Man Like Mateo Thunder

Chapter 6

Alejandro Vance gasped. The man whose word set the economic pulse of the city was clutching his phone like a frightened child.

"Your... your wife?" He shoved back from his desk and paced the penthouse study, his drink forgotten in his hand. "Sovereign, I swear on my life, I had no idea! The regional board handled the filing. They brought me a security memo this evening claiming espionage and staged violence. They said the firm was compromised! I signed without checking the registry. Please, you must believe me!"

Mateo leaned against the peeling wallpaper.

"I do not care about your excuses, Alejandro. You let your subordinates tear up a legally binding contract an innocent woman earned. You let them slander her and throw her to the wolves to protect your own comfort."

"I'll fix it!" Sweat stood on Alejandro's forehead. "I'll reverse the cancellation immediately! I'll fire every executive on that board before the sun comes up! Name your terms, Sovereign."

Mateo looked at his own eyes in the dark windowpane. He wanted Sofia vindicated in front of everyone. He wanted the city to choke on its lies.

"You will not quietly reinstate the contract. You will hold a nationwide press conference at your corporate headquarters at noon tomorrow."

"A... a nationwide press conference?"

"You will stand in front of every major outlet in the country. You will personally apologize to my wife, Sofia, for your company's incompetence and slander. You will state publicly that the accusations of staged violence were a fabrication by corrupt actors."

"Yes! Yes, I'll do it!" Alejandro was nodding at an empty room. "I'll read whatever statement you write! Word for word!"

"I will not write it for you. You will write it yourself, and you will mean it. If I hear one sentence that sounds like a lawyer, we will have this conversation again, and it will be shorter."

"Understood. Completely understood."

"We are not finished. Because your board put her through hell, you will double the contract. Two hundred percent of the original commission, paid upfront as a lump sum. And you will issue a permanent blacklist against every subsidiary and shell company tied to Rodrigo or to Victor's enterprise. They are barred from doing business with any entity you control, effective immediately."

"Victor will come to me," Alejandro said faintly. "He will want to know why."

"Tell him the truth. Tell him you were given a choice between him and everything you own."

"And if he asks who gave it?"

"He won't have time to ask."

Mateo let a moment pass.

"One more thing, Alejandro. You have never heard my voice. Your own auditors found the forgery in that report, and that is why you acted. My name does not appear beside hers. Not in your statement, not in your boardroom, not in your sleep."

"I never received this call," Alejandro said quickly. "No one will ever hear otherwise."

"If anyone does, I will know whose mouth it came from."

Alejandro swallowed. Blacklisting Victor's syndicate would cost him dearly, in money and in politics. The alternative was losing everything he owned in sixty seconds.

"It will be done, Sovereign," he whispered. "At noon tomorrow the press conference airs nationwide. Your wife's contract is doubled, and Victor's people are erased from our ledgers. You have my word."

"See that it is."

Mateo ended the call and slid the phone back into his jacket. He breathed out slowly. Vance would move heaven and earth to deliver; he was too frightened to do otherwise.

He walked back down the hallway to the bedroom.

The room was dark except for the streetlamp outside the window. Sofia had not gone back to sleep. She sat on the edge of the mattress wrapped in a blanket, her shoulders shaking. Her phone lay on the floor beside the bed, its screen dark.

He hated seeing her like this, grieving a crisis he had already ended.

He went down on one knee in front of her and took her cold hands in his.

She looked at him with red eyes and tried to smile.

"I'm sorry, Mateo." Her voice was hoarse. "I wanted to give you the world. I wanted to get you out of that awful arena. And instead I ruined everything."

He squeezed her hands.

"You didn't ruin anything. Listen to me. The calls I just made... things are going to change. That contract is not lost."

Hope flickered in her face and was gone. "Mateo, don't. The board released an official memo. The media has the story. It's over."

"It is not over yet. Have a little faith." He stood and held her face in his palms, wiping a tear from her cheek with his thumb. "I have to work my shift tonight. If I don't show, Victor's men will come here looking for me. Lock the door behind me."

"Tonight? You're going back there tonight?" She caught his wrist. "After what he said to you in that room? After what his people did to me?"

"If I stay home, he sends men to this door, and you're behind it. If I go, I'm one more night with a mop." He turned his hand over and held hers. "One more night, Sofia. That's all I'm asking you for."

"You talk like you know something."

"I know you earned that contract. I know the people who took it are about to learn what it cost them."

She searched his eyes for madness or false hope. What she found was a calm she had never seen in her husband before, and it frightened her a little.

"How... how do you know that?"

"Because," he murmured, kissing her forehead, "justice is coming."