I look at her trying to be patient, because my mother seemed not to understand the kind of danger I was in.
"Mom, don't insist, I can't go with you now, what else would I want to do, but I can't, understand that any of the three of us could be in danger, and I simply don't want to hurt them, can you understand that?" I tell him persistent.
My mother sighs again, and she only answers me by nodding her head.
"Thank you, I really want you to forgive me for this, but let the detective do his job of finding me and don't get in the way of his job, at least you know I'm safe" I say to my mother as I grab her hands to caress them, and I felt a lot of pain in doing so, because I felt how her hands were very cold, and at the same time they trembled from the fear that she was experiencing.
Our conversation and our mother-daughter moment was interrupted when the bathroom door was flung open, and I felt at that moment how my body froze when I realized that it was Matteo who had entered the women's bathroom in the living room that way.
Matteo was furious, I saw it in his eyes, and I don't know why he was like that, maybe someone must have told him something that he didn't like when he answered the call that came in on his cell phone, or simply, he realized that I was locked in the bathroom while I was talking to my mother.
"Matteo…" I tell him when I can speak, because when I saw him, I was completely frozen, unable to move, and unable to even say anything about what was happening at that moment.
"What is this woman doing here?" Matteo asks, deep down, he wanted to speak calmly, to maintain his composure, however, I knew very well that deep down, he didn't want to be calm, if it were up to him, he would have already drawn his gun, which I know he had hidden in some area of his body where it could not be seen with the naked eye, and then, he would shoot both my mother and me to kill us.
"It's not what it seems..." I tell Matteo, the truth was that I didn't want to see myself in the task of having to give an explanation when there really wasn't one, if my mother and I had met again at that event, that was nothing more had happened due to things of fate, it's not like it had been something that I wanted to plan, how could I have done it if I don't even have a cell phone on hand to have called my father and have had this meeting?
"How is it not what it seems? You knew your mother was going to be here, right?" Matteo says, his anger against me was getting much stronger, so much so that he began to breathe with much more force from the anger he felt.
"No, it's not what it seems, how the hell was I going to plan to meet my mother here if I don't even have a cell phone in her hand to have called her and told her? Also, you never told me where we were going, you were only able to tell me that we had to come to this dinner, you didn't tell me anything else" I tell Matteo trying to stay calm so as not to make things worse than they were.
"Be quiet! You know I hate being contradicted by things when you know I'm damn right! You are a fucking traitor! I should kill you right here! Kill them both, so they can get out of my sight for ruining all my plans!" Matteo yelled, his rage had finally come to light and there was no power that could control it.
My mother looked at me with terror, and I was also feeling terror, I couldn't believe that this situation was really happening to us, Matteo had now taken out a weapon from his secret hiding place, a weapon that left us terrified because we didn't know when it would be the exact moment when he would pull the trigger to shoot us, and we didn't know how strong the shot was going to be for us.
"Matteo, please calm down, my daughter is not contradicting you in anything you say, my daughter is telling you the truth, she and I never planned this, she never called me or anything, if we met here it was purely coincidence of life" says my mother to Matteo trying to remain calm and not showing terror to Matteo because she knew that with these types of men it was better to treat them that way, for them to feel that they had the respect of their victims so as not to end badly.
But just before Matteo could answer us, or even make the decision to shoot us to end all this, someone was trying to open the door, however, they couldn't do it immediately because Matteo, having gone into the bathroom, blocked the access to him leaning his back against the door and the person who was behind wanting to get into the bathroom could not do it and just moved the bathroom knob believing that with this he would be able to do it.
"There is someone there?" asks a woman's voice from outside the bathroom.
Matteo looked at us with his eyes wide open, as if he was afraid someone was going to find him inside the women's bathroom as if it were a crime, and without thinking about it, he decided to run as fast as he could to get inside some cubicles of the bathroom and close the door.
My mother and I stayed outside, looking at each other as if we were complicit that we should take advantage of that situation to escape.
The woman who was insisting on entering the bathroom finally got inside.
"Holy God! What a hard door to open!" the woman complained at the same time that she ignored the presence of my mother and me to go into the other cubicle that was empty.
I looked at my mother and nodded, she took my hand, and we rushed to run out of the bathroom to go into the kitchen of the restaurant that, fortunately, the owner and chef of this restaurant was a friend of my mother's since high school and we were very sure that he was going to help us escape Matteo's clutches.