you’ve built in your head over the last three weeks. You don’t hate the man I was when we were together.”
My heart twisted at the mention of that man. I wanted so badly for him to be real.
“I’m going to show you something that I never wanted you to see,” he continued, his huge body coiled tight from some invisible strain. “It might help you understand me better. I won’t pretend that I’m not a criminal. And I won’t lie to you and take back anything I told you about the circumstances surrounding your engagement. I did make a deal for your virginity. I would do it again if it meant keeping you from Ronaldo.” His knuckles turned white. “But I’ve decided to provide you with more context, so we’re taking a little field trip.”
“Where are we going?”
His rugged features twisted in a grimace. “Hell.”
We drove for half an hour, the tension growing thicker until the atmosphere inside the Porsche was nearly suffocating. The shining skyscrapers of the LA skyline fell into the distance as we drove away from the glittering, opulent parts of the city and into ramshackle, impoverished neighborhoods.
Vibrant murals in bold colors broke up the wash of gray cement blocks and fading paint that flaked off dilapidated buildings. Graffiti was scrawled everywhere, the hastily-drawn marks so different from the artistry of the murals.
There were vast gaps between the buildings, sometimes taking up as much as half a city block. The spaces stood vacant; flat expanses of bare concrete behind chain-link fencing.
“That’s the new money coming in,” Mateo explained in a monotone, noting the direction of my gaze. “The only thing the gangs in this neighborhood hate more than each other is gentrification. Developers are buying up land they don’t even have a use for yet. They bulldoze the housing and pour concrete to mark their claimed territory. They’re pushing out the undesirables, displacing the communities steeped in crime that will damage their future business ventures.” He sneered the last, his disdain for the wealthy discernable in his disgusted tone.
Did he feel that same scorn toward me for my wealthy background? Mateo had told me he’d grown up poor, but now that he worked for Adrián, he had the same comforts and expendable income as my family did. He wasn’t poor anymore, but his feelings surrounding money were more complex than I could have fathomed.
I remained quiet, uncertain what to say. It was becoming clear to me that Mateo hated this place. It was also obvious that this was where he’d been raised.
He resented the rich men who were coming in and transforming the neighborhood, but he also held deep-seated contempt for the area.
As we drove past crumbling houses and old, beaten-up cars, Mateo’s scowl drew impossibly deeper.
The Porsche slowed in front of a sprawling, single-story building. It was utilitarian and blandly beige, and the only mark of character was the cartoon lion emblazoned on a banner that hung by the wide, glass front doors.
“This is where I went to school. For a while.” Mateo’s dark eyes were fixed on the building, as though he was focusing on some disturbing scene I couldn’t see.
“You see those prison bars around the grounds?” he asked bitterly, drawing my attention to the tall iron fencing that served as a barrier around the property. “They’re not to keep dangerous people in. They’re to keep the criminals out.” His mouth pressed to an angry slash. “They don’t work.”
He tore his gaze from the school, and the Porsche started moving again.
“So, what do you think?” he asked coldly, not deigning to glance over at me. “What are your first impressions of home sweet home?”
