Page 64 of Enforcer's Obsession

He wasn’t yelling, but his ice-cold tone might have been worse than the loudest scream. But I fought to stay firm and met his eyes.

“Do I want to talk about it? Not really, but it might help you. And one thing’s for sure, you’re not going to solve anything by being so wound up.”

“What the fuck do you know about being wound up?” he asked, his expression incredulous.

I chuckled, though there was no humor in the sound. “All I know is that I unloaded all my shit on you, and no, talking didn’t change anything, but saying those words out loud made me feel better. And that’s not nothing,” I said.

As much as I hated to admit it, what I said was the truth.

For days, I had lamented telling Nico how much that conversation had helped me. I hated myself for that, maybe even more than I hated myself for wanting him so much, but after I said the words, it felt good to have the truth out there.

I wasn’t totally sold on the idea that confession was good for the soul, but talking about my mother and what happened to her was something.

“You never asked where my scars came from,” he said.

It took me a long moment to process his words. I’d been sure some “work” issue was bothering him, so I hadn’t expected that. When I could finally speak, I responded, “You weren’t going to tell me.”

To my surprise, he chuckled, though the humor only lasted a split second.

“No, I wasn’t. But maybe I will now,” he said.

He sat on the other end of his mile-long couch and looked at me.

“A fire. When I was seventeen,” he said. His voice didn’t tremble, and his body was still, but when I looked at his hands, I could see they were clenched and seemed to be where all of his tension was located.

“So it was bad,” I said.

I wanted to hug him, tell him I was sorry, but I remembered when I’d been sitting in his position, knew how vehemently I would have rejected that.

“Yeah. It was bad. It killed my two sisters, my brother, my father, and my mother. My whole fucking family,” he said.

He glared glanced off into the distance, then looked back at me.

“And I won’t let that happen again,” he said.

“People die in fires, Nico,” I countered, for lack of anything else to say.

After I said the words, I worried he might be angry, but he nodded his agreement.

“They do. But my family didn’t have to. And they wouldn’t have, either, but the boss…”

He trailed off, then looked at me, seeming to make a decision.

“The boss, he thought it was all talk, said that nothing would come of the threats. And because of his inaction, my family got incinerated,” he said.

“What happened?” I asked.

He shrugged, looking disgusted. “The usual shit. Beef over territory. Someone not wanting to pay their taxes,” he said.

I huffed. “I feel like you don’t mean their quarterly employment taxes.”

He smiled. “No. But for your purposes that’s a good enough analogy. Anyway, there was talk of problems, but the boss brushed them off. My family paid the price. And that day, when my uncle pulled me out of that burning house as my family screamed, I swore would let anything like that happen ever again.”

“So you got the scars trying to save them,” I said, the sudden realization dawning on me.

He nodded. “Yeah. Trying to save them. And I failed. I won’t fail again, no matter how much the boss wants to stand in the way,” he said.

He looked at me with fire in his eyes, with certainty, and another realization hit.

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