“How? I thought you said they all thought you were dead.”
I let out a sigh and dragged my fingers through my hair. “Rufie—a sociopath of the highest order—is the new leader of Trinity.”
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t move.
With another breath, I crossed to the nearest weight bench and dropped onto it, elbows on my knees, hands hanging between my legs. “Two weeks ago, he stepped up behind Loco—the leader who’d told the rest of the gang I was dead—and slit his throat. The Trinity members who opposed him faced two choices—swallow his shit and live, or not.”
Ronnie’s eyes widened a little.
I rubbed a hand over the back of my neck. “According to Grub, more than half of those loyal to Loco elected the latter option. Their endings weren’t pretty. Unfortunately, one of those members revealed I was still alive during his last conversation with Rufie. The second the fucker learned I wasn’t dead, he made it his mission to find me.”
“Well, fuck, eh?” Ronnie murmured.
I chuckled, the sound dry and empty. “Fuck, eh,” I echoed.
Grub—a blubbering mess of a turd by the end of our talk—wasn’t sure how my exact location came to be known to Rufie, but he thought it had something to do with Detective Dewey.
Which meant once again, I was in the crosshairs of my old sadistic gang and authorities more corrupt than fucking sin.
I didn’t want to tell Ronnie that. Hopefully, I wouldn’t need to. I’d take care of the situation myself. End it.
She’d tear me a new one when I got back, but at least she’d be safe.
“What about the information on Trinity and Dewey and Kitchner?” she asked. “The stuff you sent to that person both you and Doctor Winchester know? What happened to that?”
Fuck. I should have remembered Ronnie had a mind like a steel trap.
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “Grub didn’t, either.”
She scowled at me.
I understood her agitation.
Whoever the crooked authorities were, they’d made certain the information I’d collected on Dewey and Kitchner and Trinity’s more legal—using that term lightly—enterprises, had not gone public. As soon as I could, I’d need to contact Lila and let her know. It was highly unlikely our mutual acquaintance was shady or in Trinity’s pocket, but nor was he a fighter. If he was hurt—or killed—because of me, I was going to be very angry. And my anger would be a pale imitation of what Lila would feel.
Heaven help anyone who hurt or threatened her ex-husband.
“So what you’re telling me,” Ronnie said, tone ambiguous, “is there’s a target on your back and potentially lots of people aiming for it?”
“That about sums it up.”
“And some of them know where you are?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve threatened to…what? Hurt anyone who comes after you again?”
I wobbled my head in a non-committal way. I might be telling Ronnie the truth, but she didn’t need to know exactly what I’d threatened to do to Rufie and anyone he sent after me. I loved her too much for her to know just how vicious I could be.
Still gripping the tonfa and sai, she crossed her arms over her breasts—breasts I would much rather be burying my face into at that moment in time—and fixed me with a direct stare. “I take it hurt is an understatement?”
“You could say that.”
For a few seconds, she didn’t move. Just studied me, her expression unreadable. And then she let out a shaky sigh, shook her head, and threw up her hands. “I liked you so much better when I thought you were just a prick of a next door neighbor, Lucas Pratt.”
My gut clenched. My chest tightened. My mouth turned to dust. “What are you saying, Ronnie? That you…you don’t…don’t want to be with me anymore?”
Jesus, the question was like razor wire tearing through me.