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She looks over her shoulder with tired eyes, and I don’t even know what I’m going to say until it’s tumbling out of my mouth.
“If you need extra hands with Nina, I can help.”
When she looks at me again, there’s recognition there. A light I haven’t seen in too long. “Yeah?”
“Absolutely.” I nod. “Just say the word. I know of a company with night nurses and nannies?—”
Her sudden frown stops me in my tracks. For the first time since she walked in here, she looks truly angry.
“Thanks, but no thanks.” Her words are clipped, razor sharp. “I can take care of my own child.”
And on that cutting note, she’s gone.
Charles yanks against the ropes tying him to the rusting chain-link fence.
“Careful,” I warn him from where I’m standing against the opposite wall. “It’ll be hard to watch the show if you’re eating pavement. That fence looks like it could tumble down at any moment.”
Charles must agree because, after a cursory inspection of the fence, he stops fighting. “What are you going to do to me? Where are we?”
“The middle of nowhere.” I hold my hands out to encompass the empty lot and deserted warehouses around us. “I expect there to be a lot of screaming, so I wanted our privacy.”
Years ago, I found Jasper strung out in this warehouse. He was supposed to be on duty for me, but he’d disappeared. Days later, he was barely conscious on a piss-stained mat in this dump. Even all these years later, the air still reeks of bad choices.
Today’s events are unlikely to change that.
“But what are you gonna do to me?” Charles sniffles, watching Dominik and Gedeon pace back and forth in front of him like he expects them to lunge out and take him by the jugular.
Gedeon pump-fakes towards Charles, grinning when the man cowers into the chain link. “Easy, pal. I’m not going to hurt you.” He slaps Charles’s cheek lightly and saunters off, hands stuffed in his pockets.
“They aren’t going to hurt you,” I confirm. “Neither am I, actually. What you’re going to do today, Charles, is watch.”
Dominik turns to me. His bruises aren’t so bad in the dim alley light. There’s still some swelling under his eye, but his ego took the worst of it. Thankfully, we’ve never let our personal issuesget in the way of what needs to be done. He arches a brow in question, and I nod.
“I’ll take these, thanks.” Dominic snatches Charles’s keys from his front pocket.
“I didn’t go near her again!” Spit flies from Charles’ mouth as he watches Dominik walk away with his car keys dangling from his fingertips.
“No, but you did call her last night. You threatened her.”
“She’s a filthy liar!” he roars. “I just wanted to talk to her mother. I’m not the villain she’s made me out to be.”
I raise a hand in warning. “I don’t plan to hurt you—but say another nasty word about my wife, and those plans can change.”
“I’m her father. Your child’s grandfather. You’d really hurt me?”
I cock my head to the side, studying him in case there’s any tiny scrap of him I find redeemable. But there’s nothing. “The night I killed my own grandfather, I slept better than I had in years. I don’t anticipate this being any different.”
His face twists with fear. “Laila may think she hates me now, but she’d never forgive you if you killed me. I’m still her father. That means something.”
“It might have,” I concede with a shrug, “ifyou’d been around while she was growing up. But you were too concerned with appearances to stick around for a wife with a scarred face and a daughter with a bum hip.”
He swallows hard. “Listen, I’ll… I’ll disappear. I’ll leave them alone. I’ll?—”
“I’ve heard this all before. I’m bored.” My gaze slides to the vintage Porsche he drove here, under gunpoint, courtesy of my two right-hand men. “Nice car, by the way. Very snazzy for a man who doesn’t have two dimes to rub together.”
“It was a gift. From a friend.”
“But you don’t have friends, Charles,” I remind him. “What you have are creditors. And lots of them.”
