Man Like Mateo Thunder

Chapter 2

The employee break room felt like a concrete tomb. The air smelled of ammonia, stale sweat, and the blood that seemed to seep up through the foundations.

Mateo sat on a cracked plastic chair with his elbows on a dented metal table, looking at his bleach-burned hands while the fluorescent tubes buzzed overhead. The anger from the cage had cooled into something patient. Eighty-nine percent. The trap was set. He only had to choose the moment to spring it.

The steel door groaned on its hinges. He tensed, expecting one of Victor's enforcers with another order but it was Sofia, his wife.

She stood in the doorway holding a small white bakery box to her chest. She still wore her work clothes, a grey skirt and a blouse wrinkled from a long day at the office. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her shoulders sagged under the debt she believed he had caused. But when she found him in the dim room, she smiled.

It hurt to look at her. She kept him human, and she was the source of his worst guilt. He could buy this city twice over. He could give her diamonds, an island, and a private army. Instead, to keep her out of the crosshairs that followed his real name, he made her live inside the lie he had invented to shield her family.

"You didn't think I'd forget what day it is, did you?" she asked.

Mateo blinked. The days had run together: scrubbing floors, dodging Julian, plotting the end of Victor's empire.

"How did you get past the gate?" he asked. "They don't let family down here."

"I told the man I was bringing your dinner. He looked in the box and laughed at me." She shrugged one shoulder. "Let him laugh."

"You should be home. You've been at the office since six."

"Since five. And I'm going back." She said it lightly, the way she said everything that cost her. "Sit down, Mateo. You're hovering."

He sat.

Sofia set the box on the table and opened it. A single chocolate cupcake. She took a striped candle and a lighter from her pocket, pushed the candle into the frosting, and lit it. The flame lit her tired face.

"Happy birthday, Mateo." Her eyes were wet. "I know things are a nightmare right now. I know my family treats you like you're less than human because of the ledgers. But you didn't run. When Victor's men came to collect, you stepped in front of them. You took this job to keep my family safe. I see what you're giving up to fix this. I love you."

His throat closed. He reached out and traced the line of her jaw with rough fingers. She leaned into his hand and let out a shaky breath.

"You shouldn't have spent money on this," he said. "You need every penny."

"I needed to celebrate the man who holds my world together." She opened her eyes. "Now make a wish before the wax gets in the chocolate."

Mateo looked at the candle. He ran the world's most powerful shadow bank; he had no use for wishes. But he had one anyway: the day he could drop the lies and give her everything she deserved. He blew out the flame.

"What did you wish for?"

"If I tell you, it won't happen."

"That's not a real rule."

"It is where I'm from."

She laughed, the first real laugh he had heard from her in weeks, and reached for the cupcake to break it in half.

"Beautiful." The voice came from the doorway. "Squalor and romance. It brings a tear to my eye."

Mateo stood and put himself between Sofia and the door.

Victor leaned against the frame with a Cuban cigar in his teeth. He wore a velvet suit and a gold watch that caught the fluorescent light. Three scarred enforcers flanked him, hands resting on the pistols in their waistbands.

"State your business, Victor," Mateo said. "This is a break room. We're off the clock."

Victor chuckled, a wet rattle. He strolled in, blew smoke at the ceiling, and ignored Mateo. His eyes went to Sofia and travelled down her body.

"It really is a tragedy." He tapped ash onto the floor Mateo had scrubbed hours ago. "A woman like you, Sofia, tied to an anchor like him. Cheap clothes. Long hours. A birthday in a room that smells of bleach. You deserve silk sheets and champagne, not..." He waved at the cupcake.

"I chose my husband, Victor," Sofia said. "Nobody tied me to anything."

"Choose." He tasted the word. "People choose badly when they're young."

"Keep your eyes on my face when you speak," Mateo said. His knuckles cracked in the quiet.

Victor looked at him at last, smirking. "You don't make demands in my building, scrubber. You owe me thirty years of labor for the millions your bookkeeping cost me. I own your time. I own your future. I own every breath you take in this city."

He stepped in until the cigar smoke was all Mateo could smell.

"But I am a reasonable businessman." His eyes slid back to Sofia. "Thirty years is a long time. You'll likely die an old man washing blood off my floors. So I'll offer you a discount."

He pointed the glowing end of the cigar at her.

"Give her to me for one night. Send her up to my penthouse. Let her entertain me until the sun comes up. If she's enthusiastic, I cut ten years off your debt. Ten years of your miserable life, for a few hours of her time. What do you say, accountant? Will you let pride cost you a decade?"

The room went silent.

The buzzing of the lights faded. The smoke vanished. The husband stepped aside, and the Sovereign woke up wanting blood.

Victor's throat was two feet away. The edge of a hand to the trachea would crush it. As Victor dropped, Mateo would turn, strip the pistol from the nearest enforcer's waistband, and put a bullet in all three guards before they understood their boss was dead. Three seconds.

He shifted onto the balls of his feet. He was going to kill this man. He was going to—

Fingers dug into his forearm.

"Mateo, no!"

Sofia threw herself between them, her back against his chest, gripping his arms with all her strength.

"Don't," she begged, tilting her head back to look at him. "They'll shoot you. Please. I can't lose you."

He looked down into her eyes. She thought she was saving his life. She was saving Victor's.

And she was right to stop him, for reasons she couldn't know. If he killed Victor here, the Syndicate's enemies, the people who believed the Sovereign was dead, might hear of it. That would put a target on Sofia's back. He would not trade her life for his revenge.

He made his fists open. He wrapped his arms around her and turned her away from Victor's gaze.

"We decline your offer," he said evenly.

Victor threw his head back and laughed.

"Look at him," he told his enforcers. "Hiding behind his wife's skirt. She begs for his life because she knows he has no spine." His eyes went dead. "You'll scrub my floors until your hands bleed, accountant. Enjoy your cheap cake."

He waved a hand and strolled out, his men behind him. The steel door slammed.

Mateo held Sofia and breathed. All his power in the shadows meant nothing when a thug could say that to his wife and he had to stand there and take it. He felt like a failure.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You should never have had to hear that."

"Don't you dare apologize for him." Her voice shook, and she steadied it. "Do you know what I saw just now? I saw a man with three guns behind him, and I saw my husband tell him no. That is not nothing, Mateo. That is everything."

Sofia pulled back and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. She gave him a wobbly smile.

"Don't listen to him." She cupped his cheek. "He wants to break you. He won't. And I promise you, Mateo, this nightmare is almost over."

He frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I have a surprise for you." Hope had come into her face. "That's going to be my real birthday gift."

"Sofia—"

"I have to get back to the office." She kissed him quickly. "Wait for me at home tonight. Everything is going to change."

She hurried out. Her footsteps faded down the concrete hallway.

Mateo stood a long time looking at the untouched cupcake. She was working herself to death over a debt he could erase with one phone call. It made him feel bad but it won’t be long again now, she would have the world if she wanted.

He turned to leave and saw her black leather handbag on the chair.

He grabbed it and jogged through the corridors to the rear exit. Sofia always parked her old sedan in the alley behind the arena to avoid paying for street parking.

He pushed the door open. The alley was dark except for one flickering streetlamp at the far end.

"Sofia!" He held up the bag.

A scuffle of footsteps. A muffled scream.

He ran.

At the end of the alley a dark van idled with its side door open. Four men in were wrestling someone toward it.

Sofia.

She kicked and twisted, but they were too big. One of them struck her across the face. Her head snapped back and she went limp.

"Hey!" The roar tore out of him.

They threw her onto the floor of the van and jumped in. The door slammed. Tires shrieked, and the van swung out of the alley into traffic.