“I don’t give a f**k, Anya.”

“You didn’t even know me then, not even close.”

“I don’t give a f**k about that either.”

“He was paying for his crime,” I reminded him.

“Not hard enough,” he stated firmly.

This, I could not deny, was absolutely true.

I held his eyes.

Then I said quietly and cautiously, “Don’t you think that’s a little crazy?”

“Not… even… close.”

I held my breath.

Knight held my eyes.

I let out my breath and looked away.

“Eyes to me.”

“I need time,” I told the floor.

“Look… at… your… man,” he growled and, my heart beating wild in my chest, my eyes went to him. “You do not f**k with what’s mine.”

I was silent.

Knight was not.

“Carl Sebring came in my life when I was seven and that was the beginning of the end of a life that was pure shit. David Watson came into your life when you were seven and that motherfucker made your life shit. Only when I came into it twenty years later did it stop bein’ shit. It is not lost on me we share that age when our lives rocked but I lived seven of bad and I got twenty-eight years of good. You lived seven years of good and got twenty of shit. That is absolutely not acceptable to me. And when something is unacceptable, I do something about it.”

I loved it that he felt that way.

I still could not process what he’d done for me.

So I remained silent.

Knight did not.

“He harmed you, irrevocably. He changed the path of your life. You mentioned my smoking once and then didn’t say dick about it. Women bitch about shit like that. You do not. And it’s not because you were used to it with your aunt. It’s because it reminds you of your father. You loved him, you miss him. So you don’t say dick. You dream more than any f**kin’ person I know. You say they’re all not good. You don’t sleep all night by me but you sleep by me, babe, and if you think for a second I don’t feel you jerk awake at least once every f**kin’ week because you had a bad dream, you’re wrong. I feel it. Every f**kin’ time. You said that started when you were seven. They died when you were seven. He gave you that. He did all that. And he paid. That’s what happens in my world to someone who f**ks with what’s mine. Like I said, you need to find a way to come to terms with that. You want me to help guide the way, I’m here. You can find that path on your own, good. But you need to find that path, Anya. Because I own you. You live in my world. You need to find a way to live with that, baby. There’s no other option.”

I pressed my lips together. Then I ran them back and forth.

Then I nodded.

Knight studied me.

Then he asked quietly, “When’s the spaghetti gonna be ready?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes. I’ll call you,” I answered softly.

“Right, baby,” he whispered then he turned and walked away.

I watched him go. Then I stayed frozen in place watching where I last saw him.

Then I turned and finished the spaghetti.

* * * * *

I was awake when Knight opened the front door.

I rolled and looked through the dark at his alarm clock to see he was really early. It wasn’t even two in the morning yet.

I rolled back.

My guess, he was worried about me. Or where my head was at. I barely spoke through spaghetti. As he was changing into his suit, I sat on his plush, gray suede couch in front of the TV, mindlessly watching it to the point where, when he came in and his fingers sifted in my hair and gave it a gentle tug back so he could lean in and kiss me, my kiss and farewell were distracted. I knew he felt it, noted it because Knight noted everything. I also knew because his hand in my hair held my head back seconds longer than usual and his eyes roamed my face.

Then he let my hair go but kissed the top of my head and left me.

After he was gone, I didn’t zone out. I was Knight’s and I’d been with him long enough to know what that means. He said he’d give me time but in Knight’s world, even with something this important, that didn’t mean days or weeks. That meant on his schedule. He was decisive. He expected those around him to be the same.

So I tried to figure it out. How I felt about this and it wasn’t lost on me that I never really allowed myself to think about how I felt about the way Knight dealt with my Jerk Landlord Steve or what Knight did with Dick.

He told me he didn’t call the hit on David Watson. He told me he sent his boys to talk to Jerk Landlord Steve and they didn’t like what he said. They didn’t go in and bust him up. He was a jerk then they made their point. And Dick quietly moved away. I didn’t see him but no one mentioned that he looked beat up or that there was any ruckus in the building. Dick gave notice, he moved and from what I heard from neighbors I ran into, they were relieved.

Truth be told, I spent so much time burying the fact that David Watson still existed in the world, I honestly could not call up much emotion for the fact he no longer did.

He killed my parents. Knight was right, he altered the path of my life and he harmed me irrevocably. It was random, he didn’t even know them, they’d done him no wrong. He was looking out for himself and jacking up lives along the way, his girlfriend, his baby dead, my parents dead, my life changed forever.

It wasn’t Knight’s responsibility he was dead. He didn’t ask for that. And I didn’t know what it said about me but digging deep and thinking about it, I could also not call up much emotion about the fact that Knight took measures to make him pay. I wouldn’t do it myself. I didn’t condone it. But I didn’t think less of Knight because he did it. He did it for me. He did it because that was the kind of man he was and that was the kind of world he lived in.

And I lived in that world now too.

This was not lost on me though I had been doing what Knight said I was doing. Burying my head. Not thinking about it. But right off the bat, Knight was always who he was, he did what he did, he never hid anything from me.

And I took his hand and walked right into his world.

I could not quibble now.

I had a choice.

Now that my head no longer was buried I could walk out of his world and never look back.

Or stay.

I also knew I didn’t have all the information. Knight said he’d tell me about him when he was ready for me to know. He doled out information carefully and unlike with everything else, he was not generous. I understood this. In his world, I was sensing, he needed to proceed with caution. Even with me. But from the little he told me of his early years, they would mark anybody. There were women, heck, not just women but people, I knew, who would hear his mother was a prostitute, part of his growing up years he grew up in that life and didn’t know who his father was and they’d think things about Knight. That would make anyone wary especially if they were falling in love. He undoubtedly faced those judgments more than once in his life. And he’d given me so much; I could give him time to share at his pace with me.