Free Heller by J.D. Nixon Page B

the
pantry and entered the other room on the sixth floor. “This is the
library,” Daniel said ushering me in. It was a surprisingly bright
and airy space, even though every square centimetre of its walls
was shelving, filled with DVDs and books. My eyes widened
again.
    “There must be
thousands of DVDs in here! And look at all of these books! It would
take years to read them all.” I walked around in wonder. “What kind
of books and DVDs are there mostly?”
    “Mostly
thrillers, mysteries, police procedurals, war, action, horror, some
comedy, some supernatural. No relationship or romance stories,” he
said apologetically.
    “Good. I hate
mushy stuff,” I returned with a smile. “And I love a good thriller.
Do we just help ourselves here too?”
    “Sure. There’s
also a collection of games in that corner. For Niq’s Xbox, although
I have to admit that the twins and I like to play occasionally
too.”
    “Not
Heller?”
    Daniel
laughed. “No, not Heller. He doesn’t have much patience for wasting
time on frivolous activities like that. He has, um, other
interests. But he’s tolerant. To a point.”
    Nothing I’d
heard so far about Heller made me any more relaxed about accepting
a position working for him. I started thinking that the next month
was going to test me in ways that I probably wouldn’t be competent
enough to face.
    Unaware of my
inner thoughts, Dan carried on the same conversational topic.
“Niq’s only supposed to play once he’s finished his schoolwork
though. Do you play?”
    “Sometimes.
Depends what you like to play.” A thought struck me. “Daniel, where
does Niq go to school?”
    “He doesn’t.
He’s home-schooled, through distance education.”
    “Why?”
    Daniel sighed
and sat down on the arm of one of the library’s lounge chairs. “Niq
struggles to fit in with other kids. He missed a lot of school when
he was younger and wasn’t well-socialised. He can’t adapt to the
rigid routine and well, you’ve seen how individual he is. He’s not
good at conforming.”
    I nodded and
parked my rear on the arm of another chair as he continued.
    “When Heller
first bought this building, not long after Niq . . . um . . . came
to live with us, we enrolled him at the local primary school. He
was badly bullied from the first day but didn’t tell any of us for
ages. It was a very damaging experience for him, totally destroyed
his self-confidence and when Heller found out, he became quite . .
. ah . . . angry. I went with him to the school and there was a . .
. hmm, um . . . an extremely unpleasant scene between him and the
school principal that I suspect might have ended with . . . might
have ended a lot worse for everyone if I hadn’t been there to calm
things down. But the result was that Heller withdrew Niq from the
school permanently. He wasn’t willing to risk the bullying
happening again at another school so we enrolled Niq for distance
education instead.” He shrugged. “Niq’s coping remarkably well now,
so what we’re doing seems to be working for him. Everybody’s
happy.”
    I nodded again
and didn’t push it any further, although I felt that Daniel had
been choosing his words very carefully as he spoke. I was growing
increasingly curious about their relationships with each other.
Heller was undoubtedly the boss, but where did everyone else fit
in?
    We finished
our tour by climbing up to the roof-top. I was pleasantly surprised
to find it decked out as a leisure centre, with a couple of sun
lounges, a sheltered area with a barbeque, picnic table, pool table
and a hot tub. There was also a small herb garden off to one
sheltered sunny corner.
    “We come up
here to relax,” Daniel smiled, “and to get some sunshine.”
    “I like this
place,” I said, looking around happily. “Heller’s a very generous
boss.”
    “Well, I
suppose that’s because we are all more like family to him than
staff,” Daniel considered. “The twins, Niq and I have all lived
with Heller