Chapter 13 - What Mateo Never Told Hazel
Hazel waited until Noah was asleep.
Then she faced Mateo.
“What didn’t you tell me?”
Mateo did not evade.
“I found you once.”
Her stomach dropped.
“When?”
“Noah was two.”
Hazel stared.
“You said you stopped searching because the photographs were leading Victor to me.”
“I did.”
“That isn’t what you just said.”
“I found you accidentally.”
He had been traveling for business.
At a roadside café outside Louisville, he saw Hazel through the window.
Noah sat in a high chair.
Two years old.
Laughing.
Mateo knew immediately.
Not with certainty.
With something deeper.
He saw his own mother’s eyes in the boy.
He sat in his car for forty minutes.
Then left.
Hazel’s voice shook.
“You knew.”
“I suspected.”
“And you left.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because you looked safe.”
She slapped him.
Mateo accepted it.
“You let me raise him alone.”
“Yes.”
“You let him grow up without a father.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Mateo’s eyes filled.
“Because the week before, Victor had killed a man’s daughter to punish him for cooperating with me.”
Hazel stopped.
“I looked at Noah and understood what my world could do to him.”
“So you decided for us.”
“Yes.”
“The exact thing that destroyed us.”
“Yes.”
His willingness to admit it made anger harder, not easier.
“I was wrong,” Mateo said. “Again.”
Hazel turned away.
“I don’t know how to forgive this.”
“I’m not asking tonight.”
“Do you want forgiveness?”
“More than anything except Noah’s safety.”
She looked back.
Mateo continued.
“I thought loving you meant keeping danger away from you. I never understood that I was also keeping choices away from you.”
Hazel cried quietly.
“And I thought protecting Noah meant keeping you away from him.”
Mateo stepped closer but stopped before touching her.
“We both chose fear.”
Hazel nodded.
“Yes.”
“Maybe we stop.”
She looked at his open hand.
Then took it.
Not forgiveness.
A beginning.
The next morning brought news.
Victor had escaped federal transport.
Someone rammed the vehicle.
Two guards injured.
Victor gone.
Mateo’s old instincts returned instantly.
Weapons.
Orders.
Men.
Hazel saw it happen.
Then he stopped himself.
He called the investigators.
Shared every safe house.
Every account.
Every contact.
He did not disappear into revenge.
Hazel noticed.
So did Noah.
“Are you going to catch the bad man?” Noah asked.
Mateo crouched.
“I’m going to help.”
“Why don’t you catch him?”
“Because there are people whose job is to do that.”
Noah considered this.
“Like Batman?”
“Not exactly.”
“Batman doesn’t wait for police.”
Hazel covered a laugh.
Mateo sighed.
“We need to discuss your media choices.”
For one morning, they almost felt normal.
Then Caleb arrived.
He carried an envelope.
“I found this in Victor’s storage unit.”
Inside was a deed.
Brooks & Thyme.
Hazel stared.
Victor owned the building through a shell company.
Her restaurant had never been random.
He had guided her there.
Watched her there.
Waited.
Every piece of safety she had built had been constructed inside his surveillance.
Hazel felt violated.
Mateo expected her to break.
Instead she became furious.
“He doesn’t get it.”
“What?”
“My restaurant.”
“He legally owns the building.”
“I don’t care.”
She stood.
“He doesn’t get my recipes. My staff. My customers. My life.”
Mateo smiled faintly.
“There she is.”
“Don’t.”
“I said nothing.”
“You made the face.”
“What face?”
“The proud face.”
Noah looked up.
“She does the sad-happy face.”
Mateo nodded.
“I’ve seen it.”
Hazel pointed at both of them.
“No teaming up.”
Noah grinned.
It was the first time Mateo and Noah shared a joke at her expense.
She pretended annoyance.
Inside, something healed.
That afternoon, investigators traced Victor to the Lombardi lake property.
Mateo knew it well.
His father had taken him there as a child.
Hazel looked at the map.
“There’s another way in.”
Mateo frowned.
“How do you know?”
“My mother took us there once.”
“What?”
Hazel remembered being seven.
A lake.
A cabin.
Her mother frightened.
A cellar door.
Evelyn had hidden something else there.
They drove with federal agents.
The cabin was empty.
In the cellar, Hazel found a metal tin.
Inside was a cassette tape.
Mateo found an old player.
Evelyn’s voice filled the room.
“If Victor ever finds this, he’ll know I discovered the one thing Antonio never did.”
A pause.
“Victor Hale wasn’t working alone.”
Mateo and Hazel looked at each other.
The recording continued.
“There was someone above him.”
Footsteps sounded upstairs.
Mateo raised his gun.
The cellar door slowly opened.
A familiar voice said, “Put the weapon down, son.”
Mateo went white.
May you like
His father had been dead for eleven years.
Antonio Lombardi stepped into the doorway.
