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Mateo waited for me to round the car, offering me his hand. The second I took it, he began walking. I had to take two steps in my heels for every stride he completed in order to keep up with him.
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”
He stopped walking and released a quiet breath. Turning towards me, he gripped the back of my neck and pulled me into him.
“You know she’s in there,” he bluntly responded. “If you’re not ready for this, you don’t have to go in, but I need to.”
Staring up at him, I felt a trickle of guilt for how I’d reacted in the car. It wasn’t just my life this affected, or she’d hurt. He’d been hurt too.
“I can do this. I think I need to do it, too.”
“We’ll go together then,” he said, pressing a soft kiss on my lips.
When he stepped away again, he captured my hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze just as we reached the front door. He opened it right up, waltzing us inside like we lived here.
We didn’t have to go any further to see the party had already started.
One man’s body lay at the bottom of the stairs with two bullet holes in the back of his head, face down in a puddle of blood.
Another looked as if she had been tossed right over the banister. Her right leg was twisted around to the left side of her body.
We walked forward and found ourselves staring into an open concept living, kitchen, and dining room.
Melody and Peyton both looked up as we entered, seemingly fine. In the center of the living room, two people sat on a coffee table. Elias and Sergio stood sentry.
“You two okay?” I asked my friends, still moving forward.
“We’re fine,” Peyton answered, watching me cautiously, expecting me to blow up on them. That could wait; right now, my attention was elsewhere.
I faltered for just a second; Mateo silently forced me to keep going.
Swallowing the nerves threatening to make me vomit every ounce of champagne I’d had, I let myself focus on the anger and the pain to drown out the crushing anxiety.
I let his hand go and slowly rounded the table. Nothing mattered but the voluptuous woman with long chocolate hair and shiny olive skin.
She turned her head and I found myself staring into eyes similar to mine, so familiar and, at one time, comforting.
“And there she is,” she said with more than a little amusement, looking me over from head to toe. “You grew up to be so beautiful.”
“Shame, isn’t it?” I retorted, knowing if she’d had her way I wouldn’t have gotten to grow up at all.
“Eva was a bit prettier. Do tell, how is my sweet girl?”
“Happy to be free of you, I assume,” I casually responded.
This woman was wacked in the head; I wasn’t going to let her have a field day with mine.
I dropped my gaze to her ruby red lips that were slowly tilting up into a smile. The rush of crippling heartbreak or onslaught of hysteria I feared would assault me in this moment never came.
I wanted to jam the barrel of my gun down her throat and finger fuck the trigger. I couldn’t do that, though. I couldn’t leave any permanent blemishes, and she needed to be alive if I wanted to follow through with Mateo’s plan.
Glancing at the barely conscious man beside her, I knew this was the boy toy I’d heard about—Brock, her pathetic little henchman.
“Is this the guy who did it?”
Mateo came to stand beside me, not sparing my mother the glance she so desperately wanted.
“This is him,” he replied, pressing his gun to the man’s kneecap.
