Man Like Mateo Thunder

Chapter 8

The wooden handle of the mop creaked in Mateo's grip.

He stood in the shadows beneath the overhang of the VIP balcony, fifteen feet below the booth. The crowd was roaring at the cage. He had stopped hearing it.

The arena had been built to carry sound: the cheers, the fighters' pain. Tonight it carried Julian, who had raised his voice so that every syndicate boss in the lounge could watch him grovel to Victor.

Every word had come down to Mateo.

He kept his head bowed under the brim of his frayed cap. For months he had swallowed the sneers of Victor's thugs. He had gone down on his knees to scrub other men's blood off the concrete. He had let the dregs of the city treat him like an insect, and he had answered none of it. It was camouflage, the price of keeping Sofia out of the crosshairs that followed his real name.

But Julian, whose fingers Mateo had saved from Victor's machetes, had just offered his own sister to the oligarch like a cut of meat.

Sell yourself and pay the toll.

The rage that opened in his chest was cold. It was not a brawler's anger. He had watched Sofia break her back to save him. He had seen her struck in the face the night before, all to clear a debt he had invented to protect her worthless family.

Now they were going after what was left of her.

He was done being the husband who took the blame.

The disguise had one purpose. It was supposed to stand between Sofia and harm, and it still could. Nobody in that lounge needed to learn what he was. They only needed to learn that the janitor had a limit, and that they had found it.

He opened his blistered fingers. The mop clattered on the concrete. Nobody heard it over the crowd.

He stepped out of the shadows.

The janitor's shuffle was gone. His back straightened and his shoulders came level. He passed the service elevator and walked, unhurried, toward the carpeted staircase that led up to the VIP tier.

Two of Victor's enforcers stood at the foot of the stairs, big scarred men in tactical vests, paid to break the knees of anyone who approached uninvited. They saw the scrubber coming and grinned. One unclipped the baton from his belt and stepped out to meet him.

At ten feet, the guard stopped.

Neither man could have said why. It was something in the way the scrubber walked, and in his eyes, which did not see them as obstacles. The baton lowered. Without a word, both men stepped aside.

Mateo passed between them, his eyes on the balcony.

He counted the stairs without meaning to. On the first he saw her in the doorway of the break room with a bakery box. On the fourth, her head snapping back in the alley. On the ninth, her hands around a phone in the dark, saying we're ruined. By the landing he had stopped counting.

On the stairs the smell of bleach and old blood gave way to cigars, cologne, and spilled champagne. He reached the landing, stepped through the velvet ropes, and crossed the carpet of the lounge.

At the center booth Rodrigo was still holding court, leaning over the glass table with his flute in hand, telling the lower bosses how he planned to strip Sofia's firm for parts. Julian was laughing and pouring himself more whiskey. Victor lay back against the cushions, bored.

Mateo walked into the middle of them.

He didn't speak. The laughter stopped anyway. Glasses went still. One by one the bosses turned to stare at the filthy janitor standing on their carpet.

Rodrigo broke off mid-sentence, and his smile curdled.

"What the hell is this?" He slammed his glass down, champagne slopping over the rim. "Who let the scrubber off his leash? Get back to the floor before I have you thrown off the balcony."

Mateo ignored him. He looked at Sofia. Her face was white. Her eyes widened, relief and panic together, and she gave the smallest shake of her head. Run. Before they draw.

"Mateo." She found her voice. "Go back down. Please. This isn't your fight."

"It was always my fight," he said, without taking his eyes off her. "I let you carry it. I'm sorry for that."

One of the lieutenants laughed uncertainly. Nobody joined him.

He held her gaze a moment. Then he turned to Victor and Julian.

"This ends tonight."

He said it quietly, and it carried. Victor's cigar stopped halfway to his mouth.

"You have all grown bold in your ignorance," Mateo said. "You mistook my silence for weakness and my patience for submission. Because I wore these rags and scrubbed your floors, you believed you held the power of life and death over my family."

Victor recovered first. He had not kept this city by flinching in front of his own men.

"That's a pretty speech, accountant." He drew on the cigar before he went on. "Who wrote it for you? Go home. Sleep it off. I'll add a year to your debt for the interruption and we'll say no more."

"Add ten," Mateo said. "It changes nothing about tonight."

Victor's smile held, but he did not draw on the cigar again.

Julian was too drunk to feel the change in the room. He banged his whiskey down, his face going red. To be interrupted by his disgraced brother-in-law, here, in front of these men.

"Are you insane?" He got up on unsteady legs and jabbed a finger at Mateo's chest. "You don't speak to us! You're a beggar! A parasite! You dragged my sister into the gutter, and now you come up here to play the man?"

He barked a laugh and looked around the booth for someone to laugh with him.

"Look at you. You stood at an altar in front of God and our whole family. You swore to love her, cherish her, provide for her. And what did you do? You bankrupted us. Your vows are a joke, Mateo. You're not a husband. You're a liability."

Rodrigo chuckled and settled back with his arms crossed.

"Julian's right, accountant. You couldn't provide for her, so she'll have to provide for us. Real men will be handling your marital duties tonight. Be a good little husband. Step aside and let the adults do business."

Mateo did not shout. He did not move.

His jaw tightened until his teeth clicked, loud enough to hear. The veins stood out in his neck.

He looked at them, one after another, and there was nothing in his eyes at all. Around the booth the smiles went, and nobody reached for a glass.