Protect & Serve(15)

I smiled, looking up at Nathan as I tucked my hair behind my ears with my fingernails. “This looks incredible… But where in the world did you find the candles?”

He picked up the remote and turned off the TV. “A man needs to have a few secrets. Anyway, it’s the least I could do since I I’m the reason you’re stuck here.”

But that was the thing—I didn’t feel stuck.

“You’re important,” I told him, picking up my fork as he sat down. I stabbed at a piece of orange chicken, measuring my words, trying to ensure that what I said was both enough and not too much. I needed to appeal to his ego. “This city needs to see a man like you stand up for what’s right. Your testimony is going to make sure Wallace never hurts another innocent person ever again. Can you imagine what that means to the women and girls he’s devoted a decade to enslaving?”

Nathan didn’t answer. He only smiled weakly and skewered a bit of his broccoli beef onto his fork.

“Oh, come on,” I teased him. “You don’t have to be modest—not in here with me. You can brag a little, if you want.”

He chewed, then swallowed a gulp of his own green tea. “I thought you didn’t like arrogant, self-centered Nathan?”

“I don’t. But I have to give credit where credit is due. You’re putting your life on the line for the greater good. That’s something not a lot of people would do. It’s something you can be proud of.”

Nathan went quiet for a time, watching me eat. When he spoke again, it was in a tone I’d never heard from him before.

“Can I tell you something?”

I looked up at him and frowned. He sounded soft, hesitant, uncertain. His brows were furrowed and the corners of his eyes pinched. For the first time since I’d known him, Nathan looked like a man shouldering an unseen burden, a far cry from the man who would tie me to a bedpost and fuck my brains out without even a hint of care.

I stopped eating and put my fork down. “Yeah. Of course.”

Nathan puts his elbows on the table, wringing his hands together as he looked away from me and to the dancing candle flames instead. They lit up his eyes, highlighting the gold rimming his pupils as he took in a deep, shaky breath that nearly snuffed them out. When he spoke, his voice grated with the pain of a man who’d made a terrible, perhaps unforgivable mistake.

“When my father died,” he began, “I took over his company. You know that, obviously, but… what you don’t know is that I’m nothing but a figurehead. I have no idea how to run a business, let alone an international corporation. Dad tried to groom me for the job as best he could, but I wouldn’t listen. I didn’t want to do what he did for a living. Besides, Dad was young. Nothing was going to happen to him for a long time. When he passed from a heart attack at forty-nine and it all fell to me, I panicked. I decided to continue on with my original plan and ignore its very existence.”

I watched the shadows playing across his face. He suddenly looked older and farther away, not the twenty-something playboy with a smart mouth and no responsibilities. This was a facet I’d never seen before. It was like looking up at the dark side of the moon.

“But… I don’t know… When you broke things off with me things changed. I started to spend more time at the office. I started to like it. People looked up to me, Sandra. They wanted my advice. My ‘wisdom.’ I never wanted to be some big shot CEO, but once I was in the chair, I didn’t want to give it up… In a way, you gave me that,” Nathan trailed off, staring down at his fork. I kept silent, and he continued.

“When the head of our logistics division coordinated a meeting with Peter Wallace, I agreed, knowing full well who he was. He was offering us an obscene amount of money to transport those shipping containers. When he said it wasn’t anything illegal, I believed him, not because I actually thought he was telling the truth, but because I didn’t care if he was or not. I’d hired people to worry about that kind of thing, and they were all in agreement that the contract was on the level. Mr. Wallace has never been convicted of a crime—you know that. And he does plenty of legal shipping. I didn’t even consider that my advisors might be lying to me. I had no idea it’d be…”

He hesitated, lips parting as he struggled with the word.

“People. Women. Children…”

“But you knew?” I asked him, horror knotting in my stomach. “You knew what he was bringing into the city was illegal, and you let him do it?”

Nathan nodded slowly. “I suspected. Maybe… But everyone on the board wanted to take the contract. A substantial part of my inheritance is tied to maintaining my company. They could’ve voted me out if I didn’t do something, and once I lost the reigns, there was nothing stopping them from carving the whole damn company up for themselves. That would mean…”