I held my breath and diverted my eyes from his. I’d already said too much. Nitro would surely get up and walk out the door after that confession. I couldn’t imagine anyone but Monroe choosing to stand by me once they knew the thoughts in my head and the things I’d done.

He tilted my chin so I looked back up at him. “What did he do to you?” There was no judgement in his tone, no repulsion in the way he looked at me.

Letting out the breath I held, I shook my head. “Let’s not talk about this, Nitro. It’s done and in the past and I’m trying to move on from it.” My cheeks heated with the self-disgust I always felt when I thought about Randall. All the disgust I felt towards myself stemmed from him, because every shameful thing I’d done was for him.

He shifted on the bed again, this time to press harder against me and to drape his arm over my chest, almost as if he was trying to pin me down. “I have someone in my life who I want dead, too. The shit he did to my family and me… I want him deader than fucking dead. I want to do it slowly, make him hurt and beg for forgiveness. Forgiveness I’ll never give.”

His declaration came out harshly, his pain still sharp. I heard what he was telling me without saying it out loud. This was a safe place between the two of us.

“I met Randall when I was twenty, when I was a naïve uni student just trying to put myself through a law degree. He was seven years older than me and seemed so sophisticated with his own business, expensive car, flashy house. You name it, he had it. And he used all that shit to fool me. After growing up with nothing, I was determined to have things for myself, nice things. I wanted the big house, the cars, the holidays, everything. A year after we met, he proposed and I said yes. It wasn’t until we’d been married for about five years that I opened my eyes to who I’d really married. But, God, us women are fucking dumb sometimes. I swore I could fix him, change him, make us better. If only I did better, he’d stop lying to me, stop treating me like a fool.”

The pressure in my chest became hard to bear. It was like a heavy weight pressing down on me. I needed out from under Nitro’s hold. Pushing his arm away, I forced myself to a sitting position and drew my legs up so my knees were against my chest. I wrapped my arms around my legs and dropped my head to my knees, allowing my tears to fall.

Sobs racked my body, and I let them. I didn’t try to stop any of it. I just let myself move through the emotions as my therapist had suggested. Anger, hurt, shame—I let it all hit me. Most of all, though, I stopped hiding from my self-hatred. I let it bleed out of me.

Lifting my head, I eyed Nitro through my tears. He watched me silently, his hand placed reassuringly on my back. Wiping at my tears and getting myself together, I continued, “Randall had an importing business and he did well with it, but he always wanted more. More sales, more income, bigger and flashier everything. Was always looking for the next big thing in business to give him the wealth he craved. He managed to get himself into debt and that’s when he turned nasty and mean towards me. We fought all the time. Nothing I did was ever good enough. So I decided I had to help him somehow.” I paused for a moment, willing the tears to hold off until I got this out. “That was when Billy came to me with an offer. I was working in the DPP, and he needed someone to help get him off some charges. I’d known him for about four years, and although I knew he was dirty, I liked him. He’d always been good to me. Before I started working with the DPP, I’d done some legal work for him so I knew what he was into. Anyway, he offered me good cash to help him. One case led to another, and it just spiralled out of control. I did whatever I needed to do to make his problems go away, including lying for him and forging signatures. I always told myself that once I had the money Randall needed to get himself out of shit our problems would go away and I could stop doing that work for Billy. Turned out that the day Randall had the ninety thousand he needed to clear all his debt was the day that he went away.”

Nitro frowned. “He left you?”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said softly. “For his long-term mistress who I never knew about.”

Nitro’s jaw clenched and his shoulders tensed. “So that motherfucker took the cash you’d sold your fucking soul for and did the fucking dirty on you?”

I gulped back a sob. “Yes,” I whispered. “And then it all went to shit after that. My whole life… fucked. I lost everything.”

“The DPP found out what you’d done,” Nitro said, putting it all together.

“Yes. I was disbarred. My friends, who were all lawyers, walked away from me. I lost my home, my car, everything. The only people I had left were Chris, Monroe, Duvall and Billy.”

“That’s when you started working for Billy?”

I nodded. Taking a deep breath in an effort to stop more tears, I said, “I did this to myself. Everything I don’t have now is my own fault. I was stupid to fall for someone like Randall. Stupid to think he would give me the things I was desperate for. And even dumber for wanting those things in the first place. I threw my career away for nothing.”

“Fuck, Tatum,” he started. “We do crazy shit for our family sometimes. Anything to make them happy. You weren’t stupid to fall for someone. He’s the asshole in all this.”

More tears fell. I couldn’t hold them in any longer. “He didn’t even call when Chris died…. I don’t know what I expected, but I thought no matter what had happened between us, he might care enough to check on me. I guess I know once and for all how much he actually cared about me.”

“Why was Chris murdered?” he asked quietly.

“He was involved in some bad shit. Mostly car theft. He ran with a gang from the time he was fifteen and just got deeper and deeper into shit. I tried to get him out, but it was ingrained in him. He went off the rails when he was nineteen, mentally, and after that, he just never seemed to get his life together. Had delusions of being untouchable. He went into direct opposition with Silver Hell, selling stolen cars cheaply. They didn’t like it because he was undercutting them. In the end, they solved their problem by killing him.”

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Are your parents still alive?”

I shook my head. “No. Dad passed away nine years ago, and Mum died from breast cancer last year. Just before Chris died.”

His eyes filled with sorrow and he wiped my tears as they fell harder. His touch was so tender. Full of care. When my tears didn’t subside, he pulled me into his arms and held me until I stopped crying. Nitro’s embrace was everything I’d never had from a man in my life. My father had been so busy providing for our family that his time had been scarce. He’d also been preoccupied with desperately trying to figure out how to get my mother to love him as much as he did her, which meant his emotional capacity was stretched thin when it came to his kids. And as far as my ex-husband was concerned, I couldn’t recall a time he’d ever comforted me the way Nitro was. My nightmare slayer.