6. Nick
— ? —
Nick
The image won’t leave my head.
Matthias’s fingers digging into Jo’s arm. The way she flinched but didn’t back down. The flash of pain across her face that she tried to hide, the way her jaw set with determination even as her eyes went bright with tears she refused to let fall.
A part of me I had kept bolted down came loose when I watched that scene unfold from the hallway. Cold and hard, it settled into place, the certainty that has been building for weeks finally going sharp and clear.
My brother is a monster. And Jo is someone worth protecting.
She’s leaning against my car when I reach the parking garage, arms crossed, shoulders tense, looking like she’d rather be literally anywhere else on the planet.
The fluorescent lights wash her out, make the shadows under her eyes more pronounced, and even exhausted and guarded, she’s the only thing in the garage I can make myself look at.
“I can take myself home.” Her voice is clipped, defensive. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
“Nick...”
“Show me your arm.”
She stiffens. For a long moment, neither of us moves. The parking garage hums with that particular emptiness of after-hours, the distant sound of traffic from the street below the only reminder that the world outside still exists.
“Please,” I add, softer this time.
The fight drains out of her shoulders. Slowly, reluctantly, she uncrosses her arms and extends the left one toward me. Her sleeve is already pushed down, hiding whatever’s underneath, and when I reach for the fabric, she flinches.
The flinch cuts deeper than it should.
“I’m not going to hurt you.” The words come out rough, scraped raw by the anger I’m barely containing. “I would never hurt you.”
“I know.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “I know you wouldn’t.”
Gently, carefully, the way you handle something precious and breakable, I push up her sleeve.
The bruise is already forming. Purple and black and sickly yellow at the edges, the clear imprint of fingers wrapped around her forearm. Four distinct marks where his fingers dug in, a larger smudge where his thumb pressed hard enough to grind muscle against bone.
My jaw clenches so hard my teeth ache. The rage that surges through me is hot and immediate, a primal thing that wants blood, wants violence, wants to find my brother and show him exactly what it feels like to be on the receiving end.
“Nick...”
“Did he do this before?” The question comes out harder than intended. “When you two were together. Was he physical with you?”
“No.” She pulls her arm back, tugs down her sleeve with trembling fingers. “He wasn’t, he wasn’t like this back then. The cheating, the lying, the gaslighting, that was all there. But he never put his hands on me. Not until now.”
“This won’t happen again.”
“You can’t promise that.”
“Watch me.”
The words land in the space between us, heavy with meaning neither of us is ready to examine too closely. Her eyes search my face, looking for something, sincerity, maybe, or the catch that must be hiding somewhere in the offer. Everyone has a catch. Everyone wants something.
Whatever she finds makes her shoulders drop, just slightly. The tiniest release of tension.
“Okay,” she says quietly. “Okay.”
The drive to her apartment is quiet, but it’s a different kind of quiet than before.
Less charged, more comfortable. She stares out the window at the city lights sliding past, and I don’t push.
Pushing her doesn’t work, that much has become clear over the past few weeks.
She opens up on her own terms, or not at all.
Her apartment building is modest but well-maintained, the kind of place where people actually know their neighbors’ names. A far cry from the cold luxury of my own building, where the doorman is the closest thing to human contact most residents experience.
“Thank you for the ride.” She reaches for the door handle, already halfway gone.
“Jo.”
She stops. Doesn’t turn around, but doesn’t leave either.
“What he did to you. Back then.” The words form carefully, deliberately, because this feels important. “Do you want to tell me? I know there’s history between you two.”
The silence stretches long enough that I think she’s not going to answer. Her hand stays on the door handle, knuckles white with tension, and I can see her fighting with herself, the instinct to run warring with what looks like a quieter wish, the wish to be known.
“We were married.”
The word is a punch to the gut. “Married?”
“For six months.” A bitter laugh escapes her, hollow and tired. “I was twenty. He was twenty-four. We met while we were both studying abroad, and he was... God, he was everything. Charming. Attentive. He made me feel like I was the center of the universe.”
My hands tighten on the steering wheel. The picture forming in my head is painfully familiar. Matthias at his most seductive, all charm and promises and carefully constructed lies.
“I thought he loved me.” Her voice is flat now, reciting facts rather than reliving them. “I thought we were building something real. But he was cheating on me the entire time. Probably from before we even got married. I just didn’t know until I walked in on him with another woman.”
“Jo...”
“I left that night. Didn’t take anything, didn’t look back. And I haven’t seen him since. Not until I walked into that conference room and realized the universe has a really sick sense of humor.”
There are a hundred things I want to say. That she deserved better. That I’ll burn this whole firm to the ground before I let my brother touch her again. That the thought of her at twenty, alone and lied to, does something to my chest I don’t have words for. None of them make it out. They never do.
Instead I hear myself reach for the one thing I know how to give, which is a plan.
“We’re documenting the bruise tonight. Photos, dated. And we’re filing a police report on what he did in that hallway.”
She turns from the window, startled. “I never reported anything he did, back then. I didn’t think anyone would believe me over an Anderson.”
“You have one on your side now.” It comes out harder than I mean it to. “There’ll be a record from here on. Every mark, every note, every threat. So when this ends, it ends with paper, not just our word against his.”
She studies me a moment, and I can see her notice what I’m doing, the way I always do it, handing her a strategy when she might have wanted something softer instead. But she lets it go. She nods. And I tell myself that keeping her safe is the same thing as letting her in.
It isn’t. I’m simply not ready to know that yet.
The pieces click into place. The fear in her eyes that first day. The way she went pale at the sight of him. The history that hung between them, a blade waiting to fall.
“I’m sorry.” The words feel inadequate, laughably small against the weight of what she’s just told me. “He’s an asshole. He’s not capable of love, not real love, not the kind that actually means something.”
“Yeah.” Another hollow laugh. “I figured that out eventually.”
She’s quiet after that, staring at her hands in her lap, and something about the set of her shoulders tells me there’s more. Something she’s holding back, something heavy enough to make her close up even as she’s finally opening.
“There’s more, isn’t there? Something you’re not telling me.”
Her head lifts. Those eyes. God, those eyes, are bright with unshed tears, and the urge to reach out, to touch her face, to tell her she’s safe, is almost overwhelming.
“No.” The word comes out too quick, too certain. “Nothing else.”
“Okay.”
The lie sits between us, obvious and untouched. But pushing won’t help. When she’s ready to tell me, she will. And until then, I’ll wait.
She gets out of the car. The door closes with a soft thunk, and she’s walking toward the building entrance, shoulders hunched against the cool evening air. I’m reaching for the gearshift, ready to pull away, when the front door of the building bursts open.
A small body comes hurtling out, a missile with legs.
“MOM!”
The kid slams into Jo’s legs at full speed, nearly knocking her over, and she catches him with the practiced ease of someone who’s done this a thousand times before. She lifts him up, buries her face in his hair, and my ribs cinch tight enough that breathing turns into work.
“I missed you,” the kid says, his voice carrying clearly through my open window. “Grace made mac and cheese but it got all lumpy. Are you okay? You look sad.”
Jo pulls back, and even from here I can see her smile, watery, tired, but real. “I’m okay, baby. Just a long day.”
The kid looks over her shoulder. Spots me in the car. His whole face lights up with the kind of unfiltered enthusiasm only children can pull off.
“Is that your grumpy boss? Can he come inside? Does he want mac and cheese? Even if it’s lumpy?”
Jo’s face goes red. “Rory...”
The window is already rolling down before I consciously decide to. “Mac and cheese sounds great. Even lumpy.”
Why did I say that? I should leave. I should maintain professional distance. I should drive away right now and pretend this never happened, pretend I didn’t see her apartment building, didn’t see her kid, didn’t feel my heart crack open at the sight of them together.
But the kid. Rory is already running toward the car, and Jo is looking at me with something like wonder, and my legs are carrying me out of the driver’s seat before my brain can catch up.
The apartment is small but warm. The kind of warm that has nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with the life that fills it.
Drawings cover the refrigerator, dinosaurs mostly, some houses, what might be a purple elephant.
Toys are scattered across the living room floor in the organized chaos of a home that’s actually lived in.
Books are stacked on every available surface.
A plant in the corner is somehow still alive despite looking like it’s been forgotten multiple times.