“Rome! Buddy!” Mase grins and pokes him in the chest. “You’re my best friend, did you know that?”
“Yeah, well if you’re mine, you’ll come outside with me. Now.” He hooks an arm under Mase’s shoulders and half carries him towards the front of the restaurant.
Around us the tables have gone quiet, fellow diners looking our way. My cheeks burn. I want to die. I want to fall through a hole to the center of the universe and become one with the hot molten mess.
I don’t think that’s going to happen though, so I open my eyes and face Richard. “I should go.”
A cutting smile. “Stay. We have things to discuss.”
My hackles raise. “I’m not sure you have anything to say I want to hear.”
“My son turned down my offer because of you.”
I work my jaw, trying to push down the nausea that churns at my throat as the accusation hits far too close to my own worries. “That’s not true.”
Richard scoffs. “He’s young and thinks he’s in love but I’m not about to let my only son throw away his life for you.” He folds his napkin. “Roman is a Banks. He’s been groomed andraised to take over my family’s empire from before he could walk. Circumstances brought him into your world for a few short holidays but that’s all Pine Rock is. A break from reality.”
I let out a low laugh of disbelief. “If you bothered to know your son at all, you’d know that isn’t true.”
Richard’s gaze is thick with condescension. “I do know my son and he doesn’t belong in your small town, dirtying his hands with apples and girls with family histrionics.”
My spine straightens. “Frankly, that’s not your decision to make,” I hiss.
Richard sits back, crossing one leg over the other and linking his hands together. “I hope you understand this isn’t me being cruel. This is me protecting my son. From what I’ve heard trouble follows you around. You’ve been back in town for less than two months, and you’ve already been a victim of arson.”
The hair on my neck pricks because how does he know that?
“I don’t like things that don’t make sense, Lola. Never have. Setting fire to your shop sign seems awfully specific, doesn’t it? It made me wonder what you could have done to piss someone off quite so royally.”
Richard’s cool eyes pierce into me. Gone is the man who greeted us with a sparkle in his gaze. This version of Richard is vicious.
“The fire was just kids messing about,” I say past the sea-urchin in my throat.
Richard smiles, a manipulative thing. “I don’t think it was, and I don’t think you do either. Why else would you have paid that little visit to the motorcycle club?”
The sea-urchin drops to my stomach. Sharp edges scraping at my insides. The SUV I saw outside the Vipers’ clubhouse flashes in my mind and realization hits me hard. “Your PI, he wasn’t looking for dirt on Roman.” He was looking for dirt onme.
“Merchant always finds the most interesting information.” Richard sits forward and folds his hands together on the table. Each movement precise. Calculated. “Tell me, Lola, does Roman know you framed a man?”
My stomach sky dives. I have to grip the edge of my chair to stop from teetering forward as the blood rushes from my head. I’ve never actually heard anyone say it out loud and it’s like my brain glitches.
Slowly, the puzzle pieces click into place. Max telling me the messages from the unknown number were sent from London. That feeling of being watched.
Richard keeps talking but I disassociate, hearing his words like I’m outside my own body.
“No. Of course he doesn’t know. I imagine Roman’s the last person you’d want to find out. Well, maybe not the last. The police probably take that spot.” He says it so casually, like he’s not wielding the power to utterly destroy my life.
I wet my cracked lips and curl my fingers around the stem of my wine glass. “Is that a threat?”
Richard’s face pinches. “Please, Lola. I’m not in the business of threatening people. I have no need to. I do, however, strongly suggest you let my son go. If Merchant were to share the information he found, I would hate for Roman to be dragged down with you.”
Pressure builds under my eyes. It feels like my heart is stuck upside down, all the blood pumping in the wrong direction and sucking the oxygen away. “You have no evidence,” I murmur, more to myself than to Richard.
He sits back and arches a single gray brow. “Come now, Lola.”
I realize too late that this is the man Roman warned me about. I fell into his web and now I’m stuck, sticky threads tightening around me.
I want to hiss at him, to throw his false kindness back into his smug little face. That’s what teenage me would have done. She’d have thrown her drink on his million-dollar suit and told him to take his blackmail and shove it up his ass.
