I put my hand across her mouth. “How dare you keep ridiculing my appalling furniture? My interior designer will spin in her grave.”
She pries away my fingers. “Good to know she’s dead. I’d hate to think of her talents being used against other unsuspecting clients.”
“It was a turn of phrase.”
“Now who needs the English instructor?” She’s still holding onto my hands and frowns at my knuckles, twisting them under the light for a better view. “Why do you have so many scars? Did you have a former career as a bare-knuckle fighter?”
“Something like that.”
When her curious eyes continue to ask the question, I shrug. “When I first joined Oskar, he put me to work as an enforcer.”
She rubs her thumb over the right-hand knuckle of my forefinger, by far the worst offender. “You used to beat up people who owed money?”
“I did everything I couldnotto beat them. The reason boxers wear gloves is that landing a blow on an opponent hurts.”
“It must have.” She kisses each individual scar, a process that easily uses up another few minutes. “Did you enjoy the work?”
“I…” The most common lie—no—won’t cut it. “We left Christchurch because I was so angry all the time. I got kicked out of high school and my behaviour was so appalling that even the other schools we were zoned for excluded me. We could have sought a placement order, but I didn’t want to attend classes at all, which made everything more difficult.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.”
Crimson appears shocked, then sad. “So, you were in trouble already, then you lost your friends and family, too?”
I smile at how she turned my selfish teenage raging into a sympathetic tale.
“Mum has extended family up here, but they didn’t want to know us. It was just an excuse to swap one toxic environment for another. Work saved me. It gave me goals to strive towards and it was the first time I felt I knew what I was doing.”
There’s an expression on her face too subtle for me to get an accurate read. Maybe envy? From the lack of autonomy in her life so far, I’d guess she doesn’t know where she fits either. Not unless someone is dictating a role to her.
“We’ll find a place you belong, too,” I tell her. “There’s so many parts to the business, there’ll be somewhere where you click.”
“I could go along with your enforcers. Tell your debtors that if they don’t pay, I’ll cry.”
“Yeah, nah. When people get desperate, they cease to care.” I shift around on the bed, pulling out the cover that’s bunching beneath my back.
“How’d you go from there to here, you big thug?”
“There were some businesses that should’ve been able to generate enough to pay back the loans but were being mismanaged. I was a lot better at logistics than brutality. Once I started helping rather than just delivering threats, my take exceeded other guys on the same payroll. From there, I moved into other areas, mapping routes and befriending officials.”
“You are an exceedingly charming man.”
“I’m so glad you noticed.”
I pause my story to explore her lips again. The light sheen of sweat on her forehead looks delicious, something I verify by wiping my thumb along her hairline and sucking the taste of her from my skin.
“When Oskar started to miss things, I joined forces with the best men on my crew to roll him. That’s how I grew from a cheap thug to run my own silo.”
It’s a deliberately light version of what took place. Raising aggressive boys into savage men isn’t a great idea if you’re planning a gentle retirement. Thaddius is lucky the same didn’t happen to him. Although the name he insists was his gift to me ironically helped him out with that.
“And then you lived happily ever after.” Crimson is now propped on her elbow, reading my face with her incredible eyes.
“Something like that.” Although it feels more like my happily ever after might be happening right now. The pieces fitting together as we talk and get to know each other, lying in each other’s arms. A wife. A family. A true home.
“Can I ask you something about tonight?”
I nod, then smile. “Unless it’s to do with the menu. There’s a reason I hire a cook.”
