Don Ferna (BWWM)

18.

"What do you want to tell me?" Her worried eyes finally left her food after several moments of hesitation.

Tobias knew she had felt how nervous he was and that what he wanted to tell her was serious.

Should he start off lightly? And ease her into the main topic?

"My sister is in New York." He knew this was the best start as he caught her eyes sparkling in excitement.

"Rebecca? Oh my god, that's so cool. I've always wanted to meet her!" She grinned and Tobias felt horrible. That smile would be dimmed in a few minutes.

"Yes and the men I told you about as well..." He said rubbing his forehead as he felt a new headache brewing. He had not even been awake for over thirty minutes.

Bringing the family together was always stressful. They were all adults and most of the time, conflicts of interests were unavoidable. Thankfully, he could always fall back on Alvaro and Mateo if it got too hard.

"That's good too. What's the special occasion though? Why's everybody pulling up?" She asked lightly, already digging into her richly garnished bowl of rice. He wished he had an appetite to eat, the food looked really good.

He just needed to find the right approach to tell her carefully so she would not freak out.

"It's for your court trial." He watched as she slowly lifted her head to look at him for a moment before going back to her food. All good so far.

"Why?"

"The thing is, they'll be there as a means of ah..." He didn't know how to put it. "Protection. For you, that is."

"What do I need protection for? It's just a trial and if Alvaro is as good as you put him to be, I don't think I'll have any issues with the law or anything like that."

"It's not the law I'm worried about. It's you and your safety." He exhaled deeply, meeting her eyes for a few seconds.

He knew he couldn't stall any further, he had to tell her. He had prepped up for this moment for days. Why is it so difficult?

"My safety?" She sounded a lot more concerned than she did before. It was not a good sign.

He hesitantly stretched his hands to wrap around hers in a bid to reassure her. This is going to be difficult.

"I need you to calm down, okay? And to listen to everything I say. Can you do that for me, Princess?" He asked softly, gently caressing her knuckles with his much bigger rough hands. Hands that were a bit too rough, contrasting the office work he did.

"Okay." She answered quietly, focusing on his soothing fingers on the back of her palms.

"Bien." At least she was calming down.

"Something happened a while ago, I believe I already told you half of it. About 3 years back." It stung him to recall what had happened that long ago. He'd rather forget about it.

"Okay..." She trailed off, urging him to continue.

"Rebecca was kidnapped on her way to Minnesota from Germany after my dad had... passed on. We— well, Varo and I thought it was just a normal kidnapping and they just needed ransom."

"What then did they need?"

"The entire Ferna empire, our company, shares, stock, investments, assets, everything." He almost chuckled at the memory of the crumpled up note containing all their demands. The note didn't even last 3 seconds after they had read it as Varo had immediately thrown it into the fire in the fireplace.