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“Yes,” he admitted. “And, fuck, I know, baby, I know that was probably not my place.”
“You think?”
“In my defense, I just wanted to make sure you were safe. And not struggling. And, yeah, to have you know that I still gave a shit about you.”
“Who? Who has been watching me?”
“That’s the thing,” Czar said, that muscle ticking harder. “It was my cousin Asen.”
“And?” I asked.
“And Asen was locked up two years ago. So the notes, the flowers, all that shit… it should have stopped. And he was never supposed to threaten or hurt anyone.”
“He wouldn’t have pushed the task off on someone else?”
“Not without asking me. And no one has said shit about it.”
“Do you still have contact with your family?”
“Yeah. I get calls and letters a few times a week still.”
“You have no idea who would have left me the comic books?”
“No. And I don’t know who would beat your boyfriends either,” Czar said, eyes going a little sad. “I won’t lie. It fucking cuts to think about you with someone else, but I’m not fucking naive, Nyx. I knew you were going to eventually move on. I’ve always wanted you happy. I wouldn’t have stood in the way of that.”
He meant that.
I had very few reasons to trust him.
But, somehow, I did.
“Hey,” Czar said, going to reach for my hands, but getting barked at by the CO, making him fold them into fists near mine. “Listen. I don’t know what the fuck is going on right now. But I don’t like the way shit is sounding. I’m in touch personally, but out of the loop on the… comic book sales business,” he told me.
“Who is running it now?”
“I have no idea,” he admitted.
And, I guess, that was fair.
Czar wasn’t the head of the whole organization. He’d just been running things locally. But the core of the organization was in LA. Which wasn’t exactly close. So it made sense if he didn’t have a finger on the pulse of what was going on there.
“Bab—Nyx,” he corrected, starting to realize he couldn’t call me that anymore, that we weren’t going to be together again. “Listen, I don’t know what the fuck is going on. But I do know that shit is serious. And you need to get somewhere safe. Do you have somewhere?”
“I… yeah,” I said.
“Listen, stubborn ass,” he said, dipping his head and giving me an old, familiar cocky smile. “You might not like it, but you can’t handle this alone. You need help. Lean on the fucking Murphys if you need to. They would know how to hide you at least. Go snag your aunt and hide somewhere. Because that kinda money in comic books is… serious. And I can try, but there’s not a fuckuva lot I can do from here.”
He would try, too.
Czar had always been a decent guy. The kind who stopped to jump a stranger’s car on the side of the road. Always tipped well. Randomly paid for someone’s groceries if it looked like they were freaking out about the total going up as the clerk kept scanning items.
I’d been able since he went away to paint him the villain because I believed he’d been behind the attacks and the threats and the heroin.
But if that wasn’t him, then, really, what did I have to be pissed at him about?
Holding a torch?
It was kind of sweet, even if it was never going to go anywhere.
