Andrew's POV
"Mateo Torrez."
The name left my lips before I even fully thought it through.
I could feel Jem tense in front of me. Mateo froze mid lash as recognition flooded through Patrick.
I could se him now. Tall and skinny, lanky even, his hair was dyed red back then and was long enough to cover his eyes. He never looked people in the eyes and always tried to make himself as small as possible.
He's changed so much in only a few years.
His black hair was grown back out and it was clear that he no longer had a problem with looking people in the eyes. He bulked up quickly, nearly doubling in size while confidence fell off of him in waves. He was nothing like he used to be.
"Are you naming off people at random just to save yourself some time," he asked with a new glare covering his face. "It's pathetic."
Jem hardly breathed as he put pieces of the puzzles together.
"Toe," Jem mumbled mostly to himself before a glare covered his face as he stared up at the kid who still only paused with the whip in his hand.
"So now you remember me? Now that Andrew did the hard work for you."
"Toe," he said again, louder this time as he put a harsher tone on the word. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
Mateo's grip on the whip tightened as he glared right back at Jem, the shock that had filled the room was gone the second Jem raised his voice. Mateo's face dropped into the face of a child who was lightly scolded by a parent.
"Could you please stop with that stupid name? I told you I hated it," he sighed but Jem didn't care.
"Are you fucking stupid," Jem only yelled back. "Let us go you stupid brat. Dev and Barrett will be here before long; do you really want to be here when they get here?"
"I'm not afraid of them Jem."
"We both know you should be," Jem said with a sigh, the anger in his voice fading slowly. "You're being an idiot. I can forgive you for that but Dev won't and you know it. Let us go and we'll work something out-."
"No," Mateo said harshly, a new glare working onto his face. "You don't get to act like this! You are the one who abandoned us! Don't pretend like you have the right to parent me right now."
"You're going to get yourself killed," Jem reasoned, slight panic filling his voice.
Mateo rolled his eyes but didn't bother answer as he turned his attention back to Patrick.
"Come on Patrick. Jem and Andrew seem to remember now; surely they aren't the only ones. You were supposed to be the new savior but look at you now. Each of you have failed me."
"I took you away from Jem. He was using you. How am I wrong for helping you," Patrick asked weakly as he hung from the celling, arms shaking with exhaustion.
"I didn't ask to be saved," Mateo scoffed. "Being with Jem may not have been ideal but it was better than the death sentence you sent me to."
"What happened," I asked as I shrunk farther into the wall. Mateo's eyes cut into me as a sick smile covered his face again.
"I was hoping one of you would care enough to ask. Figures it would be the therapist but at least one of you had the sense to ask. Then again you should be able to piece it together yourself." I watched, completely frozen as he stalked closer to us.
Jem sat in front of me with a harsh glare but it didn't stop Mateo from crouching in front of us, the whip still firmly held in his hand.
"Tell them Jem. Tell them how all of this started. Prove to me you that you truly remember."
Jem hesitated before taking a long, shaky breath.
"He was begging outside of one of my restaurants. I had gotten a couple of complaints about him from the stuck up snobs and told Dev to make him leave but he would always come back the next day so I decided to deal with it myself. I was just going to run him off again, threaten him until he was too scared to come back but I couldn't bring myself to do it when I saw how bad he looked."
Mateo's eyes light up at how well Jem seemed to be remembering, proud that he wasn't as insignificant as Jem claimed he had been.
"I brought him back to the house and offered him a job in the warehouse. He accepted and lived in the house with almost everyone else until I made the deal with Patrick."
"Don't leave out the good part," Mateo teased, a deranged look of pure pleasure on his face from seeing how much this was effecting Jem.
He had been shaking ever since he figured out who the kid was. I could tell he was fighting back the tears at the accusations that Jem abandoned him. Mateo enjoyed every second of the mental torture.
"Tell them. Tell them what you said to me that night. I'll even set the scene for you," he said as he moved his eyes to me. "Imagine it Andrew. A starved, dirty, child sitting in a fancy kitchen with the best food he's every tasted sitting right in front of him, a cold man standing in front of him with a smirk on his face as he watched the kid shovel everything in like he hadn't eaten in days. Tell them what you said."
"I don't remember," Jem said, his forefinger rubbing against his thumb, his tell for lying.
The slap against Jem's skin was sickening from this close. Jem groaned through clenched teeth before looking back up at Mateo with hatred in his eyes.
"Tell them."
"I don't-," another flick of the wrist cut off his lie. Red lines slowly covered his side as Jem balled up as small as he could to protect his face.
"You remember," Mateo stated. "I know you do. I heard our words for days after Patrick took us away. They followed me like a taunt. Making fun of a stupid child who believed in a complete stranger. What did you tell me that night Jem?"
"Slow down," Jem rasped. At first I thought it was an order to Mateo to give him a second to catch his breath but when that smile spread across the kid's face I knew I was wrong. "You'll choke yourself. Everything here is yours now. No one is going to take it away."
"Imagine, Andrew, the hurt I felt when Jem called all of us down one morning to announce we were leaving. That everything I loved was being taken away after only a few months of finally having them."
"I can't imagine what that felt like," I whispered just to try and keep him calm. Anger was what we were trying to avoid right now. If we could keep him calm we would by ourselves more time.
"I was trying to help," Jem scoffed.
"By ripping us away from our family?"
"If it meant you not dying then yes!"
"Don't even start with that bullshit," Mateo shouted, the whip slamming down on Jem's skin again, this time leaving blood in its wake. Jem groaned again but didn't let the pain stop his defense.
"Barrett was shot the night before. He almost died because of the job I gave him. I couldn't imagine that happening to anyone else so yes I sent you away. I wanted you to be safe!"
"No you were being a pussy. Had it been anyone else you would have put a bullet in between the eyes of the bastard who hurt him and went about business as usual but no. Because it was your precious little pyromaniac Barrett who was hurt all shit hit the fan and you panicked. You'd never admit it to yourself but we were the ones you loved more than anyone else and you couldn't stomach the fact the thought of us being in Barrett's position, not because we could get hurt, but because you didn't want to deal with your own guilt and mourning if something happened! So you did what you always do and closed yourself off from anyone who could help and you started with the ones who would put up less of a fight. Admit it!"
"I was trying to keep you safe. Why can't you get that through your thick ass head."
"Because that wasn't safety!" Mateo screamed. His breath became ragged as he lifted the whip over his head again.
Blood began puddling around Jem's body. Lash after lash, each coming down harder than the last. The sight alone was enough to make me sick to my stomach but the cries of pain Jem finally let loose after 4 days is what brought the tears to my eyes.
"This is where Patrick get's involved," he panted after a while. One hand rubbed the other gently as if it hurt after using it so much. Patrick tensed when Mateo stalked back to him. "Tell them what you did Patrick," he said teasingly, the whip lightly smacking his skin, just enough to scare him.
"I brought you to Andrew."
"You did," he hummed softly. "What else did you do? What could you have possibly done to warrant this? Think hard, you're answer isn't as obvious as theirs."
Patrick went silent as he tried to figure out what the kid could mean but you could almost tell the exact second he out two and two together.
"You didn't even hear that," Patrick dismissed but Mateo's smile only grew. "I was on the phone outside of the interrogation room. You couldn't have heard me."
"But I did. You'd be surprised what you can hear when small and quiet. The door was cracked, probably so you could keep an ear on me but I snuck closer anyway. I heard every word. Tell them Patrick. What could you have possibly done to warrant this as a punishment?"
"I promised you a better life," Patrick sighed. A wave of sadness passed through the room.
If Patrick was getting hurt like this after that promise, its clear things didn't go the way they were supposed to.
"That's not all you said," Mateo chaste, allowing the whip to land harshly on his shoulder blades. "Word for word Patrick."
"He'll never get to you again. No one will. You'll have a better life now, I promise."
"Hope is such a dangerous thing," Mateo sighed. His age showed as his shoulders sagged in exhaustion. He was Liam's age; he was too young to feel this way. "Too little of it and you start to drown, too much and you start to believe in what you're told. I had a safe amount of it but the second you said those words to me I had too much. I was excited to get to whatever shit hole you put me in because at least this would be an actual home. A place where I wasn't beat or starved like my parent's house, a place where I didn't have to work for love like Jem, a place where I could finally be a kid, that's what you had promised and I was stupid enough to believe you."
"What did they do," Patrick asked barely above a whisper, his heart breaking for the kid he barely knew.
"Enough," Mateo spit out. "Don't pretend like you care now. It's too late. You hand picked that group home for me didn't you? That's what they told me at least. I was hoping Caleb at least would get to come with me, I'm sure Andrew told you I wouldn't do well in groups by myself, at least I hope he did or his punishment will be worse than yours-."
"He did," Patrick, said quickly, his eyes wide with panic but he was cut off by another flick of Mateo's whip.
"Don't interrupt me. Still, I was dropped off at a group home without knowing a single person there. It was terrifying. I didn't speak to anyone for the first week. The second week was better, I made a friend, at least I thought I had. He was nice at first, gave me extra food, let me have his hoodies, and made the other boys leave me alone. I was so grateful until he said it was time to repay him. That was real torture, this is nothing compared to that. You should count yourself lucky that I'm not a monster like him."
Jem's breath hitched while Patrick went as still as a statue. My heart stopped beating for a moment.
"I'll kill him," Jem seethed but Mateo only chuckled as he gripped the whip tighter.
"I'm afraid I beat you to it. Granted I wish I had done it sooner. He died only a week before I tapped your phones and sent you to that warehouse."
The room was silent as the weight of his confession spread through all of us.
A boy in that group home had offered safety, more hope, food, clothes, out of what Mateo assumed was the same pure kindness Jem had offered him, only to be turned on and raped by someone he trusted no telling how many times before he escaped.
Ryder flashed through my mind, Ryder who had been through the same thing, Ryder who now was happy and barely suffered from the trauma he was put through now, Ryder who could have ended up like this boy if we had let him fall through the cracks.
"Still, it's not all Patrick's fault. Sure he picked the home, sure he didn't see the signs at the few home checks he came to, and sure he stopped coming after a few months but at least he came." Mateo's eyes shifted to Jem and I, hatred shining bright in them. "But only Andrew is responsible for sending me there."
"I recommended foster care," I said as he stood above me with a glare.
"Like that would have been any different," he scoffed. "Getting moved every few months, being taken care of by people who wouldn't care, I would have been back with Jem before the end of the year, we all knew it."
"If you know that then why are you upset?"
"Because there were still two more options. Now we both know I wasn't cut out for jail. I didn't have a criminal record anyway so you couldn't put me there even if you wanted to. But that last option, that last chance for me, apparently camp wasn't for kids like me. Apparently I was too much of a problem to not get a permanent family but not enough of a problem to go to camp so where do you stick kids like that? A random group home that no one cares about, where the kids run wild, the adults don't care, and the quiet kids get targeted first."
"I couldn't have possibly known that was going to happen," I said, struggling to keep the calm in my voice.
"Of course not," he said with mock sympathy. "How could perfect little sheltered Andrew possibly think something like that could ever happen somewhere as perfect as a group home? But it was just one kid right? Just one kid who got the shit end of the stick! Jacob killed himself last summer; also in a group home Caleb's foster dad was beating him every night. Riley's gone mute since the deal was made but it was just one kid right? What's one fucking kid out of 14?"
Pain shot through my shoulder. Patrick fought with his chains as the next hit slammed down on my side. Jem was too weak to move when the third hit came down. By the fourth I had finally balled up but it hurt just as bad.
"All of you are to blame! Do you know how hard it is for a group home kid to have a good life after they turn 18! I had no way to go to college, I had no job because the people at the home said we weren't allowed to have one, I had no money and no place to live yet the second I turned 18 I was on my own. Abandoned for the third time already in one lifetime all because of you people!"
"Toe stop it. You know it's not his fault," Jem said as he tried to grab his wrist but Mateo only turned the whip back to him.
"I told you to stop calling me that! I'll fucking kill you!"
Jem screamed as the whip tore more of the tender skin on his back, allowing more blood to pour out.
"Then do it," Jem dared. I expect Mateo scowl and take Jem's bluff but he only laughs, his head thrown back as the sound echoes around the room.
"As if you deserve mercy yet," Mateo teased, bringing one last lash across Jem's face. Jem hissed at the pain, his hand immediately covering the cut to clot the bleeding. "Besides, you say Dev and Barrett are on the way. It would be a shame if you didn't get to see them one last time. Unlike some of us, I'm not the monster here. I know how much you want to die along side them. Who am I to deny you that?"
"Don't fucking touch them," Jem groaned, even the simple motion of talking hurt too much.
"Jem, we've been through this. For once you don't have the power here. You don't get to call the shots. You are completely helpless! Lean back and enjoy it. Feel the pain knowing your life is in someone else's hands."
Mateo didn't say another word as he turned away and slammed the whip on the table. All three of us flinched when the door slammed shut behind him.
No one said a word. Tension was thick in the air. No doubt the only thing on anyone's mind being 'I did this to him.'
We failed him. Life gave him 3 chances yet we ruined all of them. There was no way around it. We had killed him, Mateo was no longer the sweet, scared kid I met a few years ago, he was dead, this boy was nothing but a shell of that kid and it was my fault.
Last updated July 6, 2022