His Chubby Obsession

Chapter Seventeen: Enzo's Fury

(Enzo's POV)

I didn't sleep that night. I don't think I'd have been able to even if I'd wanted to.

I sat up long after Emma had finally gone to bed, the photograph of her father and Niel Spears still sitting on the kitchen table where she'd left it, and felt something in me building toward a place I didn't fully trust myself to be in charge of.

Her own father. Four months before any of it started. A business transaction dressed up as a fairy tale, and every single adult who should have protected her had instead priced her out like inventory.

I thought about my mother. About the version of this exact fury I'd felt at nineteen, standing over her, understanding for the first time that all the adults who should have stepped in over the years — neighbors who'd heard the shouting, family who'd seen the bruises and looked away, a system that had processed her three separate times and returned her to the same house each time — every single one of them had chosen the easier thing over the right thing, and she had paid for their comfort with nineteen years of her life.

I did not want to feel that fury again. I especially did not want to feel it on Emma's behalf, because I knew exactly where that particular fire liked to lead a man, and I'd promised myself a long time ago I wasn't going to become the kind of man who let rage make his decisions for him.

I failed at that promise a little, that night. I'll admit that now, even though I didn't admit it to her at the time.

I actually got as far as the truck keys before Sofia caught me in the doorway.

"Where are you going," she said. It wasn't really a question, not from the way she was looking at me.

"To have a conversation with Niel Spears."

"At two in the morning."

"I don't particularly care what time it is."

Sofia stepped fully into the doorway, blocking it, which took a certain amount of nerve given the state I was in, and I'll always respect her for it even though in the moment I nearly told her to move.

"And what exactly is this conversation going to accomplish," she said. "Besides putting you in a room with the single most powerful man in this city while you're angry enough to do something we can't undo?"

"He orchestrated her entire life like she was a chess piece."

"I know."

"He picked her because he thought she'd never fight back. He watched her family's finances like a predator waiting for the weakest moment to strike."

"I know, Enzo." Sofia's voice softened, just slightly, the way it did when she was talking me down from somewhere she recognized because she'd stood on that same ledge herself, more than once, in the years after our mother died. "And going over there right now, in this state, doesn't fix a single thing that already happened to her. It just gives an old man with unlimited lawyers and unlimited money a reason to see you as a threat instead of an asset."

"I'm not asking his permission to be furious."

"No. But you might want to ask yourself who you're actually furious for." She held my gaze, steady, unflinching, the same way she'd held it the night she'd first challenged me about vouching for Emma at all. "Because from where I'm standing, this doesn't look like it's about Emma right now. It looks like it's about a nineteen-year-old kid who couldn't do anything to stop what happened to his mother, finally getting a chance to feel like he can stop something."

I stood there a long moment, keys still in my hand, and hated how completely right she was.

"That doesn't make the anger wrong," I finally said.

"No. It doesn't. It just means the anger belongs to a different night than this one." She reached out, gently took the keys from my hand, and I let her. "Go talk to her. Not him. She's the one who actually needs you right now, and she doesn't need you disappearing into your own history at the exact moment she's finally facing hers."

—

I found Emma in the kitchen an hour later, unable to sleep either, sitting in the dark with a cup of tea gone cold in front of her, staring at nothing.

"You look like you were about to do something stupid," she said, without turning around, and I realized Sofia must have said something to her, or maybe she just knew me better than I'd expected this early into knowing each other at all.

"I was going to go see him," I admitted. "Your father-in-law. Or your soon-to-be ex father-in-law, whatever we're calling him now."

"Enzo."

"I know." I sat down across from her, the same table, the photograph still sitting between us like a wound neither of us had bandaged yet. "Sofia talked me out of it. She was right to."

"Why did you want to?"

I considered lying, softening it, the way I'd softened things my whole life to keep from scaring people off with the size of what was actually underneath. But something about the last week — about her, about the particular way she'd started looking at me like the truth wasn't something to be afraid of — made me want to just say it plainly, for once.

"Because watching you find out what that man did to you made me feel exactly the same as I felt at nineteen, standing over my mother, understanding for the first time that everyone who could have stopped it just... didn't." My voice came out rougher than I meant it to. "And I couldn't fix that, back then. I was a kid. I didn't have the money or the connections or the leverage to do anything except bury her and be angry for the rest of my life. And some part of me, watching you tonight, thought maybe this time I actually could fix it. Maybe this time I wasn't going to be too late."

Emma was quiet a long moment, watching me with an expression I couldn't quite read.

"I don't need you to fix it," she finally said, gently. "I already have every document I need to understand what happened to me. What I need is — " She stopped, seemed to reconsider, then pushed forward anyway, like she'd decided somewhere in the last few days that honesty was worth the risk of it not being returned. "What I need is someone who stays. Not someone who charges in and disappears the moment the danger's handled. Someone who's actually still here, on the boring nights, after the crisis is over."

"I can do that."

"Can you?" She looked at me steadily. "Because I've spent five years being someone's project, Enzo. Something to be managed, produced, maintained. I don't want to trade one version of that for a kinder one. I want — "

"You," I said, before she could finish, the word out of me before I'd fully decided to say it. "That's what I want to be here for. Not the danger. Not the fixing. You. Just you, on whatever kind of night this turns out to be." My chest felt tight, saying it, the way it had felt tight on the porch before the headlights interrupted us, except this time there was nothing left to interrupt it. "Somewhere in the last week, you stopped being a woman I was protecting and started being someone I genuinely can't imagine losing. That terrifies me more than any of this ever has. More than Bruce, more than Vincent, more than any of it."

The kitchen was very quiet. Emma's hand found mine across the table, the same way it had found it on the porch step, except this time neither of us let the moment get interrupted by anything at all.

"I'm terrified too," she whispered.

"Good," I said. "Means we're both paying attention."