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“You don’t know anything about Mexico. And I’m not talking to you about it here. It’s none of your goddamn business.”
“She’s my wife. It’s always my goddamn business.” Dario spoke calmly, lifting the napkin and wiping his mouth. Balling up the fabric, he tossed it on the table. It landed next to his phone, which buzzed to life, the display lighting with a number he instantly recognized. Bell’s.
Hawk’s eyes moved to the phone. “You need to take that?”
Dario ignored the question, sitting back in his seat and letting the phone buzz, his posture relaxed despite the clench of his jaw. “Don’t change the subject, Robert. You were asking about Gwen.”
Hawk’s eyes stayed on the phone and he reached forward quickly, snagging the cell off the table and tapping the screen to answer the call. He lifted the phone to his ear and held Dario’s gaze.
Underneath the table, Dario’s hands clenched, every muscle in his body fighting to stay relaxed, to keep himself from leaping out of his seat and snatching the phone from the man’s liver-spotted hands.
The psychopath smiled, then drawled into the receiver. “Hello?”
Dario could hear something, a delicate voice that spoke. Hawk asked who she was, glanced at the screen, then held the phone out, across the table.
Dario took the cell, releasing a contained breath when he saw that the call had ended. “Don’t touch my fucking phone again.”
The man raised his eyebrows in a mild manner. “She sounds like a beautiful woman.”
It was bait, and Dario avoided the trap, schooling his features into a manner that didn’t scream his thoughts. What had Bell said? What, if anything, did Hawk know?
“Do you know why I picked you to marry my daughter?”
Dario stayed silent and fought the urge to check his watch. This lunch had already gone on too long. A rehash of circumstances wasn’t going to help that.
“I picked you because you told me that you would be loyal to her and to my business interests.” Hawk took a long sip of his drink, then smacked his lips together. Dario examined the lines that formed around his mouth, the dry spots on his cheeks, the watery blink of his eyes, the scab on the top of one ear. Robert Hawk was getting old. “I picked you because I liked how you carried yourself, and I liked how you handled situations.”
“Is there a point to this?” Dario caught the waiter’s eye and lifted one finger for the check.
“You’ve gotten too big for your redneck Cajun britches.”
Dario smiled. “That’s a matter of opinion.”
“You don’t pay me the proper respect.” The older man slapped his hand on the tablecloth with enough force that the silverware rattled.
Dario said nothing. He’d learned, after a decade with this man, that he’d burn himself out. The waiter eased by and he passed him the credit card.
“Who was that on the phone?” The man’s eyes bulged, the table rocking slightly as he leaned forward and spit out the question. Dario said nothing and Hawk’s finger jabbed the air between them. “If you’ve got some slut on the side, I swear to God—”
Dario interrupted him before the threat could be completed. “I’m loyal to Gwen. I always have been. And I’m loyal to your business interests and investments. Just as I’ve always been.”
He took the check folio from the waiter and added a generous tip, then scrawled his name across the bottom and stood. “And Robert?” Tucking his credit card back in his wallet, he leaned forward and rested a palm on the table, leaning forward until he was eye level with the older man. “Don’t ever fucking threaten me.”
Walking away, Dario’s heart pounded against his chest.
* * *
BELL
I watched Ian walk across his room, his build thin and lanky, the muscles popping from his frame as he changed from his button-up and khakis into workout clothes. This is who I should be with. Safe. Secure. Sweet.
Boring.
He hadn’t seemed so, three weeks ago. He’d seemed sexy, then. The bad-boy professor who bent the rules by bending me over his desk. The bad-boy professor, taming his wild ways and legitimately interested in taking me on a date.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t give him false hope for a relationship that would never happen. While Dario and I seemed to be barreling down the road toward some version of a relationship, I hadn’t returned any of Ian’s calls or texts. I’d ghosted him out, and he’d called me on it after class, pressuring me into this meeting at his house.
Now, he turned to grin at me, and I thought of Dario. I’d called him just before class, needing to hear his voice. I hadn’t liked the way our last call had ended—a fight with a gaping cliffhanger. A fight where he said he cared about me. A fight where I’d shouted out more confessions than I’d planned or expected to.
