He stopped close and she tipped her head back to keep hold on his gaze.

Watching her hair glide off her shoulders and fall down her back, seeing how soft her slim-fitting sweater looked up close, having her mouth right there, he wanted to kiss her.

But he didn’t quite get what was in her eyes.

“What’s makin’ you not really okay, Livvie?” he asked quietly.

“I have good news and…I think…good news,” she announced.

He felt his head jerk.

Then he warned her he was losing patience by saying, “Liv.”

“My guess is that you know Drake Nair.”

Nick felt his body go solid.

He knew Nair.

He knew Nair as an adversary of his brother’s.

He also knew Nair as a total and complete asshole.

He further knew Nair was mixed up with the human trafficking business that got Hettie dead.

Last, he knew in all the getting to know you and figuring things out he and Olivia had been doing between fucking and just being together, he’d not figured out how to explain he intended to destroy her father, kill a family henchman and he’d first met her through carefully planned machinations because he intended to use her to start that plan in motion.

What he did not know was why Olivia seemed aloof while bringing Nair up out of the blue.

“Yes,” he confirmed tightly. “I know Nair.”

“Well…” she flipped out a hand, “he’s dead.”

Nick stared at her.

“Say again?” he asked.

“Around about the time he told Dad that when Valenzuela chewed him up and spit him out then put me on the auction block and Nair was going to buy me, come all over me and then put me out for sale, Dad blew his head off with his .45. He could have picked his nine millimeter, which would have been far less messy. But Dad doesn’t do the clean up or even order it, so he doesn’t mind messy.”

Nick felt the muscle jump in his cheek as his hands formed fists.

Although stunned at the suddenness of it when Nair had been a pain in the ass for a fucking long time, Nick was not at all pissed Nair was dead.

The guy was a dick. He’d fucked with Knight in seriously shitty ways. And he was a memory that Nick didn’t like having since Nick had used the man back when he was an asshole to try to drive his brother and his woman apart.

But he was pissed because he felt grateful to Vincent Shade for taking him out due to all of those reasons but especially because Nair spouted that shit in front of Nick’s woman.

And he was pissed because he didn’t like feeling grateful to Vincent Shade at all.

“A rare, as in unique demonstration of fatherly affection,” she declared, lifting her drink and taking a sip. She went on after she lowered it again. “That being said both in terms of it as the first demonstration of fatherly affection I remember in, I don’t know…ever and blowing a man’s head off with a .45 is just a jacked-up, crazy, lunatic way to demonstrate affection.”

“Are you okay?” Nick asked, his voice still tight.

“Yes,” she answered casually. “I was far enough away. No blood or brain matter hit me.”

“Livvie,” he whispered, his warning gentle this time that her bullshit needed to stop.

“Who does that?” she whispered back and he saw it happening deep in her eyes.

She was losing it.

Nick shifted closer.

“Georgia just called Gill, ordered a cleanup and asked when we could reschedule our meeting. Now who does that?” she asked.

He lifted both hands and framed her face.

“Nair was awful,” she said. “Everyone knows he’s awful. But now he’s dead and I’m just supposed to go to the grocery store and go home and make dinner and that’s it?” She shook her head in his hands. “A man is dead.”

“Livvie—”

She lifted her hands too, curling them tight around either side of his neck.

“I don’t want this to be my life,” she whispered fiercely. “But now, I don’t want it in your life. Don’t you see? Don’t you see now why I can’t do this? Why I can’t have you? Why I can’t have anybody?”

Before he could react to that, as in put a stop to where she was heading, she let him go, pulled out of his hold, jumping off the stool and taking a big step away. Throwing an arm out wide to take in his kitchen, she kept talking.

“Honey, I’m home,” she called out sarcastically. “Oh good, sweetheart. Taco extravaganza for dinner and, oh, by the way, this afternoon, Dad murdered someone in front of me.”

“Liv—”

She bent toward him, the movement so abrupt it appeared painful.

“That’s insane,” she hissed.

“Baby—”

She leaned back. “And what do you do? You can’t call the cops. Or you can. Then, as retribution, my dad makes you dead or I’m dead or your brother’s dead or the mother of his children is dead or—”

He took two strides to her, yanked her in his arms and ordered, “Livvie, stop.”

She held herself stiff then sagged so deep he had to take most of her weight.

“We can’t do this,” she said into his chest.

“I’m getting you out,” he declared.

She went stiff again.

Then her head jerked back and she asked, “What?”

“I’m getting you out.”

“Nicky,” she whispered, her hands coming up, going into his jacket and curling into his shirt at the sides of his waist.

She did that but said no more.