He swallowed and the man’s eyes glistened with guilt. “I built what I had to. I used it to get leverage on Julian’s partners. There are people who took my company years ago — I bought it back, restructured, cleaned the books. I did things the way the predators understand so I could take their toys away. I didn’t tell you because I thought telling you would make you a target. Also—” he hesitated, the lighter, almost ridiculous truth nudging the darker — “I wanted to come back as someone who looked like he could fend them off, not the greasy bike-fixer they’d come find.”
Her hands curled like a blade. “You didn’t let me help.” The sentence was honest and accusatory and beautiful in its bluntness. “You decided alone. You kept us alone.”
He stepped closer, careful, like a man stepping into a
