Tough Love

Chapter Twenty-two

I shake my head, realizing he's right. He hasn't let me down once. That thought pushes me to voice an idea I had been toying with for a little while.

“Eli?”

“Yes sweetheart?”

“One question...”

He looks at me confused and I noted that I liked the way his left eyebrow quirked up when he had a question. “What question?”

“No, I mean, you get one question. One a day. And I'll try my hardest to answer it truthfully.”

He looks shocked and maybe a little proud at the same time. “Where is this coming from?”

I shrug, stare at my plate and shift the food around. “I don't know. I think it started when my poppa spoke to me the last time.”

“Are you sure about this? I mean, I'm sure it's going to make you uncomfortable.”

“I don't know. I just think it's better this way.”

“Ok, but if you don't want to answer or if it's too much for you, you must tell me. Ok?”

“Yes sir.”

“Why do you always call me sir?”

“Is that your question?”

“Is it related? I was just wondering. I didn't realize it was connected.”

“My poppa always taught me to be polite...”

He was silent for a few seconds and then it was like a light went on in his head. “They made you say it, didn't they?”

My lack of an answer was all the response he needed.

“Calling someone sir is a mark of respect. Not everyone deserves that respect, especially scum like them.”

This was the first time he'd ever shown me any emotion about the whole thing. I thought he had turned his emotions off or he had no real feelings on the matter, so his words shocked me.

“What? What's that look for?”

At first I don't answer, but then I decide to bite the bullet and see how he reacts to what I have to say.

“You've never shown any emotion about it. That's the first time you've shown me anything. I thought you were immune or something...”

“Oh no, baby. I'm definitely not immune. I was trying to be strong for you. I knew that me getting angry would scare you and I didn't want to show you just how much my heart was breaking in case you misunderstood it and thought it was directed at you. If I'm honest with you, I'd like to have them all in a room so I can just kill them all, slowly and painfully.”

This shocked me even more. Eli had never shown any love of violence before. I knew he had to like violence to some degree otherwise he would have been in the Rangers and then moved into SWAT. But this was the first time he had overtly shown this side to me.

“I'm not going to lie to you, sweetheart. I want to hurt them, bad. What they did to you deserves a slow and painful demise.”

A single tear slides down my cheek and I flinch when he moves to wipe it away.

“I didn't mean to upset you...”

I just nod, not knowing how to voice what was going on in my head. No one had ever cared enough to try to figure out what had happened to me. No one else wanted to kill these people for what they did. Granted, no one else knew what happened, but the clients knew. They saw what went on; they saw our bodies broken and bruised. Not all of them were psychopaths. Some of them just wanted or needed to pay for a woman's attention. They were the ones that could have done something; they could have said something, but none of them cared enough.