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It doesn’t feel like joy lately. But I don’t say that. “I want to play La Mer. That hasn’t changed.”
The warmth behind his eyes is banked. “Only thing that hasn’t.”
He rises and crosses to a hedge of bright-pink flowers, pulls off a dead bloom, and tosses it away.
I want to ask why he left the way he did. If it was worth breaking up what we had.
But I’m afraid of the answers. If he says it was worthwhile, it’ll hurt all over again.
If he says it wasn’t… then what? We can’t go backward. I’ve started to build a future on my own terms, gigs around the world, even if they don’t satisfy the way I thought they would.
There’s no way I’d give this man a chance to break my heart again. I’ve done brave things in my life, and stupid ones. Inviting in a man who makes me feel as if I’ll never be as worthy as his vendetta would be the most foolish.
“You must have changed too,” I say.
“My parents were liars,” he says abruptly. “Building a legacy for them is moot.”
The hurt in his voice has my chest tightening. “What are you talking about?”
“After Tyler and Annie’s housewarming, I received a call from my investigator confirming my parents’ life was a lie. They weren’t trying to get out, Raegan. If Mischa or his parents killed them, it was to prove a point. For internal justice. Not because they were leaving.”
Horror washes over me. I close my fingers around my mug to avoid reaching for him. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Mischa burned down the club that night. I didn’t have a chance.”
I can only imagine what he was going through.
He spent his life trying to do penance for what he thought was his fault—that his parents were getting out of the Ivanov’s business on account of him and died trying. It must feel as if he never knew them. The anger he must have, the questions… None of which he’ll ever get a satisfying answer to.
Fuck. It’s not as if this changes everything, but I wish he’d told me.
“So, why continue trying to bury Ivanov?”
Harrison rubs a hand through his hair, looking the kind of rough-around-the-edges he rarely shows the world but shows me because of what we are. What we were.
“He’s already shaped my past. Not only through his actions, but indirectly, through who I thought my parents were. He’s had even more influence than he realizes. I won’t let him have my future.”
The edge in his voice makes me wonder if he only means his clubs or if that extends to me too. If he was afraid to commit to a future with me so long as Ivanov had a chance of shattering it.
Even if he was, it can’t make up for him leaving. But it lets me understand this complicated man a little more, and it makes me want to help.
“He’s running drugs through the clubs. Not just his own,” I hear myself say. “He’s made himself a nuisance at Bliss. And I saw one of his guys at Wild Fest.”
Harrison’s expression darkens. “Wild Fest… I didn’t realize he had territory in America.”
“I’ve seen his people at parties in London.” Ash appears in the doorway, hands in his pockets. From his face, I’m guessing he didn’t hear the part about his parents.
“You knew it was Mischa’s people?” I ask, shoving my hands in my jeans pockets.
He looks away. “Yeah.”
“How can you know?” Harrison presses.
“I just fucking do.”
Silence falls over us. I think of the coldness in Mischa’s eyes before he hit me that night at Debajo. Then last summer, the unforgiving flames devouring every inch of wood, scarring the metal that would have been Kings.
He’s the kind of man who would stop at nothing to prove a point.
