Page 18 of The Fighter

Devlin’s fingers faltered in their rhythm before he quickly recovered. “And I care because…?”

My hackles were rising. Did he have no sense of self-preservation? “Don’t act stupid.”

His palm flattened on the table with an audible smack as he leaned forward, face no longer blank as his lip curled. “You think I give a shit if Rome falls? Because I don’t. Soto can do what he wants. I’ll watch Rome burn around me. I’ll burn with it. I thought you knew me better than this.” My gut churned as his sneer morphed into a leer. His tongue snaked out to poke at the corner of his mouth. “But good to know you’re watching me. I like the attention.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” I did my best to look down my nose at him. “My attention isn’t on you. It’s on the blood trail you leave in your wake.”

He didn’t like that. His eyes flared hot. “I care about chaos. Not power. And I haven’t even reached my peak. So fuck your company, your COO position, whatever the fuck that stands for, and fuckyou.” He drained his wine glass. “So keep your attention on mytrail. Because it’s only going to get worse.” He leaned in even further then, tone low, and his voice shook with what could have been rage or regret or sorrow. “You could have stopped me ten years ago. You could have collared me, and I would have been brought to heel like a dog. But you didn’t, did you? So watch me burn this entire city down around us. I’ll dance in the flames.”

He stood up and strode out. His men followed. And I didn’t move, staring at the red wine in my glass while it turned to poison in my gut. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when a body slid into the seat across from me.

I lifted my gaze to find Nik watching me. He sat at rest, hands below the table, but I knew him enough to know he practically bled tension and anger right now. “That didn’t go well.”

No, no it hadn’t. I’d recorded the whole thing, and Nik had been listening. Guilt tore at my insides, shredding at my lungs as the air around me seemed to thin. I couldn’t breathe. “I made everything worse. I madehimworse?—”

“His actions are not your fault.”

“How so?” I spat. “He said so himself. I could have prevented all of this. Every person he took advantage of, all the victims he tortured. Killed. All the drugs and the crime?—”

“If it wasn’t him, someone else would have taken his place.”

“But it’s not someone else.” I pounded a fist on the table. “It’sDevlin.”

Nik shook his head. “He never would have come to heel, no matter what he says. He would have always been this, Conrad.Always. This was what he was always meant to be, whether it happened ten years ago, or ten years from now.”

“I don’t believe that.”

He cocked his head. “You don’t? You think you’re that powerful that you could have kept him in check?”

I glared. “Fuck you.”

“No, fuckyou.”

“Getting a little tired of people saying that to me?—”

“Then quit being a bitch.”

I almost punched him. “You don’t didn’t know him back then, Nik.I did. He could have?—”

“Ask Ben.” Nik’s jaw ticked. “Ask him if he thinks you’re to blame for what Devlin is.”

I remained silent, and my gaze returned to my wine glass. I wouldn’t bring Ben into this. He didn’t know how just how far Devlin had fallen in the last few years.

Nik snorted, and I refused to look at him. “Fine,” he spat, clearly done with me. “Then keep flogging yourself. But at least multi-task, because we have a lot of work to do for Soto. If you want to live your life feeling like you need to make up for Devlin’s sins, at least be productive about it.”

He stood up with a swish of his long coat and a scent cloud of his heavy cologne. He didn’t go far, only to the door of the restaurant where he took out his phone and pointedly ignored me. That was Nik, letting me know he was pissed at me, but not pissed enough to risk leaving me alone and vulnerable.

I wasn’t blameless in this, and I wouldn’t involve Ben. He knew a lot, more than most, but I’d never let him see the files I’d compiled on Devlin, all the evidence of who he’d stepped on and killed to get the top of a seedy empire.

I rubbed at my forehead as a headache bloomed there. Nik was right about one thing—I had to get my head out of my ass and do something. Soto’s men had begun small raids on Devlin’s properties, anything to disrupt his supply chain of drugs andguns. But that was only a part of what Devlin did, and while the damage had annoyed him, it hadn’t hurt him enough.

It was time to escalate.

EIGHT

Tav

Lary squeezed my taped wrists and looked at me in the eyes. “You got this one, Husk.”