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Carlos grabbed the door latch and had it halfway open before he realized it. As soon as his actions penetrated the jealous haze fucking up his brain, he yanked the door closed again. Shitty impulses were what had gotten him into this mess in the first place.
Alex tsk-tsked. “It’s okay. You know chicks don’t go for that whole yes ma’am Southern boy charm he’s got going. Not. At. All.”
Carlos kept his gaze straight forward and his jaw clamped shut tight enough that he was probably going to put all of his dentist’s kids through grad school. Alex was about as opaque as a piece of Plexiglas. He’d sauntered over for his piece of flesh and he wasn’t going until he’d gotten it. The less engagement the better.
“Of course you don’t care,” Alex said. “That’s why you handed her off to Roscoe in the first place and went on immediate leave.”
Carlos gave the shit disturber the best dead-eyed, fuck-off look he had.
“All right. I see you’re a man with lots of”—he shrugged—“plans for your vacation that involve unauthorized stakeouts because you like sitting around with six days’ worth of fast-food wrappers while you stare at an apartment building. That’s good. We’ll need someone to keep tabs on Mika’s place while she’s at the Battle Ultimate tomorrow.”
Carlos’s gut clenched. “She can’t go.” The hoarse words were out before he could stop them.
Alex shrugged. “That’s what I said. She told me to go fuck myself.” He gave Carlos a considering look. “I kinda like her. I wonder if she likes tall, smart, classically handsome men of Chinese descent.”
Whatever reaction Alex was trying to provoke, Carlos was too busy sprinting across the busy street to give it to him.
“Bastard,” Mika muttered.
He was still out there. Parked down the block like Mika wasn’t going to notice—not that he expected her to. No. To Carlos, she was just a liability, a woman who made the same mistakes over and over again because he thought her impulsiveness got people in trouble, got them hurt, and could have gotten them killed. Well, he was wrong, and she’d show him just how much, and then she’d never waste another moment thinking about him again.
“Fuck you,” she muttered to herself.
“Sorry?” Will asked.
She looked over her shoulder at the big block of a man sitting at her dining room table with a college football scouting magazine opened in front of him. No doubt somewhere out there, a fairy tale was missing its giant. “Just talking to myself.”
She took one last look at Carlos’s car, then turned away, walked over to the coffee maker in her kitchen, and poured the last of the morning pot into her Tardis mug. Staring out the window at the man who’d ripped her heart out and thrown it in a blender was the last thing she needed to be doing with the Battle Ultimate starting tomorrow. She had last-minute costume adjustments to make, strategy to discuss with her court, and a million little details to work out. Of course, since she had so much to do, it was the perfect time to deep-clean her kitchen.
She had the entire upper-level cabinets emptied out when someone banged on the door. Hard.
Will held up a hand, signaling her to stay put as he picked up his handgun from underneath the magazine and made his way to the door. He looked through the peephole and stepped back.
“It’s Carlos.”
A flicker of excitement curled around her before she got ahold of herself and stomped that out. So he finally had the balls to leave his car? Perfect. She had a week’s worth of pissed off to rain down on him.
“Oh is it?” She stormed over to the door and yanked it open. Scruff covered his square chin, his clothes were wrinkled, and he looked like he hadn’t slept well in a hundred years—still her heart kicked into overdrive at the sight of him. “What are you doing here?”
He slid past her into the apartment and glowered at Will until the bigger man faded into the background of her apartment like he wasn’t even there. Only then did Carlos turn to her. Anger, frustration, and something a lot like regret rolled off him in waves that slammed against her.
“You can’t go to Battle Ultimate. It’s not safe,” he said. “For all you know, he’s just waiting for you to let your guard down. The event will be chaos. Everyone will be in chaos. There’ll be mundanes mixed in with the players, and you won’t know friend from foe. He’s already helped harm half your court. He’ll know you’ll be there. It’s the perfect opportunity for this guy to cut another loose end without anyone realizing until it’s too late.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re so caught up in guilt and determined not to repeat the past that you can’t ever believe that other people might not be total morons.” She shouldn’t have ever opened her door and let him in. Hell, she shouldn’t have ever gone home with him from the bar that first night. “It’s been a week and there hasn’t been a single solitary peep out of the mystery drug dealer. I’m not turning my back on my life because of a perceived threat. I’m not going to live the rest of my life trapped in my loft because of something that might happen.”
And this was what her life had become. She was lying like it was second nature. It went against every fiber of her being, but if that’s what it took to get him out of her life, she’d do it. She had a plan to right her wrong. It would work. It had to.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” He turned toward Will Roscoe, who was studying one of her design association magazines like a man about to embark on a career change. “You can’t let her do this. He could be out there.”
Will shrugged his broad shoulders. “Not my call, man.”
Carlos pulled his phone out. “I’m calling Tony.”
Oh no. He wasn’t about to try to outmaneuver her on this. She was the client, and what she said went. “It’s not his call, either.” Mika jabbed her finger into Carlos’s unrelenting chest for emphasis. “It’s mine.”
Her father hadn’t stuck around after Hana was murdered. Her mother hadn’t left physically, but she’d shrunk into herself and abandoned her only living daughter just the same. Mika had come into adulthood alone—not by choice but because of circumstance. Well, she was done with that. Only she would control her destiny. She was the one leaving, not the other way around.
He popped his knuckles and worked his jaw back and forth hard enough to grind his teeth to dust. “If you insist on doing this, I’m coming.”
