"I'd like to tell you his attack came out of the blue, that he was a model fiancé until he snapped, but I'd be lying. The signs were there. The disrespectful tone. The disproportionate outbursts. I was finding my backbone finally, and he didn't like it. Not one bit. Women don't have backbones. They don't answer back or have different opinions or undermine their men. They look pretty and are taken care of. How their men choose to take care of them is irrelevant. Or so it seemed."
Nico was familiar with the type. He'd been surrounded by men like that for the last few years. Strong, independent women were considered a threat, their confidence squashed. "It's never irrelevant. I like my women loud and pushy. Don't like china dolls."
She smiled. "The smallest things would set him off. So much so, that I'd rather do nothing than risk upsetting him. Put up with his lies and his cheating. Marc is why I don't like people making decisions for me anymore, much less telling me what to do. Or not to do, as is often the case."
"That's why there's so much tension between you and your parents?"
"You noticed that? And I thought I was being discreet."
Nico chuckled. "No, you weren't."
He'd noticed the hushed conversation with her mom. Read their lips too. He was a firm believer in repressing feelings to cope with trauma, but the Erlingtons could benefit from family therapy.
"I let them steer my life for a long time, basically because I didn't know where I was going. But that's no excuse. Can I ask you something?"
"Try me."
"What would've happened if I'd agreed to go out with you that night you came to Rosita's?"
He didn't like subterfuge. "You mean what would have happened to you?"
Paige held his stare. "Yes."
"I would have tried to coax you into telling me where Elle was. If I'd had to resort to alternative methods, I would have."
She stiffened and reached for her T-shirt. "What alternative methods?"
Her sudden hurry to cover herself pissed him off. "Don't fucking look at me like that. I don't kill innocent people. I would've explained the situation and arranged protection for you." The same as he'd done for Donald Solis. Sometimes there was a leak and the protection wasn't enough, but those deaths weren't on him. Or so he kept telling himself.
She narrowed her eyes at him. "Who are you? You are not Nick, engineer on oil rigs, and you definitely aren't Nico, ruthless drug lord. What exactly is it that you do for a living? You're a covert operative, right?"
"Don't ask questions you aren't ready to get answers for."
She pressed on. "Who do you work for? The CIA? NSA? Interpol?"
It wasn't that cut-and-dried. "The people I work for don't exist. Not officially."
"But they're the good guys, right?"
He couldn't contain the snort. "There are no good guys in this business, Goth girl. Don't kid yourself."
He'd been well on his way to become a thug when the agency had recruited him. Or maybe they recruited him because of it.
Some days he couldn't stand himself, much less what he did for a living. He'd tried to spare the innocent, although he wasn't sure he'd always managed that. One didn't make it where he was without breaking some eggs. Or heads, as it were. "Collateral damage" was such a fancy term for it. So clean. So sterile.
He often repeated to himself that the end justified the means. Everyone involved with the cartel was guilty. But who the fuck was he to play judge, jury, and executioner when most of the time he had no clue whose agenda was whose?
"Who tried to kill you?"
"Long list, Goth girl."
"How long are you going to pose as a drug lord?"
As long as it took to gather enough information to take the whole cartel down. That is, if no one managed to snuff him first.
"Cartels don't collapse when their bosses fall. They're like spiderwebs. Fucking resilient. Able to spring back fairly easy if you make the mistake of leaving any threads connected. There's no shortage of ruthless assholes ready to take over." Which was unacceptable to him. Too many years and blood and pain had gone into this.
He wasn't supposed to have killed Maldonado when it happened. There was much Nico knew about the inner workings of the cartel, especially where the drug trade was concerned, but not all the pieces had been in place to ensure a successful and relatively smooth takeover. Too bad he hadn't had a choice. His hand had been forced.
"So you're in it to shut down the drug trade from the inside?"
"There are other side businesses that need to be dismantled."
Frankly, he didn't care much about the drug trade. There were exceptions, true, but taking drugs boiled down to a personal choice. He wasn't going to try to save every dumbass who preferred to shoot up a vein rather than face his issues. That was entirely on the users. Their choice. Their fuckup.