Chapter 19 #2
I huff out a breath that almost turns into a laugh. “That your official advice?”
“That’s my polite advice.”
Then Griff’s laugh drifts in from outside, low and easy.
Rainer’s eyes shift toward the roller door. “He came in here looking for you.”
He sets the mug down on the bench as the words land exactly where I don’t want them to.
Rainer leans back against the bench and folds his arms across his chest. “I told him to get out. He said a guy named Ricky was looking for you.”
My stomach drops.
Rainer watches my face. “Who is Ricky, Zane?”
My mouth is dry. “Ricky is the one Griff went to. The one who organized the fights. Matched the fighters. Handled the money.”
Rainer goes very still.
I force myself to keep looking at him because looking away right now would be the coward’s move and I have already been the coward in this workshop too many times.
“And he is looking for you because?” Rainer asks.
My chest aches with something that is too much like shame to call it anything else. I think about this man standing in this workshop, handing me a wrench when most people would have handed me directions to the nearest gutter and walked away.
I drag a hand over my jaw.
The warm, fuzzy sensation I had when I left Skylar’s apartment now feels like a thousand miles away.
“He’s looking to collect for the fight I missed the night I got arrested.”
“How much?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know.”
His eyes narrow. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
“Bullshit.”
I avert my gaze away because I cannot stand him looking at me right now. Not like this. Not in this place he built with his own hands while my old life stands outside, trying to get its filth on the walls.
Rainer goes quiet. The particular quiet that has weight to it, that lets the distant sound of a car outside come through and lets Griff’s voice float in through the open roller door.
“You thinking about doing something stupid?”
“No.” I stare down at the concrete. There is a dark oil stain near my boot shaped almost like a map of somewhere nobody wants to go. It's fitting.
This is what I do. I bring trouble with me. I carry it behind me like mud on my boots and call it history, pretending it is not still alive.
For a second, I see what this looks like from where Rainer is standing.
A kid he took in when nobody else wanted him, who is no longer a kid but still somehow feels like one when the past shows up at the door. A kid with blood in his history and too many people coming to collect pieces of him. Trouble in a clean shirt.
I hate that I brought this here. To this place. To him.
“I don’t want you involved in this,” I say.
Rainer’s face shifts. “Well, it’s here.”
“That’s exactly the fucking problem.”
“No.” His voice is even and entirely calm. “The problem is that you are standing there, looking like you are already packing your bags in your head.”
I stare at him.
He holds my gaze without blinking, without shifting, and without giving me a single inch to hide behind.
I hate how well he sees me. Because somewhere in the back of my head, the old instinct has already risen and is quietly and efficiently looking for the exit. The way it always has when I was young enough to realize that leaving was the only form of control I had over anything.
Leave. Before Rainer gets pulled into a world he never asked to be part of. Leave before Skylar finds out the man she let back into her life has debt collectors circling.
I could do it. I’ve done it before and I was good at it. The muscle memory is right there under everything, patient as a bruise.
Except the second the thought forms, her voice comes with it.
I am not running.
I can’t do that to her again.
I grip the edge of the bench until the metal bites into my palm. “I can’t drag this shit to your door.”
Rainer steps closer. “Running is not noble, son.”
My throat hurts when I swallow. “Then what do I do?”
Rainer studies me for a long moment before his gaze shifts to the roller door. “You stop disappearing every time your past catches up. That doesn’t protect people. It just leaves them.” He pauses. “I know that, Zane. I have lived that life myself.”
I stare at him, wanting to ask more. But I don’t get to ask what he means by that.
Footsteps sound, more than one set, and just like that, the past walks in to collect.
Ricky walks in as if the room already owes him something.
Charcoal suit. Fine stripe. Clean shoes on a floor that has seen oil, blood, coffee, and every ugly kind of morning.
He is not a big man. That is what people always get wrong about men like Ricky.
They expect size. Muscle. Some thick-necked asshole with fists the size of bricks and a voice made for threats.
But Ricky is lean and immaculate. A man who has never once needed to raise his voice to make a point because the two men behind him do it without being asked.
They step in after him, broad and taking up space near the roller door, their hands loose at their sides and their eyes sweeping the workshop.
Before they land on me and then on Rainer.
Ricky stops in the middle of the workshop floor and slowly looks around. Griff stands behind him.
My pulse turns heavy. Every beat lands deep and ugly. This is what I brought here. These assholes in suits. The clean little smile with dirty money behind it.
My fists curl at my sides before I force them to open again.
Ricky’s eyes finally meet mine. “Griff said you wanted to hear it from me. So here I am.”
I step between him and Rainer. That is where I need to be and that’s exactly where I’m staying.
“Say what you came to say.”
Ricky’s gaze flicks past my shoulder to Rainer before shifting back to me. That alone is enough to make my blood heat.
He adjusts one cufflink like a man making sure everyone in the room knows time belongs to him.
“You missed a fight, Zane.”
“I got arrested.”
“Yes.” He’s still got that smug expression about him. “That was, shall we say, inconvenient.”
The two men behind Ricky don’t move, but I sense their weight in the workshop, their purpose, the threat.
Ricky takes one step deeper into the garage.
My body wants to match it. I do not let it.
“Bets were laid,” he says. “Money moved. Men lost. You understand how that looks.”
His gaze slides across the space—over the cars, the tool chests, the office door, and the old sign on the back wall, Rainer’s name spelled out in faded blue letters. He is measuring the place. Not as a workshop. As leverage.
I step sideways, cutting off his view of Rainer’s office.
He notices. “You always did have a protective streak.”
“Get to the point,” I say.
“The point is simple.” He looks me straight in the eye and gives me that smile—the one that has never once reached his eyes. “Come back and fight, and we’ll call it settled.”
“No.”
The word sits between us, flat, final.
Ricky’s smile doesn’t move. “No?”
“I’m not fighting again. Not for you. Not for anyone.”
“Then you clear the debt another way.”
“How much?”
From near the roller door, Griff watches with that smug expression on his face, the one that makes me want to put his head through the wall.
“One hundred and three thousand dollars,” Ricky says.
The workshop goes quiet.
“I can’t pay that,” I tell him.
“Then you come back and clear it.” Ricky tilts his head. “It’s as simple as that.”
I turn my gaze toward Ricky.
“How much to settle the debt?” Rainer’s voice comes from behind me.
My whole body goes cold.
“Stay out of this,” I say, turning to Rainer.
Rainer ignores me. He steps around me, his hands greasy, his work shirt worn at the collar. “I said how much to settle his debt?”
“Rainer.”
His eyes don’t move from Ricky. “You heard what I said. How much to clear it?”
“Why don’t you stay out of it, old man,” Ricky says, that smirk still plastered on his face. He looks between Rainer and I like he is working something out.
I want to put my fist through the smug little calculation forming behind his eyes.
“Is this about the debt,” Rainer says evenly, “or about the fact that you want him back in that ring?”
Ricky stares at him for a long moment, as if deciding how much respect the question deserves. “One hundred and three thousand,” he says.
Rainer nods once. “Come back in two days. I will have it ready.”
The floor cracks open beneath me. All I know is that the room tilts and something hot and ashamed rises in the back of my throat.
“No,” I say.
Rainer keeps his eyes on Ricky. “That clears the debt entirely. You do not walk through this door again and you do not reach out to Zane again.”
His gaze shifts to Griff. “That goes for you, too. You stay clear of him.”
Griff’s mouth tightens, but he does the smart thing and keeps it shut.
Ricky watches Rainer for a long moment, then his eyes slide to me.
“Generous man,” he says.
For one second, nobody speaks.
I hate myself for standing here watching this, because Rainer should not be in this position, discussing payment terms with a fight organizer like it is a business transaction. He should be complaining about invoices and busting my ass about the alternator I haven't finished.
When Ricky stays quiet, Rainer does not. “Do we have a deal? Zane is left alone once the debt is paid.”
Ricky adjusts his cuff, taking his time, as if he has all the time in the world and wants us to know it.
“Two days,” he says finally. “You pay it then and the debt is paid. We have a deal.”
He holds Rainer’s gaze for one beat longer than necessary, making sure the weight of it lands and that there is no confusion about who just won this exchange. Then he turns and walks out without uttering another word. His men follow, the roller door rattling in their wake.
Griff lingers half a second longer than the rest. His eyes stay on mine and the glance he gives me is almost enough to drag that old version of me out by the throat, where I would fix this with my fists.
Then he goes too.
I stare at the empty doorway.
One breath, then two, before I turn around.
“No.”
Rainer is already walking toward his office. “It’s done.”
“No it’s not fucking done.”