Chapter 12 The Protector
Returns
Bishop
I put my hand on Delilah's arm before she can move.
"Stay here," I say. "Don't come out. Don't make a sound. Don't open this door for anyone but me."
She looks at me. Her jaw is set and her eyes are steady and she wants to argue I can see it working through her but she reads something in my face that makes her swallow it.
"Bishop"
"Anyone but me." I hold her gaze for one second. Two. Long enough that she understands I'm not being careful for the sake of it.
She nods.
I open the boathouse door and step out into the morning.
The sun is fully up now. Bright and flat off the lake, the kind of light that leaves nowhere to hide and no shadows to work with. I walk toward the access road with my hands loose at my sides and my pace unhurried.
Unhurried is the only language men like Reye’s respect. Fast means scared. Slow means you've already decided how this ends.
I've already decided how this ends.
What I haven't decided is the cost.
There's always a cost. That's the thing about men like Reyes they don't come to hurt you. Hurting you is expensive and messy and draws the wrong kind of attention. They come to remind you that they could. That the option is on the table. That whatever quiet life you've been building has a price tag you haven't finished paying.
I walk.
Reyes watches me come. He doesn't move from the property line hands where I can see them, weight balanced, the specific stillness of someone who was trained not to telegraph. The SUV idles behind him. The driver stays behind tinted glass. I don't recognize the driver's silhouette.
That's information. New muscle. Which means Reyes isn't running this as a personal visit.
He's running it as a message.
I stop six feet from him. Standard. Close enough to talk, far enough that nobody's committed to anything.
"Marcus," I say.
"Bishop." He says my name the way he always did no inflection, no warmth, no hostility. A designation. "You look good. Lakeside living agrees with you."
"What do you want?"
He almost smiles. "Direct. I always liked that about you."
"What do you want, Marcus."
He shifts his weight. Looks at the house, then the marina, then back at me. Taking inventory. He does it slow enough to make a point look how much of your life is right here, look how much of it is visible from where I'm standing.
"Capo sends his regards," Reyes says.
"Capo can send them somewhere else."
"He's been patient. Eight months is a long time to wait for a conversation."
"We had our conversation." I keep my voice level. "Eight months ago. In a parking garage. The answer was no then."
"The answer was no then." He tilts his head. Concedes the point the way you concede a point you were always going to work around. "Things change."
"Not this."
He looks at me for a moment. Not threatening. Just reading. Reyes was always good at reading people finding the thing a man was trying not to show and filing it somewhere useful. He did it to other people in front of me for years. I know what it looks like from the outside.
I show him nothing.
"You cost the club," he says. "The incident. The press. The heat that came down after." He says it without accusation, the way you read from a ledger. "There are people who feel that's a debt outstanding."
"I didn't create the incident. I managed it. Your capo created it."
"That's not how the story got told."
"No." I hold his gaze. "It isn't."
Reyes nods slowly. Like I've confirmed something he already knew.
"The club wants one favor. Clean. Contained. Nobody gets hurt and nobody hears about it." He pauses. "You do this and the debt's cleared. Finished. You go back to your boats and your lake and nobody bothers you again."
"No."