Chapter 8 Nic
EIGHT
NIC
We talk while we wait for the food to come. She doesn’t let her guard down completely, and I wouldn’t expect her to, but at some point she stops bracing as much.
Her hands tell stories as she talks, more animated than the words themselves. And just before she drops a sarcastic line, her mouth twitches, like she knows what she’s about to do.
Then there’s the way she leans in slightly when she’s interested in what I’m saying. It’s subtle, but I notice it.
When the food arrives, the conversation stumbles and I don’t like it. I try to coax her back into the previous ease we had, but she’s quiet as I unpack the food cartons onto the table.
I understand. She’s been tossed from one bad situation to another without space to catch her breath. Of course she doubts me. Words are cheap. She doesn’t know me or my code. Doesn’t know that I don’t move the goalposts once I set them.
I don’t explain again or give her reassurance. She doesn’t need more words from me. I need to show her the truth. I grab the serving spoon and pile a bit of everything onto both plates. I slide one in front of her, the other in front of me.
Keeley stares at the mountain of food like this is a test she hasn’t studied for.
“You want somethin’ else?” I stab a piece of meat and pop it into my mouth, watching the wrinkle between her brows.
Keeley looks down at her plate and then back at me. “You gave me enough to feed half the city.”
She’s not wrong. I went overboard. “Didn’t want you to go hungry.”
Keeley huffs a laugh that hits me square in the chest. That sound? Yeah, I want her to do it again and I want to be the one to make her do it. “I don’t think there’s much chance of that, Nic.”
“Eat,” I say. “Let me worry about portion size.”
She picks up her fork and nudges the food around, like she’s deciding what to taste first. Then she takes a small bite, almost testing. The same way she did with the drink. It’s a weird little quirk she has, but I like it.
“I’ve been here a week,” she says, taking another bite. I hum under my breath, unsure where she’s going. “People are going to miss me, Nic. A job. Bills. Responsibilities. I can’t just disappear from my life.”
She reaches for the water bottle, like she needs something to do with her hands. I hate that I can’t fix this immediately, and that I don’t have a timeframe for when I can.
“You can’t go back to it either.”
“So, what? I just have to sit here while everything I’ve worked for just falls apart?”
“Your life’s not falling apart. It’s just… on hold.”
Anger pushes past the tears brimming in her eyes. “I didn’t ask for this. I was perfectly happy living my life, oblivious to my brother’s shit, and now I just lose everything? How the fuck is that fair?”
Oh, I wish I could kill that rat bastard all over again.
“It’s not,” I say, “but this’ll be over soon.”
“How soon?” she demands. “We don’t even know if my brother’s going to come for me again. Daniel’s Daniel. He’ll get bored. He always does. He’s probably already moved on, which means I can go home.”
It’s said flippantly, but I see it for what it is. She’s trying to reduce the threat to something more palatable, because the alternative is too big, too scary to contemplate. Because it means admitting too much.
She wants it to be that simple, but it’s not. Her brother is the villain in her story. He wasn’t misguided or reckless. He was a piece of shit who betrayed his blood—her and the club.
“This ain’t gonna go away, Keeley,” I say quietly. “Your brother wasn’t playin’ a game. He was knee-deep in shit that I’m still tryin’ to dig out.”
She swallows hard. “I know that. You’ve made it quite clear that Daniel was causing trouble.”
“Have I?” I lean my elbows on the table, food forgotten. “‘Cause you’re sittin’ in front of me like you’re expectin’ this to fizzle out by tomorrow lunchtime.”
She meets my gaze unflinching. “Daniel’s not here. It’s been a week, and he’s not here,” she says. “You keep telling me it’s not safe for me to leave because I’ll end up back in that cage, but the only person keeping me locked away right now is you.”
Fuck, is that really what she thinks? “I’m keepin’ you safe, not caged.”
“From what? You say I’m in danger, that if I leave you can’t stop what happens next time, but what is it you think is going to happen? Why do you think whoever he was working with might come after me?”
“Because I know how this works, Keeley.” It comes out sharp and angry. I take a breath.
Calm the fuck down.
Her lips pull into a tight line in response to my flare. “It’s obvious you don’t like my brother. Join the club. He’s a bastard.” She steadies her breath. “But I have to know if you’re keeping me here to use against him in whatever pissing contest you’re having?”
I blink, fucking stunned she came to that conclusion. How in seven hells did we end up here? “What? No.”
“Then why? You keep expecting me to trust you, but you’re not giving me a reason to.”
She’s right. I haven’t. I’ve given her half-truths and nothing solid. I can’t keep hiding what I know and expect her to stay willingly. But fuck, I don’t want to tell her any of this. I don’t want more shadows crowding behind her eyes. I don’t want her to think I’m as bad her brother.
But she’s looking at me like this thread between us will snap if I don’t give her something. Fuck me. “You want the truth? It’s ugly, but I’ll give it to you.”
“Please.”
I scrub a hand over my jaw. This is a terrible idea. The worst I’ve ever fucking had. I stare at her, gauging whether this’ll make her bend or break.
In the end, all I can do is respect her choice. She wants to know, and I don’t have it in me to deny her when she’s looking at me with those pleading eyes.
“Your brother was movin’ against the club,” I say. “He cut a deal as part of that. I don’t know who with or what the terms were, but deals like this they come at a price.”
Fuck what I said. I ain’t doing this.
“What price?” My gut burns. I don’t want to say the next part.
“It doesn’t matter. All you need to know is that deal is why you have to stay.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t protect me because you think I can’t handle it. I can. I’ve seen worse, Nic.” Her hand wraps around my wrist, and my breath gets trapped in my chest. “Please, just tell me.”
I stare at her, memorising how she looks in this moment, because when I give her this, she’s never going to look the same.
“You weren’t in that cage by accident, Keeley,” I say quietly. “You were there because Blade needed you somewhere he could access you quickly.”
She frowns. “I don’t understand.”
Of course she doesn’t. This shitty, dark part of the world isn’t one she’s seen before.
“You were insurance on his deal.” For a beat, I don’t breathe, just letting that ugly truth hang between us.
I wait for her to fall apart, but she doesn’t.
“That just proves how stupid my brother is,” she mutters. “He knows I don’t have savings.”
Oh.
Oh… She thinks this is about physical money…
“You weren’t a guarantor, Keeley. You were the guarantee.”
“What’s that mean?”
She’s going to make me say it. Give her the shitty fucking details. “You were the payment if the deal failed.”
I can tell she still doesn’t get it, that she’s trying to see this through a lens that doesn’t work here.
“In business,” she says slowly, “collateral gets liquidated when a contract fails. You take assets or funds—I understand that. But how am I a guarantee? You can’t liquidate a person.”
“There’s a market for everything,” I say carefully, watching her face to see how that settles.
I can see the moment it clicks. The laugh that comes out of her a moment later pierces my chest. It’s high and sharp, fearful. “You’re—no. You’re saying that my brother used me as insurance in case his deal went wrong?”
“Yeah.”
She flinches so hard it rocks the table. I reach for her, but I don’t know if that’s what she needs right now so I let my hand drop.
The silence is suffocating, so thick it chokes me, but I wait for her to find her voice again. This ain’t about me or what I need.
She surges to her feet, her chair rocking back. “No. That’s—no. You’re crazy. What does that even mean—I was the payment? You can’t pay a debt with a person. That’s fucking stupid.”
I rise slowly to my feet, my lungs too small for the space under my ribcage. “Keeley, look at me.”
She doesn’t. She backs away from the table, her eyes wide and wild. “You’re lying. I don’t know what game you’re playing, but this is sick.” I reach for her as her hip hits the table behind her, dragging out a hiss through clenched teeth. “Don’t touch me.”
It guts me that she wrenches away. I drop my hands to my side, unsure how to bridge the chasm growing between us.
“Keeley—”
“Just… please. Leave me alone.”
She backs up like I’m the monster she’s running from, like I was the one who sold her as insurance. Yeah, that cuts even if I get it.
I twitch, ready to go after her, but the sound of the door clicking shut behind her is louder than any gunshot.
The silence that follows is suffocating.
I’ve watched people break, broken more than my share, but few things have ever hurt the way this did.
That look on her face?
Fuck.
I’m never scrubbing that out of my mind. Keeley looked wrecked.
And I did that to her.
She deserved the truth. It was past due. But my chest squeezes at the thought of her sitting in that room alone, knowing her brother sold her.
I want to put my fist through something. I want to drag Blade back from whatever hell I sent him to and make him bleed again, but this time for her.
I don’t do soft. I don’t do feelings, but the image of her standing in front of me, her eyes begging me to say it was lie is etched into my brain.
I stare after her, hoping she’ll storm back in and demand the rest. But she doesn’t, and I’m left holding the part I didn’t get to say.
Blade’s dead and his debts don’t die just because the bastard who signed them did.