Page 1 of Obsession

1

Nathan

My jaw tensed. My fingers curled into the ledger in my hands. The leather creaked, but I didn’t hear it over the pounding music.

I felt it in my bones. Each insistent beat of the bass smacked into my skull. The pressure built. The need to destroy overwhelmed me. I fought to control it. Fought not to rip my ears off to make it go away.

I hated coming to Luminescence. It wasn’t just the music. It was the stench of sweat. The high-pitched squeals. Loud voices that sang offbeat to the songs.

All of it swirled and mixed in my veins until I was so tense I could barely get my lungs to expand with air.

Then there were the goddamn flashing lights that gave the club its name. They moved in time to the beat. The blinding colors slashed across the people. Hundreds moving around the dance floor; a crush of sweaty bodies. They were too close. There were too many of them.

Luckily, most weren’t interested in the man who sat hunched on the corner stool of the bar. I was waiting for my brother, Cole. He ran Luminescence. The popular downtown nightclub was one of a few legitimate businesses we used to funnel our dirty money.

Our family business wasn’t really a business. At least not in the traditional sense, as far as most people understood it. We were a crime syndicate using our clubs to clean money that came from escorts, weapons, and loan sharking.

We’d done other things before. Horrors that I would never forget. But it all stopped when my cousin Vander took over the Kent family. He had rules.

I liked rules and order. I was good with boundaries and facts. And numbers. I smoothed my hand over the ledger again, trying to soothe the tightening of my organs.

Numbers weren’t confusing. Numbers weren’t sarcastic. There was no hidden meaning. They always behaved the same. They were always exact. I didn’t have to think.

I knew that made me different. Well, not just that. It was all the things I didn’t understand. The fact that I couldn’t stand being touched. Or that emotion confused me.

There was a label for what I was. Or there would be if I’d been raised in a typical family. One that cared to know. It wouldn’t have stopped my father from treating me like a freak. From beating me, hoping it would turn me normal.

He only quit when he learned what I could do. When I became useful at hiding our money.

That was my first lesson in this underworld I lived in. Always be useful. Disposable people were killed.

I was desensitized to the violence I grew up in. Just another side effect of my condition. Once I experienced something that became my normal. I can’t rewire my brain.

It was why I hated touch. Touch was pain. Punishment. Touch made you suffer. Even loving touch. I’d seen the effects of losing it. How it ruined people.

No, I wasn’t missing out.

I glanced at my watch again, noting my brother was seven minutes late. On average, he was eleven minutes late to most meetings. I could’ve waited upstairs in his office, but his wife was there.

She’d want to talk. Then I would’ve spent these nine minutes trying to see the hidden meaning in her words. Analyzing them for what I was missing. I didn’t have the energy.

My eyes were gritty. My thought processed slow from staying up all night. But I’d finally tracked down a trail we could follow. I didn’t need a lot of sleep, anyway.

Ten minutes, I noted, looking at my watch again. Not much longer.

“Want to buy me a drink?” My head jerked up as a woman took the seat next to me.

I blinked, trying to figure out who she was talking to. She had on a flashy silver dress and ice-blonde hair. Her gaze was right on me, telling me it was my response she was waiting for. I had no idea what to say.

“Oh, are you shy? I like them shy.” She giggled, and the sound made my teeth clench.

Before I could respond to either question, she was touching me. Invading my space. The overly fruity perfume clogged my senses. Her warm palm rested on my arm through my suit, and my skin crawled.

Her touch burned into my body. That sensation wouldn’t subside for hours. Heat filled me. Anger, hot and heavy, flooded my mind.

I would break her fingers if she didn’t remove her hand. A side effect of my condition was once something was learned, it was ingrained in me. Logically, I knew now violence wasn’t normal for most people, but I couldn’t stop these tendencies.

“So how about that drink?” She kept talking like I wanted to engage in conversation. I didn’t.

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