Page 22 of Protecting What's His

That sounded nice, but I had only one thing on my mind. “I worry what's going to happen with Jean Luc. He isn’t the nicest guy and is way worse than he was when we were dating, but I still don’t know how far I can take this. Part of me thinks that we shouldn't go anywhere near him. Maybe it is best to let sleeping dogs lie.”

Nicholas scoffed and said that there was no way that he was going to be able to go with that plan of inaction. I asked him why not, and he said that Jean Luc had to receive a punishment. He acted like the whole world was going to be off-kilter if not.

“I’m not saying that it has to be me that does it, but someone needs to. He doesn’t get to do that to you or anyone else and get away with it. People like him need to pay,” Nicholas said through gritted teeth. He wasn’t listening to the rest of it, didn’t seem to care how I felt about it at all.

I felt like I could hate Jean Luc just as badly, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to think about him anymore, and I was convinced that if I stopped thinking about him and giving him the brain power that I was, he might just go away. I didn’t have to hate him. I could just move on and not worry about it anymore. When I suggested something like that to Nicholas, he wasn’t going to listen to it. That was the last thing that he wanted to talk about, and instead of letting anything more come of it, he said that he had to pay.

“Why does he have to pay? Will it make you feel better?” I inquired. I guess I just didn’t understand why he was so hateful about it. The intensity of his emotions were too much to ignore.

Nicholas sighed and agreed that it would. “But what you seem to not remember or want to think about was all the other women that were there. He probably has more houses like that, everywhere, with hundreds of women just like you.”

I swallowed hard, because I didn’t want to think that was real. I knew that it could be, hoped that it wasn’t, but that was just how it was. He probably did have more houses and there were likely many more women just like me. How could I let that go?

“So, we have to take care of him.” I said it without any excitement. This was not something that I wanted to do. He was not someone I ever wanted to see again. What he had done to me was bad enough, and I wanted to hide it all and pretend like it never happened. But Nicholas was right. I had to do it and if I couldn’t muster the courage for myself, I had to for the other women.

“Are you sure that you know where he is and not just where another one of his houses is?”

He agreed that he knew. “I have someone that has been watching him since we got you back. I wanted to take care of him a while ago, but I thought that I would give you a chance to be there if you wanted to be.”

“What are we going to do to him?” I asked. My voice was barely a whisper and Nicholas just looked at me for a moment.

“What do you want to happen?”

I thought it was a trick question. There was no way that I got to have a choice, right? So, I shrugged and said that I didn’t have a clue. “What did you have in mind?”

“I have been thinking about it for a while now and I think that we should take him out. Make him tell us where everyone is that works for him and take him out in a slow and painful way that he deserves.”

I wasn’t ready for that answer, but I knew why he would say something like that. Nicholas was military, and he was trained to be violent when necessary. I knew that about him, but to see in real life how quickly he was willing to go there, it kind of threw me off. I didn’t want him to think that I was afraid of him or that I was trying to keep Jean Luc safe, because that was not the way it was at all. The truth was that I didn’t want him to do something like that for our own sake. We would have this in our lives for the rest of it, so I wasn’t going to feel shame for anything I did to my attacker. I didn’t want to feel that burden, and though Nicholas would likely feel it in another way, I wanted him to stay away from the temptation. There was no sense in him having any ill feelings about it at all.

“I don’t want to do that, Nicholas. There must be a better way.”

Nicholas quickly agreed that it was hands-down the best idea that he had been able to come up with, even after all the time that had passed. Nicholas wanted to act like he wasn’t concerned with it, but he was. He wanted to act like it wasn’t his desire for revenge, but it was.

“We should just call the cops and let them sort him out. They will get all of the houses and help the girls. Then, they will be able to get help like me and be able to move on with their lives.”

“You want him to live?” he asked, incredulously. I told him that I did, but he didn’t want to hear that.

“I want us to have less hate on our hearts. It will be better this way. You’ll see.” I believed it too. This was all going to work out, because we were going to do the right thing.

“I don’t know if I can do that, Lara.”

I frowned, wondering what I was supposed to say to that. “Well, if you expect me to go, that’s how it must happen. If you do something to him, Nicholas, it’s going to be on my conscious, and I really don’t want it.”

He was frustrated with me. It was definitely clear by the expression on his face, but what was I supposed to tell him? I couldn’t go along with it, and I felt like it was my right to feel how I wanted to. It didn’t happen to him, it happened to me. Didn’t I get a choice?

There was a bit of a stare down between us, and Nicholas finally relented. I didn’t have to say much more than what was already said. I would have tried to convince him any way I knew how, but it wasn’t necessary.

“Fine, Lara. We will call the police and let them take care of him, but don’t you at least want to go tell him to piss off and that it was all because of you?”

I disagreed that I wanted that at all. I didn’t want to confront him. I wasn’t very confrontational when it came to relationships. Obviously if I had been, then I would have been rid of him a long time ago. Now that Nicholas was in front of me, hoping that I would say yes, I just couldn’t.

“Not really.”

He sighed loudly, letting me know that he thought I was making the wrong decision. I didn’t want him to think that. It was my decision, and I thought it was the right one. I didn’t want to see Jean Luc and have all that come back to me. The doctor had said that I could be triggered if I saw places and people from that time. I didn’t want that. I didn’t need flashbacks of the worst time in my life. There was no way that I was going to take the chance of that happening.

Nicholas just gave me an exasperated look and I thought that he was going to be mad. I knew that it was not going the way that he wanted it to, but there was some relief in the idea that the police would soon have Jean Luc in custody, and he would pay for everything he had done. Not just that, all those women would be saved. That was all that mattered, not my revenge. I hoped that Nicholas would be able to move past it. I knew that I was ready to.

19

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