Enforcer’s Obsession

Chapter 15

FIFTEEN

Nico

I pushed the fork away, and then watched her.

She was calculating, trying to decide what to tell me.

When she met my eyes, I saw the resolve in her face.

“I’ve never talked about this with anyone. But, hey, I guess you’re special. You’re the only person who ever kidnapped me, so you get the prize of hearing the story of my pathetic life,” she said.

I wanted to reassure her, comfort her, but didn’t know where to start.

Just as I knew she would reject me completely if I tried.

“Simple, common story. My mom met my father and got pregnant with me. They were cruising along to a happy, or at least normal, ending. Except my father flipped his car and died two weeks before I was born. My mother wasn’t a saint. She wasn’t evil either. She was just her, and she did the best she could. Worked shitty jobs to take care of me, until one day, when I was three, she had a stroke of luck.

“She met a ‘good’ guy. And that nice, square, decent, insurance agent decided to choose her. I mean, she was overjoyed. After all, she came with baggage—me—but he chose her anyway. And, as he liked to remind her, and later me, he didn’t have to do that. But he did, and he thought my mother should be grateful. And when she wasn’t, he got very displeased.

“Same with me. But over time, she tried really hard to live up to his standards and meet his perfectly reasonable demand that she be flawless in every way. But she fell short. And then, she stopped caring. And then things got worse.”

She stopped speaking and looked away, and I had to physically force myself to unclench my fist.

She pushed a piece of waffle around her plate with her fork then abruptly put it down.

“She was so outgoing. Friendly, had a great smile. Loved to dance, loved to laugh. Like I said, she wasn’t perfect, but she loved me. And I loved her. No matter how bad things got, a smile from her, a hug, always made me think that we were going to be okay. But over the years she stopped smiling, then something inside of her just…faded.”

She thinned her full lips.

It was her only outward display of emotion.

“I guess that’s why it was easy to convince everyone that she killed herself. After all, she had been depressed. And he made sure that she was getting the help she needed.”

“He drugged her?” I said.

“Him? Oh gosh no,” she said with feigned disapproval. “He just saw that she was getting the mental health care that she needed. And one day, he’d had enough.”

She looked off, but then met my eyes. “I was thirteen. My mother, who somehow managed to take care of the household even though he had her walking around like a zombie, had made the grievous sin of using turnips instead of potatoes in the pot roast.”

I watched her, the emotion playing across her face affecting me more deeply than I could remember.

I could remember being young, helpless, but I was sure I had never felt the way her expression looked.

“It should have been a normal day. He should have just thrown the pot roast, or maybe forced her to eat the entire thing or smashed it in her face. But it wasn’t a normal day.

“After he took a bite, he very carefully put down the fork, stood, and then left the kitchen. I was relieved. Can you believe that? Relieved!” she said.

She widened her eyes, then swiped at a tear that I was sure she hadn’t even known had fallen.

It was the only one she allowed to escape.

“Then he came back into the kitchen with a gun in his hands. He used that gun to splatter her brains across the kitchen. It happened so fast I couldn’t even react.”

She was blinking rapidly, then started, looked around.

It almost crushed me when she looked across the table, seemed relieved to see me.

“Then he wiped the gun off, put it in her hand, and called the police.”

“Did he…?”

“Threaten me? No, but he didn’t have to. I’d seen what had happened to my mother, and when the police came, I didn’t even try to tell the truth. It would have been of no use, so I didn’t say anything. They sent me to counselors, and then decided since he had been my stepfather for so long, and I was a poor orphan, abandoned by her selfish mother, that I should stay with him. I remember the social worker telling me she wished more of the kids in her case file had adults willing to step up like he had,” she said.

My gut churn with rage, and I saw something like that reflected in her eyes, but only for a split second.

“So after that, it was survival mode. It wasn’t so bad,” she said, and the optimism, earnestness, of her words almost broke me.

“As I got older, I got smarter. Knew how to stay out of the way. I was a model student. Went to every extracurricular I could. It was mostly okay. When I was sixteen, he fractured one of my ribs. I told the hospital that it happened in soccer practice. But other than that, I just survived. When I turned eighteen, I got the hell away from him.”

“And what happened to him?” I asked.

“I have no idea, and I don’t want to know. I left on my eighteenth birthday with the clothes I was wearing, and a picture of my parents on holding a sonogram of me. I haven’t looked back since,” she said.

I grabbed my phone and fired off a text to Enzo.

I prayed that her stepfather was already dead. And as soon as Enzo got me the information I’d asked for, I’d know for sure.

“So what did you do?” I asked.

“I stayed on the street for a couple of nights. Then found a shelter. I managed to graduate high school and get a certificate from the community college. Then I just started working, saving up. Got the job at the animal shelter and do some dog grooming on the side. And maybe one day I’ll be able to go back to school,” she said.

So she had been out there alone, fighting for herself.

Even after my family was killed, I’d had a place to go.

But not her.

I was simultaneously disgusted at the world for leaving her in that position, and impossibly impressed.

My Hope was a survivor.

She’d proven that.

She smiled, seeming to come back to herself.

“What about you?” she said.

I looked at her for a long moment, overwhelmed with desire to speak, and pissed beyond belief at myself.

“Are you done with your breakfast?” I said.

She blinked, looking stunned.

“Yeah,” she finally said.

“Then let’s go. I need to handle some business.”