“His wife’s brother, and yes, I’ve been eyeing him. He wasn’t a part of West’s network. I approached, offered him a position in one of my clean businesses, and he took it.”
I blinked a few more times because that was kinda genius. “So you still ended up taking one of theirs after all.” I grinned, slowly. “I like it.”
“They took one of mine.”
Ah. I said faintly, “I wondered if you knew about Last.”
He watched me for a few seconds in silence. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but then he let out another sigh. Reaching over, he took my hand in his, pulling it to his lap, and laced our fingers together. “My shot didn’t go wide because West knocked into me. I wanted it to go wide. West jumping when he did was cosmic timing.”
“What do you mean?” I leaned forward, my free hand resting on his knee. “Why would you—” But I thought about it. There was only one explanation. “You did that to push him away?”
He shrugged, looking away, but I caught the flash there. It was something I’d only seen on his face when it came to me. Pain. A little bit of regret. He was feeling that about Lassiter. He cared. He did, about Last. About Levi.
He really was changing.
“Eight,” I whispered.
“He fought me on Pialto, so I knew there was already some interest there.”
A different thought came to me. “When did you learn Japanese?”
At my question, his eyes went flat again. Dead. My hand along with his fell with a thud to his flat stomach. “The first time I met someone who belonged to the Yakuza.”
“Are you serious?”
“Heath Nogoskeski was already in this house. There was a fire at the previous place Niko was living in. I had her transferred here. No one could move on the house unless they wanted to risk giving the Yakuza an excuse to launch their own push into the city as well. I had her assigned here as an added form of protection for you.”
“You orchestrated that?”
He wasn’t looking at my face. His gaze had fallen to our hands. He went back to tracing over our fingers.
“Hey.” I caught his chin and lifted it up. “Palma said they had another housemate who had to go back home. Something about a sick relative. Did you have a hand in that too?”
“I didn’t orchestrate her mom getting sick, but I did help open up their doctor’s schedule so they wouldn’t have to wait months to get the bad news.”
I wasn’t surprised anymore. “Were you behind the fire at Niko’s original place?”
His eyes flickered at me, but he didn’t comment.
I sighed, knowing what that meant. “What else should I know about?”
“Nothing major, but there’s a few things. Small things.”
My head was a mess. I knew he was capable of things like this, but to hear it all laid out, hearing that there wasmore, my mouth was suddenly so dry. My stomach dipped.
I had to ask. “Did you start this war because of me?”
He stilled, and for a second, his eyes blazed.
“Did you?”
“Two years ago, I saw a pamphlet for this school on your desk.”
I growled. “That’s not an answer.” Why wasn’t he answering me? It wasn’t like him. But then I thought about what he just said. I really thought about it.
Two years ago . . .
He was right. The pressure had been getting to me, of living in Cincy, everyone knowing who I was to Creighton, everyone just knowing who Creighton was. There’d been a fair at our college, and I walked through, idly picked up the brochure, but there’d been nothing idle about it. I remembered thinking how far away New York City was from Cincinnati. Thinking there were probably other Mafia families who operated there, and since it was New York, maybe Creightoncouldn’t get to me as much. I had a thought that I could hide in the shadows, hide from him, hide from everyone.
