“I don’t want you involved in this,” I say.
Rainer’s face shifts. “Well, it’s here.”
“That’s exactly the fucking problem.”
“No.” His voice is even and entirely calm. “The problem is that you are standing there, looking like you are already packing your bags in your head.”
I stare at him.
He holds my gaze without blinking, without shifting, and without giving me a single inch to hide behind.
I hate how well he sees me. Because somewhere in the back of my head, the old instinct has already risen and is quietly and efficiently looking for the exit. The way it always has when I was young enough to realize that leaving was the only form of control I had over anything.
Leave. Before Rainer gets pulled into a world he never asked to be part of. Leave before Skylar finds out the man she let back into her life has debt collectors circling.
I could do it. I’ve done it before and I was good at it. The muscle memory is right there under everything, patient as a bruise.
Except the second the thought forms, her voice comes with it.
I am not running.
I can’t do that to her again.
I grip the edge of the bench until the metal bites into my palm. “I can’t drag this shit to your door.”
Rainer steps closer. “Running is not noble, son.”
My throat hurts when I swallow. “Then what do I do?”
Rainer studies me for a long moment before his gaze shifts to the roller door. “You stop disappearing every time your past catches up. That doesn’t protect people. It just leaves them.” He pauses. “I know that, Zane. I have lived that life myself.”
I stare at him, wanting to ask more. But I don’t get to ask what he means by that.
Footsteps sound, more than one set, and just like that, the past walks in to collect.
Ricky walks in as if the room already owes him something. Charcoal suit. Fine stripe. Clean shoes on a floor that has seen oil, blood, coffee, and every ugly kind of morning. He is not a big man. That is what people always get wrong about men like Ricky. They expect size. Muscle. Some thick-necked asshole with fists the size of bricks and a voice made for threats.
But Ricky is lean and immaculate. A man who has never once needed to raise his voice to make a point because the two men behind him do it without being asked. They step in after him, broad and taking up space near the roller door, their hands loose at their sides and their eyes sweeping the workshop. Before they land on me and then on Rainer.
Ricky stops in the middle of the workshop floor and slowly looks around. Griff stands behind him.
My pulse turns heavy. Every beat lands deep and ugly. This is what I brought here. These assholes in suits. The clean little smile with dirty money behind it.
My fists curl at my sides before I force them to open again.
Ricky’s eyes finally meet mine. “Griff said you wanted to hear it from me. So here I am.”
I step between him and Rainer. That is where I need to be and that’s exactly where I’m staying.
“Say what you came to say.”
Ricky’s gaze flicks past my shoulder to Rainer before shifting back to me. That alone is enough to make my blood heat.
He adjusts one cufflink like a man making sure everyone in the room knows time belongs to him.
“You missed a fight, Zane.”
“I got arrested.”
