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“Connel doesn’t have my dad on the hook.”
“So Manzani? You think that’s any better? This Harvest deal, whatever it is, not even the guys on the ground know the details. It’s been kept close at the highest levels. They could be planning anything. It could be an attack, a robbery, whatever it is, you don’t want to get involved. You want to steer clear, just in case.”
“I know what it is,” she said, noting Strat’s double take from the corner of her eye.
“You know—he told you about Harvest?”
“I don’t know every detail, but, yeah, I know what it is. Why it’s causing so much acrimony.”
“Okay, you’ve gotta help me out.”
“Help you how?”
“Ire McDade doesn’t do relationships, commitment. His encounters with women are business or pleasure. He fucks a woman ‘cause he needs something from her or she’s so hot, he wants to know he can.”
“All he has to do is pick and point.”
“Right,” he said. “In the hospital you tell me you’re through with him, then you’re in his loft, and having sex with him ten feet from twenty of his guys.”
“It was more than ten feet… and there weren’t twenty guys.”
“There were guys in the club, or didn’t you know that?” he asked. “Quit changing the subject. Are you together? ‘Cause Ire McDade doesn’t do exclusive. He just doesn’t.”
“He’s been clear about that.”
“And you’re okay with it? You know you have to be exclusive, though, right? Ire McDade would own any guy who thought about touching what he considers his property… Are you his property?”
“You don’t have to worry about me. It’s not like I have stacks of time to go around picking up men.”
“You have more clothes at Ire’s places than you do in your own apartment. Whatever’s going on between you, it’s screwing with his guys’ heads. They’ve never witnessed anything like it.”
“And you think his attentiveness is a ploy? That he’s manipulating me?”
“Maybe,” Strat said and paused a score of seconds. “Are you in love with him?”
Was she? That was a question she quashed any time it threatened to creep in.
“Can we stop at that bakery place you like? I want to get cupcakes for Steeple.”
“Don’t do it, Scamp,” he said with severe gravity in the warning. “You fall for him and it’s over. Damn whatever your father’s mixed up in, you’ll get sucked into a world that won’t let you go.”
“You don’t think I’m already in it? Conn told me I had to be sure, that his world wasn’t an easy one to leave. He’s looking out for me.”
“Guys like him look out for family. He’s turning up the heat and you don’t even realize it.”
“So I should be suspicious of Conn? The day after I learn to be suspicious of my dad? Who am I supposed to trust?”
“You,” he said. “You’re learning that lesson late if you’re just learning it now.”
“You can’t believe that. That you can only trust yourself? You don’t want your kids to trust you? You didn’t raise them to trust you?”
“My son trusts two people in this world, himself and Jagger Dunn.”
“Not his sister?”
“Ford looks after his kid sister. He’s smarter than her. Street smarter, not book smarter. Immie’s got us all beat on that.”
“Who does Imogen trust?”
