“How many times have you come to Houston over the last thirty years?”

That had her face going slack, her eyes brightening, her nostrils flaring. To give her credit, she answered. “Every few months.”

Every few months.

Wow.

I couldn’t help the smile that came over my mouth as I made sure to keep my gaze on her instead of looking at Jonah. I had to straddle this line as cleanly as possible. For Grandpa. For Peter. For Maio House. “I know why you got divorced. I understand, and I don’t blame you. Neither does Grandpa Gus. But I just don’t care to hear whatever it is you want to tell me. Not when you’ve come to Houston who knows how many times over the course of my life and not cared to contact me. Not when you went to Maio House and didn’t make an effort then either, and the only reason I saw you was because I got curious and showed up. I know I’m not important to you, and I’m fine with it. You just don’t want me to think of you as the bad guy. I get it.”

My grandmother, because that’s what she was, blushed. I could see the hesitation—the anger—in her eyes. Yet somehow she managed to lower her voice as she said, “Your grandfather lied to me.”

“But I didn’t.”

“You don’t understand,” she tried to argue.

“No, I do. I’m a mom now too, and I understand better than you will ever imagine, Rafaela. You didn’t want anything to do with me or my dad, and you never will. How much more do you want to rub that in?”

Chapter 18

Subject: IMPORTANT

Lenny DeMaio:

Wed 3/22/2019 1:29 p.m.

to Jonah Collins

Jonah, please. For real. Call me back.

Email me back. I don’t care, but I really, really need to talk to you.

I don’t want or need anything: I just have to tell you something important, and I don’t want to do it over email.

“But I did pay.”

I stared at the phone sitting on my desk and pictured the face of the man on the other end of the line. A man I couldn’t stand half the time I had to deal with him. Then again, anyone who continuously lied to me annoyed the fuck out of me. He did this shit every other month. I took a deep breath in through my nose and let it back out again, feeling all my facial muscles get tight. “Damon.” I sighed. “Do you know how many times you’ve said those words to me?”

What that question got me was silence on the other end.

“I just checked Pablo’s bank account”—that was one of my rare lies—“and nothing has been deposited. It isn’t some magical glitch in the computer system that the payment didn’t go through. You haven’t transferred the money. Why do you put me through this every single time Pablo fights?” I asked him, leaning back against my chair and staring blankly at the wall in front of me in exasperation.

“Look, Lenny, I sent my assistant over, and she said she made the deposit.”

What was this? 1990? We both knew he was full of shit. She could have mailed a check if he was being cheap, wired the money if he wanted to spend the fee, or used one of those apps to transfer money across banks. I used that shit all the time.

“Let me ask her to check the deposit receipt, and I’ll call you back. You know I’m good for it, and tell fucking Pablo to call me if he’s got a problem,” the man tried to throw.

I gripped the cord of my work phone in my free hand and shook my leg under my desk. “He did call you. I saw it. He called you five times last week.” Silence. “And I know that you’re good, but you’re good at paying two months late instead of two weeks later like you’re supposed to. If your assistant deposited money into wrong bank accounts, you would have fired her the day after you hired her. Don’t play the dumb game with me. Come on, I know I don’t look that stupid.”

There was another beat of silence before a rough, short bark of laughter filled the line. “Jesus Christ, Lenny. If you ever want to come work for me, I’ll have a position open for you.”

That got a snicker out of me.

The promoter laughed some more. “Listen, the money will be in there by five, all right?”

“Uh-huh. I hope so.”

“It will,” he tried to assure me like I hadn’t known him for the last ten years. “Tell Gus to give me a call, would you?”

That had me smiling at least. “Ooh, now I know you’re for sure going to make the deposit if you want me to bring you up in front of Grandpa.”

He laughed again.

“I hope I don’t talk to you later, Damon. Bye.”

“Bye, Lenny,” the promoter on the other end muttered before hanging up.

I dropped the phone into the cradle with a snicker.

“I didn’t know you managed athletes.”

Damn it!

The back of the chair I was leaning in went back even further when my whole body jerked at the sound of the voice that had come out of fucking nowhere. I threw my arms out at my sides to grab onto the desk, or something, anything so that I wouldn’t tip the seat back and fall out of it.

Out of the corner of my eye, while I flailed around since I’d basically just scared the shit out of myself, or Jonah had, I saw the dark-haired man start to sprint forward like he was going to catch me. Before he could get to me though, the second that my instincts realized that I wasn’t about to go feet-over-ass and break my chair in half, I sat up straight, slapped my hand over my chest because my heart hadn’t beat so hard in forever, and slid him the nastiest look I could conjure up.

Stopping right in front of me, stopping right on the other side of the desk, Jonah looked at me and grinned.

That smile grew with every second that passed. One after another and then another until he was basically beaming at me. All handsome, straight, white teeth, and looking like a million-dollar asshole.

“I wish I could have filmed that,” he said way too brightly.

I didn’t even think about it.

I grabbed my stress ball and threw it at him, seeing his hands cover his balls like I would really try and hit him there, as he laughed. Laughed.

“I can’t stand you,” I hissed, rubbing a circle over my heart because it hadn’t gotten the memo that we weren’t about to die from an intruder alert. “How do you move so quietly when you’re so damn big?”

He was still laughing, but his hands were falling away from his crotch area when he replied, starting to bend over, “Practice. I move fast too.”

“If I had another stress ball, I’d throw that one at you too,” I told him as he tossed the ball back at me.

I caught it and dropped it on top of my desk.

“You all right?” he asked, smiling wide and slowly dropping into the seat that still looked too small for him.

“Besides that minor heart attack I just had, and the fact I probably pissed myself a little too, yeah, I’m fine,” I told him drily, earning me an even bigger smile that made it totally worth the fact that I wasn’t lying. I probably had peed a couple drops out. Mo’s fault.

“As long as it was just a bit of urine, eh?” the cheeky bastard asked.

“You know, I don’t remember you being this sarcastic two years ago.”

He didn’t break eye contact with me for a second. “You’re a bad influence, love.”

I smiled.

“As I was asking before I caused your palpitations,” he started. “I didn’t know you managed anyone.”

Oh. That. “Not officially or anything, and not really, but I’m a good third party. Especially when they want to get paid more for fights, the amateurs I mean, I have the connections. And I don’t mind haggling for them.”

“They pay you?”

“A little bit. I don’t know how much you heard, but this last time, one of the guys hadn’t gotten paid, and he asked me if I could call the promoter because he wasn’t getting through. So I did. I’ve known him for a long time, and he knows better than to screw around with us.”

“You mean you and your granddad?”

“Exactly, but I’ve been told I’m worse than Grandpa Gus.” I smiled. “Deep down, I probably enjoy it too much. It’s my high now.” I thought about that for a second. “You okay? Need anything?”

“Everything is good as gold,” he replied, leaning back into the too-small chair, his upper arms crowding over the armrests. “Just came to check on you.”

“Me?”

“Yes.” But that was all he said.

“Why?”

“Yesterday. We didn’t get a chance to talk about it.”

I played dumb. “What happened yesterday? Your mom asking me all those questions?” Because she had asked me a lot of questions on the ride back from the park. She went right in and laid them out one right after the other.

*

“Elena,” the older woman said maybe two seconds after we’d gotten inside the car after I finished speaking to Grandpa Gus’s ex-wife. “Did I hear that correctly or did you refer to the woman at the park as your grandmother?”

She’d heard that. I was still feeling pretty riled up after our conversation, but it wasn’t the time to think about it, so I’d do it later, in private. When I could really let it set in.