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"Whatever it is can't be quite as nuts as being an agoraphobic involved with drug dealers," she went on when I didn't immediately speak.
I wasn't ashamed of my life, my family, how we made our money. Far from actually. But I was finding the words hard to bring forth.
And, I realized with an almost blinding clarity, it was because it mattered this time. She mattered this time.
Getting involved with Bry and his problems aside, she wasn't the type of girl who ended up with a fucking loanshark enforcer. She taught kindergarten. I had hardly heard her even fucking curse. She was good and sweet and clean.
All the things my life wasn't.
But fact of the matter was, there was no putting it off. Dusty wasn't some one night thing. She wasn't a fling. She wasn't even in the same ballpark as those women.
She mattered.
I wanted her.
I wanted her in a more permanent way.
And she had given me her story and she had given me her body.
It was time for me to give her my story.
Whatever the consequences.
I took a deep breath and gave her a squeeze.
"My father, brothers, and I all own businesses. We are legitimate businessmen. But that isn't all we are."
"Okay," she said, not sounding as nervous as I thought she might, especially given the tension in my voice.
"My father is and has always been a loanshark."
Right then, she did the damnedest thing. She fucking snorted.
When I didn't say I was kidding, she pushed up, big smile in place, her hair falling forward. "You're serious? A loanshark? Like a 'you give me your money or I break your kneecaps' kind of loanshark?"
Her smile was so infectious that my own lips twitched. But it was serious and I needed her to understand. "That's exactly what I mean, honey," I agreed. "And all my brothers and I, except Hunt, all work for him."
The smile slipped as her eyes went thoughtful, her brows drawing together so two little lines formed above her nose. "Work for him how?"
"We're enforcers," I admitted.
There it was out there.
She paused for a long second, searching my face, looking for humor, but finding none. "So an enforcer..."
"Does the kneecap breaking," I filled in for her.
Her tongue moved out, wetting her lips, and it took a fuckuva lot of self-control to not throw her back onto the bed and fuck her until she forgot I said anything about my family.
"Seriously?"
"Well, not exactly. There really isn't a whole helluva lot of kneecap breaking these days. I won't say it never happens, but it's rare."
"You beat people up?" she asked. I could see the gears turning, could see her putting the pieces together- my scars, the way I fought, my knowing about patching up injuries.
"On occasion. It's usually not me doing much of the beating, but it happens."
"Who does then?" she asked, not sounding horrified. If anything, she just seemed... curious. "I can't picture Mark hitting people. He's so... laid back."
"He does more of it than I do, but not by much."
She paused then, shaking her head. "Not Eli. Come on! He bonded with my cat! He gave him food off of his plate."
"Remember when Eli first walked in, when he got a look at your face and he froze and went all creepy and silent?"
She pressed her lips together slightly at that and nodded. "Yeah, that was a little weird."
"Eli was never meant to be violent. But we were raised to know that our family business involved violence, that we were all expected to follow in our father's footsteps. So Eli was, in a way, forced to be something he wasn't. And because of that, when he gets angry, it's nothing like you've ever seen before. It's brutal and primal and freaky as all hell to see. Eli is the last resort, when we've exhausted all other efforts."
"These other efforts would include your other brother, right? Shane? He's the one who does most of the... enforcing?"
"For the most part, yeah. He's good at it. He can keep control but still do damage without losing his fucking mind." She watched me for a long minute, a sort of mask down over her face, making her unreadable for a long time. "Tell me what's going on in there," I demanded, tapping her temple.
She shrugged a little at that. "I'm just wrapping my head around it. Have you ever been arrested?"
"No, honey."
"But I assume the cops around here know about what you guys do..."
"For the most part, yeah."
"None of your brothers have been..."
"No," I cut her off. "Well, not for business reasons anyway."
Despite the heavy situation, her lips tipped up at the side. "What for then?"
"Drunk and disorderly mostly. Shane and Mark used to yuck it up something fierce and one of us would have to haul it down to the station and pull then out of the drunk tank and bring them home. Hasn't happened since they were in their twenties, but it happened. More than once. More than half a dozen times actually."
