Sighing, I folded myself into Cam’s desk chair. I flexed my hands, still chasing the pain. “If it isn’t about Embry and the girls, you don’t have to baby me.”
“I’m not. You are just very tall.”
“Cam’s taller than me.”
“I would tell him to sit down too.”
“Why?”
Slowly, Alexei tilted his head and pulled the collar of his expensive T-shirt down. An ugly bruise welted his pale skin from his clavicle to the back of his neck.
I whistled. “Damn. When did that happen?”
“At the last Crow fight. I was distracted by thinking Saint would need my help.” Alexei let his shirt drop. “He did not.”
“Does he know about it?”
“No.”
“Does Cam?”
“No.”
Okay. Maybe they weren’t going to spend the night banging after all. Couldn’t compute why he was telling me this shit, though. Or what it had to do with whatever bomb he was about to drop on me. Alexei was weirder than Saint and cleverer than Embry.
I didn’t stand a fucking chance.
Alexei backed up and took a seat on the edge of the bed. “I am sorry I gave you the impression I would hurt your daughter the day she came here.”
“Meant it though, didn’t you?”
“No.” Alexei shook his head. “I am not sure what depths I would sink to protect the people I love, because loving people is new to me, but I would never do something that would kill Cam anyway.”
It wasn’t exactly reassuring, but it made sense. I didn’t love many people either. “Why are you telling me this now? I’m not scared you’re going to hurt her.”
“I am trying to explain that my anger that day was not for you. It was for the reality that what happened to you and your family was going to become something too big for us to control. I was scared, Mateo.”
He said my name. “Are you drunk?”
Alexei stone-faced me. “I would like to be.”
Him and me both. I wanted to smoke too, but not here, where Saint slept. “I get that you’re scared of Cam and Saint getting hurt again. You’ve lived through it already, so you know how fucked up it is.”
“As do you.”
We shared a moment of understanding, but it was tainted by dread. “Is this about Carlos?”
“Esteban? Yes.” Alexei leaned forward. “I knew as soon as I saw his daughter that her last name was the biggest risk we would ever face, and I was right. Her father did not come looking for her, which tells me that her whereabouts are not important.”
“Meaning?”
“When Viktor came here last, he spoke of a war elsewhere that was consuming my old employer’s attention. I do not pay much heed to turf wars on the continent anymore, but this one matters, enforcer. Because Pavel Sidorov is at war with Carlos Esteban.”
It took a moment to sink in. Alexei’s past was complicated and deeply entrenched in shit I knew nothing about. All I knew about his Russian don ex-boss was that he was a top boy motherfucker who’d removed Cam from a cartel hit list with one fucking phone call. The perfect enemy for Juana’s father. With any luck, the Russians would wipe them off the face of the earth.
But I’d never been lucky.
None of us had, and by the look on Alexei’s face, that wasn’t changing any time soon.
