‘I don’t know,’ he said, leaping from the mattress. ‘I know I’m not going to say no without considering it. We owe Mauri—‘

‘What?’ she asked, unable to prevent a frown from seizing her expression. ‘What do we owe him? Please, tell me, what is it you think you owe the man who asked you to give up the only woman you’ve ever loved for the sake of his playboy son? What do you think you owe him?’

‘Don’t you get it?’ he asked, coming back to stand by the bed. ‘This could be an amazing chance for us.’ Crouching down, he rested his chest on the mattress and leaned over to snatch both of her hands. ‘We could run things, I could do things my way and—‘

‘Drugs,’ she said. ‘You want to deal drugs? You want to be responsible on an industrial scale for the lives and deaths of users across the continent?’

‘People are going to use drugs whether we provide them or someone else does, recreational drugs aren’t going anywhere. Why should we beg off and let someone else take this opportunity? We could be rich and—‘

‘Money?’ she asked, tugging her hands out of his. ‘If I wanted a mansion and a fancy car I’d send you into the ring every night. I don’t do that because I love you too much to see you hurt.’

‘I wouldn’t have to be hurt doing this. I can stay in the background, send the other guys out to do the dangerous jobs.’

‘There will still be plenty of guys who want to poach your territory, your employees, and your customers. There’s a reason that most drug kingpins don’t see forty! I don’t want to see you getting yourself in deep and then being the fall guy when Brad can’t handle what he’s taken on. You said yourself that Brad takes orders well, but he’s not street smart, he doesn’t really know what he’s doing.’

‘Which is why Mauri wants me in on the deal.’

‘Which might work out great while Mauri is alive and looking out for you. How long will it last when Brad decides that he doesn’t need you anymore? I don’t trust any of them.’

‘I know,’ he said. Moving away from the bed, he went into the bathroom, leaving her alone in their sheets.

‘If you want to talk to Mauri again, we can go to the party,’ she called toward the bathroom. ‘But there’s no way I want to move into that mansion! I would never be able to relax!’

A minute or so later, he came back out and propped himself on the doorframe. ‘I want to see Trystan.’

‘At the party? Or before that?’

‘Either,’ he said. ‘But it can wait for now.’

‘He’s at the mansion?’

‘Sounds like Mauri’s had him locked up there for a while. I suppose that when he found out Mauri was sick he had an excuse to go even more off the rails.’

‘Do you think he’s a threat?’ she asked.

‘To you?’ He shook his head. ‘I’d like to see him try and get near you now. Mauri knows that I’d walk if you were threatened.’

‘That doesn’t make me feel better,’ she said, tangling her fingers in the bedsheet.

‘You’ve fought him off once, you could do it again if you had to.’

‘I guess,’ she said, collapsing to her back. ‘I know that he’s responsible for us getting together, for us meeting, but…’

‘But?’ he said. Swooping onto the bed with barely a sound, he ambushed her, covering her body with his and holding her in this submissive position.

‘I’d really like to stick a fork in that guy’s eye,’ she said, drawing her fingertip over the ivy tattooed on his arm.

‘I’ll remember that when I get him alone,’ he said and kissed her. Just when she was pliable enough to part her legs and arch up, he took his lips away. ‘I’m going next door for a while.’

‘He got you thinking, didn’t he?’ she said, sliding a hand to his hair. ‘Or is it being back here, in your old life, that’s got you thinking? Do you miss it?’

‘I miss kicking the shit out of scumbags,’ he said.

‘Plenty of them around I guess,’ she said. ‘If you want to go back to enforcing, I can’t stop you. But being here, around the Starks again, it feels wrong, Dax. They don’t want us to be together.’

‘They don’t care about us anymore,’ Dax said. ‘At least Mauri doesn’t.’

‘Is that why you want to see Trystan? You want to be sure that we can be safe here? To check that he doesn’t have some other agenda that could damage us.’

‘Trystan isn’t a planner, he comes up with ideas and expects everyone else to figure out how to implement them,’ Dax said. ‘He doesn’t think through his actions either, he just does whatever the hell he wants. I know ‘cause I used to be the one picking up the pieces after he blew them all to shit.’

Dax got a far off look in his eye that made her think that there was something else on his mind, which was nothing to do with them or Trystan and their past. Something else was in his thoughts, and it was something that he wasn’t sharing with her. She’d give him some time, but if he didn’t spit it out in the next day or two, she would wheedle it out of him.

‘Go next door and hit your bag,’ she said, dropping her arms from his and giving him a shove. ‘I’ll be right here if you need another way to process.’

Being physical, between the sheets, in the gym, or in the ring, was Dax’s way of figuring the world out. He liked to have a goal and when he reached it, he felt that he had achieved something.

Tonight she wasn’t enough of a challenge for him, so she’d let him go and work up a sweat next door. When he came back, he would maybe have figured out how he felt about what he was going to do next, thus giving him another goal to achieve.

She had her own ideas of what she wanted to spend the next few days doing, but those would keep for tonight. Her mess wasn’t connected to Dax, she just had a few doors to close before she could embrace whatever they were going to face with the Starks.

Having had the night to think about it, Ivy was stuck on one thing: taking over the empire. That’s what it came down to. Maurice wanted Dax to take over when he passed away. Brad would be the sophisticated front while Dax headed up the dirty work division.

Last night, her first instinct had been to tell Dax no and demand that they go home, but they’d argued enough in the last few days. When he did eventually come back to bed after beating up his punching bag, he hadn’t woken her, and by the time she was out of her morning shower he’d already left to go for a run. He’d come back for a shower, and she’d made breakfast, but conversation had been stunted. Despite all of his working out, she could tell that he was still torn about their future.

Now Dax was out again, this time to pick up lunch. Takeout was his way of contributing to meals, he could cook steak and mix a mouth-watering salsa, but that was as far as his talents went when it came to cookery.

Standing in the bedroom closet she scrutinised the space, which was filled with Dax’s clothes and possessions. The whole apartment was full of his things while all she had were the items she’d thrown together back east.

Dax had made something of himself, he had money, and a way to support himself. He could be cast out, penniless, and he would still be able to earn a living through his fighting, and now he’d been offered a chance at owning part of a multi-million dollar criminal empire.

She’d made their bed with fresh sheets and then moved into the closet. Ignoring Dax’s things, she sought out a sports bag because she needed luggage that would be smaller than the suitcase they’d brought on their trip here.

The bag that she located she recognised as the one they’d had in Vegas when they got married. Taking the bag out, she laid it on the bed, and unzipped it to check that it was empty. Inside she found only one thing: a pile of zip ties bound by an elastic band.

Removing them, she thought of their wedding night, which was the night she’d found this same item in this bag. Fingering the plastic, she was reminded of the night she tried to escape from the beach house on the first night that Dax had introduced her to these restraints. Now she would never consider sneaking out of her husband’s bed in an attempt to escape from him.