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“Not?” I question quietly, hating how the worry starts to sprout roots and tangle inside my stomach, churning it up.
“Not this other person.”
“Other person? What are you saying?”
“Remember when I told you about that guy who hurt Daisy back in college?”
“Yes, he moved away, right?” I ask, hating the look he gives me when he slowly shakes his head. There’s shame swimming within his beautiful brown eyes. There’s also worry, pain, fear, and anger too. It all swirls together.
“No, he didn’t move away. Carl paid him and his family off. They left Princetown with a cool ten million in the bank, and signed a contract to state they’d never step foot in this town again or mention what happened.”
“Why did Carl pay him off?”
“Hubert lost his fortune on an investment deal gone wrong about a year before the incident when that bastard broke Daisy’s heart. I only found out when it all blew up. Daisy still doesn’t know that the family was paid off. All Huburt had left was our family home, and a few hundred thousand in the bank.”
“So Carl stepped in and paid the family to move away to protect Daisy? That seems rather extreme? I mean, I know he hurt her, but it wasn’t as if she was going to go back out with him again. I don’t understand.”
Drix fingers squeeze mine tightly, his eyes meeting mine. “No, Carl didn’t pay off the family to protect Daisy, but to protect me–”
“Wait, why would you need protection?”
“You have to understand, Lia, I acted on instinct. I couldn’t bear to see Daisy destroyed by that prick. She was devastated by what happened, and withdrew into herself. It triggered things from her past, her sense of low self-worth, all of her abandonment issues. I didn’t think she’d pull through it. A couple of weeks after he dumped her, I went looking for him. I wanted him to understand how badly he fucked her up. I wanted him to apologise…”
“Drix, what did you do?” I whisper out, my throat tightening as the worry inside of me twists and turns, transforming into something ugly, turning into fear.
“I beat him. I beat him so badly he almost died,” he admits quietly. “He ended up in hospital on life support. By some miracle he pulled through. Carl paid off his family because Hubert asked him to, so that I wouldn’t go to prison for what I did.”
“You almost killed a man,” I whisper, tears springing to my eyes as bile rises up my throat. How can this kind, attentive, thoughtful man I’ve fallen in love with be capable of almost killing someone? How could he be that violent? I jerk backwards, and he drops my hands as I try and fail to rationalise what he’d done.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” he rushes on, “And I wish so fucking badly that’s the end to my story, but it’s not Lia.”
“There’s more?” I choke out.
“After Hubert died, and Carl realised he wasn’t ever going to get that money back, he said that I had to work for him to pay off the debt.”
“You already work for the families though.”
“I do, but he wanted someone who could deal with the less glamorous side of their businesses. Once Hubert had passed away he made me their enforcer.”
“Their enforcer, as in…?”
“Wealthy men like Carl, Robert and Walter have enemies, Lia. Sure, on the surface they appear to be successful businessmen, and they are. They have legit businesses now, but they gained most of their fortune in the early days doing illegal shit.”
“What kind of illegal things?” I ask, not really wanting to know the answer, but asking anyway.
“Drugs mainly, but also theft of high value items. Jewels, paintings, that kind of thing.”
“Oh my God,” I mutter, shaking my head, trying to clear the wayward thoughts catapulting inside my head like one of those silver balls in a pinball machine.
“I hurt people for them, Lia. If I don’t, Carl will take our home as payment towards the debt. No, Daisy’s home, because it’s hers not mine, I don’t want it. She’ll have nowhere to go, and nothing left. Don’t you see, I couldn’t allow that to happen to her. She’s been through enough in her life. You don’t know half of what she had to live through as a kid. I did it for her, I do this for her.”
I shake my head, pushing up to my feet as I stumble over the skirt of my dress, trying to put as much distance between us as possible. “You’ve hurt people, Drix.”
He rises to his feet, holding his hands out, stepping towards me. “Please, Lia. You have to know that I wish it were different. I wish I’d made a different choice back then. It’s not an excuse, but I am fiercely protective of the people I love, and I won’t lie to you and say that if I ever came across your ex, I wouldn’t want to do the same to him as he’s done to you. That part of me–”
“The violent part you mean?” I snap back, wishing I could turn back time, wishing he could still be that beautiful, kind, caring man I’d fallen in love with and not someone I no longer recognise. When he’d said before that he’d kill Martin for what he’s done to me, I just thought it was words. Now I know he truly would.
“That part of me is still here,” he continues, pressing the flat of his hand against his chest. “But there’s a difference between me hurting someone to protect the people I love, and being forced to hurt someone to pay off a debt. I don’t want to be their enforcer, but I have no choice.”
