Page 66 of Sweet Surrender
“Blake, my brother, was five years older than me. Both he and mydad hated me from the minute I was born,” Nash said, his tone now void of any emotion.
“Why?” I replied, startled that his own family could hate him. It wasn’tsomething I could imagine, there was never a time when I could have hated my mom.
“They blamed me for the death of my mom,” he said cooly, makingmy eyes widen in surprise. “She died from complications during my birth. I almost died too, but the doctors were able to save me.”
Holy hell. What a horrific way to come into this world. “Nash, I…I’m sosorry,” I said, the only words I could find to say. He gave me a sad smile and for the first time since I agreed to this blasted arrangement, I realized that Nash Carson, billionaire asshole, was human after all.
“I don’t understand how they could hate you though, you were only ababy. You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said after a few seconds of tense silence.
“My dad only cared about one thing. Money. Suddenly, hewas left with two young kids, and no wife to manage them,” Nash said, pausing again to take a sip of his wine. I copied him, feeling likeIneeded the alcohol to get me through this conversation. “My dad was a dreamer. He had this idea that one day, he was going to own casinos and hotels across the world, but the one casino he owned, he could barely run it. It was losing money, and instead of being a good father, and putting all his effort into looking after his kids, he put his attention into a failing casino.
“While he was busy fucking up his business, he left my grandma andgranddad to raise Blake and me. My granddad was an old-fashioned man, very strict, and punished us when we didn’t do as he ordered.”
I didn’t need Nash to tell me how his granddad would punish him, theway he was gripping the stem of the wine glass said it all.
“I defied him for a long time, even after he started beating me,” Nashcontinued, only now he was staring at the wine swirling in his glass, his eyes glazed over as he became lost in his own world. “It didn’t occur to me that if I just did as he said, I wouldn’t be punished. But that changed when I was seven.”
He fell silent, his brows furrowed and his lips pursed into a thin line.Whatever had happened to him at seven was something that still haunted him now.
“What happened?” I whispered, unable to stop the question fromfalling from my lips. Nash’s head whipped up, his silvery-gray eyes finding mine, and he looked as if he’d forgotten I was there.
He swallowed, and a muscle twitched in his jaw. For a second Iwas sure he wasn’t going to answer my question. But he did, and fuck, did my heart break for him.
“Blake took it upon himself to take over my punishment. It started withhim sneaking into my room at night and hitting me, but after a while, he found other ways to punish me. Ways no child should ever be punished.”
My heart plummeted into my stomach as a lump formed in my throat.Even if I could find the words to say to him, I wouldn’t have been able to force them out.
“Four years. Four years he would sneak into my room. He used to tellme he was punishing me for not doing what my granddad told me to do, so I started listening to the old man to stop Blake from coming to my room. But it didn’t stop him. He started telling me that he was punishing me for taking our parents away. He blamed me for killing my mom, and he blamed me for us rarely seeing our dad.”
I didn’t know tears were in my eyes until the first one slid down mycheek. “Nash, I’m…I’m so sorry that happened to you,” I said, reaching out to take his hand in mine.
For what felt like an eternity, he stared at where our hands wereclasped together before he tore his gaze away to look at me, a new determination etched on his face.
“Fox is the reason I’m sitting here today. He was the one who made itstop,” he said, making my brows rise in surprise. “I met him when I was eleven. I was walking home from school when a group of older boys circled me. They were Blake’s friends and they said Blake had told them to punish me. Fox saw everything, and even though he didn’t know who I was, he got in between me and the boys. Said that if they laid a finger on me, he’d gut them. And then he pulled out a knife from his school bag.”
Nash grinned fondly at the memory. I didn’t knoweither of them as boys, but gratitude stillrushed through methatFox was therethatday to help Nash.
“He walked me home after that, and that’s when I realized who hewas.”
“Who was he?” I said, enthralled by the tale of how their friendshipstarted.
“He was Harvey Hill Junior,” Nash replied, smirking.
“Harvey Hill? That’s his real name?” I laughed. I’d always justassumed his name was Fox.
“Yeah. But don’t tell him I told you or he’ll kill me. And don’t evercall him it or he’ll kill you,” Nash said, a twinkle of malice in his eye.
“Why?”
“Because he shares the name with his father, and Fox hates his oldman as much as I hate mine,” Nash said, shrugging.
“Oh. Why is he called Fox then?” I asked, drawn into learning aboutthe duo with each passingsecond.
“When Fox was younger, he had auburn hair, and he was a skinnylittle fucker,” Nash chuckled, and an image formed in my head of a little boy with red hair and pointy features, a far cry from the handsome man he was now. “Kids used to pick on him, which is why he started carrying a knife around. They soon stopped picking on him when rumors started swirling that he’d stabbed someone. They were just rumors, but it did the job to get the kids to stop.”
Nash paused to take a sip of his wine, and I followed suit, our scallops long since forgotten about.
“His dad carried on being a bullying asshole though,” Nash continued. “He’d tell him he was as pathetic as a fox and was nothing but vermin who needed to be put out of his misery. What his old man didn’t know was that behind his back, Fox was planning ways to destroy his father. A sly fox plotting to ruin the man who made his life a misery.”
