“Yes.” He’s still got that smug expression about him. “That was, shall we say, inconvenient.”
The two men behind Ricky don’t move, but I sense their weight in the workshop, their purpose, the threat.
Ricky takes one step deeper into the garage.
My body wants to match it. I do not let it.
“Bets were laid,” he says. “Money moved. Men lost. You understand how that looks.”
His gaze slides across the space—over the cars, the tool chests, the office door, and the old sign on the back wall, Rainer’s name spelled out in faded blue letters. He is measuring the place. Not as a workshop. As leverage.
I step sideways, cutting off his view of Rainer’s office.
He notices. “You always did have a protective streak.”
“Get to the point,” I say.
“The point is simple.” He looks me straight in the eye and gives me that smile—the one that has never once reached his eyes. “Come back and fight, and we’ll call it settled.”
“No.”
The word sits between us, flat, final.
Ricky’s smile doesn’t move. “No?”
“I’m not fighting again. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
“Then you clear the debt another way.”
“How much?”
From near the roller door, Griff watches with that smug expression on his face, the one that makes me want to put his head through the wall.
“One hundred and three thousand dollars,” Ricky says.
The workshop goes quiet.
“I can’t pay that,” I tell him.
“Then you come back and clear it.” Ricky tilts his head. “It’s as simple as that.”
I turn my gaze toward Ricky.
“How much to settle the debt?” Rainer’s voice comes from behind me.
My whole body goes cold.
“Stay out of this,” I say, turning to Rainer.
Rainer ignores me. He steps around me, his hands greasy, his work shirt worn at the collar. “I said how much to settle his debt?”
“Rainer.”
His eyes don’t move from Ricky. “You heard what I said. How much to clear it?”
“Why don’t you stay out of it, old man,” Ricky says, that smirk still plastered on his face. He looks between Rainer and I like he is working something out.
I want to put my fist through the smug little calculation forming behind his eyes.
