Page 298 of Dark Love

True. I want to kill every man for looking at her, but it’s not the same inherent jealousy. “This guy is different. If you met him, he’d make your skin crawl.”

“Name?”

“Montgomery. Don’t know the last. He’s her brother’s best friend.”

“That should be enough to start. We’ll just look and see if he has it saved anywhere.”

Did Max and Shock go to the same school to learn to type? Their fingers fly over the keys, but their eyes never leave the screen. “Did you really learn all this without going to school?”

Max glances up at me. “There was no one to teach you about computers when I was growing up. It was all uncharted territory. A dream became an idea that I turned into a global enterprise. Did you go to school to learn to kill people?”

“My dad would have had a doctorate if there was such a thing. But no, I have no formal education at all.” I wander around his office. It’s full of pictures of Hope and the rest of his family, kids’ drawings, and some weird handmade pottery.

“Can’t say you missed much. Except for meeting Ivy, school felt like a waste of time.”

The clickety-clack of keys being struck follows me around the room.

“You would have liked playing football, even though you would have been stuck as a lineman.”

That’s not much of a loss. “I prefer MMA.”

“Really? Me too. My mom hates it with a passion.”

No one cares if I come home battered and bruised… That’s not true. Not anymore. Dahlia cares. “I haven’t figured out how to explain it to Dahlia yet.”

“Have fun with that.”

“Wanna join me for the next match? Payne and I have ring-side tickets.” To every big game there is.

“If I say yes, that means we’re actually friends. Can you handle that?”

“I invited you, didn’t I?”

“Sounds good. We just can’t tell Hope. She’ll want to come and then end up making it a hobby. It’s bad enough when she spars with her cousins and the Kamenev boys.”

“What’s it like having a kid?”

The clickety-clack stops. “You and Dahlia thinking about having a kid?”

“Yeah. Eventually.”

Max smiles. “It’s the best thing in the world. And the hardest thing you will ever do. My daughter never leaves the neighborhood alone. She has a huge family to protect her. I have every tool and all the money in the world, but I worry about her every second of the day. It only gets worse the older they get.”

“Noted.” Maybe I should ask Dahlia to only have boys.

“I’m happy for you two.”

“Thanks.”

“Do you know about her mom?”

Too much and not enough. “She scares me.”

“Eugenia Fleur would scare any sane man. But I’d kill to play poker with her. I tried to get in a game with her once, but she hasn’t sat at a table in years.”

“We played a couple of days ago.”

“Really? What was it like?”

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