‘You’re a sonofabitch, Benny,’ Dax said, grabbing the guy by the throat and pulling him into the room.

Slamming the door, Dax thrust the guy against the door and squeezed. The man sputtered and choked and although Dax’s arm was tensed straight, Ivy knew that it wasn’t Dax’s intention to kill this stranger. Sure enough, Dax’s fingers relaxed and Benny wheezed in a breath.

‘You followed me back here?’ Dax asked.

‘There’s big bucks out for you, in the inner circle, you understand.’

‘Mauri’s looking for me?’

Benny nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah, said you went AWOL this afternoon. I was knocked out to see you at Tig’s tonight.’

‘Mauri’s looking for me and you thought that you could bring me in?’ Dax probably would have laughed if he wasn’t in the midst of his intimidating routine. Ivy stayed where she was on the bed, not saying a word.

‘No, no, not me, Ravager, I would never… No, I would never think… I mean I could never—‘

‘Quit stuttering and tell me who you called, Brad or Bruno?’ Benny’s eyes flicked to her then to Dax and back to her. ‘Forget her.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I… never saw nothing, Ravage, nothing.’

This Benny guy was obviously low level and obviously scared of Dax. But he knew Mauri and Brad, so he was in the loop somehow. Ivy had done her best to avoid any interaction with criminal sorts. Just because you were poor didn’t mean you had to be dishonest. The underground circuit of fighting, syndicate drug dealing, and money laundering hadn’t been on her radar, but there was a complex hierarchy that she was just coming to know.

Avoiding criminality didn’t mean that Ivy hadn’t been squeaky clean, but her experiences were petty in comparison to how Dax had grown up. Throughout her life she’d had various associations with people who had addiction issues and criminal records tended to follow when her friends got in too deep. Bearing witness to the repeated downfall of anyone embroiled in that was part of the reason she’d always avoided the slippery slope.

‘Who did you call, Benny?’ Dax asked.

‘Bruno.’

Dax’s head tilted when he inhaled through his nose and even she couldn’t tell if this was a positive reaction or a bad one, and she had no idea what would happen next.

‘We’re going back tomorrow.’

‘Sure,’ Benny said. ‘Sure. Sure.’

‘You think I’m lying to you?’ Dax asked with a thread of disdain that curled his fingers around Benny’s throat again.

‘No! No, you’re not a liar, man. You’re a stand-up guy, yeah, I know that.’

‘You get back on that phone of yours and tell Bruno we’re on our way back. They can call off the dogs.’

‘I… I will…’ Benny said, relieved and grateful that he was making it out of this scenario alive and with all of his teeth.

Dax opened the hotel room door and chucked out the wimp of a man, then he whipped around to glare at her. ‘We have to go now.’

‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘You told me tomorrow, and we were still talking about if we should—‘

‘We have to go back,’ he said. ‘They’re my family and that is my life, my life is there. Mauri has connections all over the country, he would find us if we ran and we have no reason to do that. We’re going to tell him that we got married, that we’re serious, and he’ll get it.’

‘He’ll get it,’ she said, not convinced but beginning to feel that their return to California was inevitable.

‘I still believe that we can fix this. You have to trust me,’ Dax said. She had asked for his trust, so she couldn’t flout his when he offered it and asked for the same in return. ‘Mauri will be shocked, but he’ll let me talk. He’ll let me fix this.’

‘Fix it how? By running his errands for the rest of your life? What about me?’

‘I’ll look after you. You don’t have to worry about—‘

‘What?’ she snapped. ‘You going to jail for life? Or getting yourself injured in a fight?’

‘Mauri has excellent lawyers, there’s no way that—‘

‘He could ruin us,’ she said, climbing off the bed to cross to him. Ivy squeezed her hands under his arms around his ribs. ‘If he doesn’t understand or let us off the hook with what we’ve done then who is to say he won’t use those lawyers against you?’

‘I trust him,’ Dax said, cradling her head in both hands. ‘He’s gonna understand. You asked me to trust you, and now you’re going to trust me. Get dressed.’

He left her in the bedroom and disappeared into the bathroom. Ivy remained on the spot, listening to him shower. She didn’t know if it was nerves or because he genuinely wanted to get back to the Starks with urgency but he was quick in the bathroom.

When he came back into the room he dressed in clean clothes, ready to get moving. Flinging everything of his into the sports bag, he clicked his fingers at her, which was his way of asking for his tee-shirt back. Whipping it off, she handed it over and he stuffed it into the bag while Ivy put on the dress and shoes she’d been wearing on their arrival.

‘You haven’t slept, will you be ok to drive?’ she asked.

He slung the bag over his head, across his body then tucked her under his arm to hurry her out of the room. ‘I’ve survived on less sleep for longer,’ he said. ‘We check out of here and then we get home, this is gonna work out. We’re gonna be fine.’

But from what she could see of his profile, his iceberg blue eyes were focused straight ahead and his jaw was tight. Ivy knew that he wanted to believe what he was saying, but he didn’t like unknowns and everything in their future was just that, unknown.

Chapter Twenty

The journey back to California was very quiet and the sun was up by the time they got there. People were starting their days when she and Dax hadn’t finished theirs yet. Her offers to do some of the driving were all rebuked and she couldn’t say that she blamed him for it because even she wasn’t sure that if given the chance, she wouldn’t flip a U-turn and haul ass in any direction that didn’t lead them to Maurice Stark. The man had power over Dax that she didn’t understand and she didn’t know why the man would yield it now.

Back in the busy streets of LA, Dax pulled the car into a space on the street and turned off the engine. He left the vehicle and grabbed the sports bag from the trunk. Ivy got out and moved onto the sidewalk, she had no idea where they were going so she just waited until he came over and threw an arm around her.

Dax held her tight into his body, so she looped an arm around his waist and rested her head on him, letting him take her to wherever they needed to go. A few paces down the sidewalk, Dax guided her up the stairs of a stoop and through a communal entrance. The stairway was clean and freshly painted, decent but nothing fancy.

On the first floor, he led her to a door with a number four on it. Fumbling with the keys he still held from opening the downstairs door, he flicked through them to locate the right one without loosening his grasp on her. When he got the correct key, he stuck it into the lock and turned it.

Ivy was eager to see his apartment. Until now she hadn’t realised just how excited about it she was. The increased pulse of her heart made her squeeze closer to his side. She turned her face into his body, to prevent herself from hurrying him.

As ever, Dax was expressionless when he shoved open the door then ushered her inside. The entry way had a couple of closets leading off it, she discerned a bedroom at the end of the hall to the right, but it he took her in the opposite direction.

Left of the front door was the main living space. The first thing in the room was a dining table with a large open plan kitchen on the other side of it. To the right of the table was a huge, light, airy space and she moved into it without noticing where Dax went.

The broad windows drew her closer. She was distracted by the gauze curtains to the left when she noticed that they were over a door. Rushing in that direction, she peeked through the curtains to see a broad deck which hung above the sidewalk below, and the car they’d arrived in was just in view beneath. Grabbing the door handle, she tried to slide the door aside, but it was locked.