I looked back to Nick, and lost in my story, I kept telling it. But even looking right at him, I barely saw him.
“My father owned us and we were not free to do what we wished or be with who we wished. We were not family. Tom was not a soldier who disobeyed orders and had to be punished. We were tools who needed to be available to him for whenever he wished to use us. Minions. Slaves. We did as told and nothing else. And Georgia’s three years older than me. She saw men and even had some who were steady before that happened with me and Tommy. Not after. She learned the same as me.”
Still stroking my jaw, Nick held my eyes but he didn’t say anything.
So I asked, “You know what’s strange?”
“Everything about that is strange,” Nick noted quietly.
He probably wasn’t wrong but I didn’t know that life.
I didn’t share that verbally, but I knew Nick still got me when he asked, “But what do you think’s strange, Livvie?”
“He doesn’t give a shit about me,” I told him. “I haven’t seen him in weeks. He doesn’t care. He hasn’t phoned. Asked me to report in. Sent an email. Requested I meet him for lunch. Asked me to come over for dinner. It’s just about control. He’s perfectly fine knowing I’m where he wants me to be doing what he wants me to be doing. But that’s it. He’s nothing to me for reasons that are obvious. But I’m nothing to him too. And that doesn’t make sense for the simple fact I’m his child. It seriously doesn’t make sense for the not-simple fact that he taught me the lesson he taught me.”
“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed, and I noticed his eyes intent on me. “Does that hurt?”
“No.”
“Baby, he burned you. Your dad. Your father did that to you. I can’t comprehend that. And it wasn’t for some jacked sense of family devotion and loyalty that he did that.”
“It doesn’t hurt, Sebring.”
He stopped stroking my jaw and cupped it, starting with ill-concealed disbelief, “Olivia—”
“It would hurt someone normal,” I whispered. “I’m not normal. It isn’t like a phantom limb, something you had, used, needed and missed when it was gone. I never had that. I never had love. Devotion. Loyalty. You can’t miss something you’ve never had. Even when they had me tied down and he was pouring the oil on me, my mind wasn’t even there. I felt it happening but it was just something happening. It hurt. It hurt unbelievably. But I wasn’t there. My mind was where it always was. Somewhere else so I could survive and not go totally fucking crazy.”
I stopped talking.
Then I went still.
Because Nick was still. The air was still. The room was still. In fact, I fancied the earth stood still as he stared at me, the rage that he’d successfully tamped down before burning blatant in his gaze.
“Nicky—” I whispered, inching up his chest.
“You’re out of that warehouse, yeah?” he grunted.
“I…” I nodded uncertainly because I hadn’t told him yet about my change in job and I didn’t know if he was telling me to get out or confirming I was out. “Yes. Do you—?”
“Babe, I know everything,” he declared, answering the question I didn’t completely get out. “Just get that. I know about your sister’s labs. I know Raid Miller found the man whose job you’re doin’ now. And I know since Raid brought him back that no one has seen that man.”
I felt my eyes grow huge but Nick wasn’t done talking.
“It’s my business to know everything. I got a lot of ways I find shit out and I use those ways. I do not trade in information very often. That’s sticky and you gotta keep tabs on everything, beware of shifts in the underbelly, because you could cross someone you don’t wanna cross when they’re nobody but they end up somebody and allegiances in our world change daily. But I still gotta know. I make my money getting things for people. Delivering things for people. Providing safety in a variety of ways. Knowledge is power and to do my job and make it so my guys can do theirs and do it safely, I need as much of that as I can get.”
“Okay,” I said when he stopped talking.
“So I know.”
“Okay,” I repeated.
“And I want you to stay away from that warehouse,” he ordered.
“I can’t, Sebring,” I shared, watched frustration flash in his irate eyes and went on, “I’m out of my warehouse but I have a meeting with Dad and Georgia next week. They want me doing what I do in DTC but they also want reports about what I’m doing. David, the man who did it before me—”
“Jacked your shit and stole a shit ton of money.”
Automatically I started to push up from his chest.
Surface information was one thing. It was rife on the streets. Anyone could gather it in a variety of ways.
But detail like that?
His arm that was resting on the bed shot around me and held me where I was.
“Liv, it isn’t a secret,” he told me.