Page 100 of A Game of Deception
The pointed remark hung in the air. Diego flinched, but not from her touch. He wouldn't meet my eyes. “Appreciate it, Doc,” he mumbled.
Ben fidgeted nervously by the car. “Should I drive him to the ER?”
“I’ve got him,” Tara said. “Let’s take him to your penthouse, Xander, and I can clean the wounds.”
I nodded. “Ben, take Diego in your car, and follow us. I’ll ride with Tara.”
We pulled into the parking garage beneath my penthouse building. Ben parked beside us, then helped Diego out of the car. Despite Tara’s assessment that his injuries weren’t life-threatening, he still looked like hell—battered, exhausted, and defeated.
“Let’s get him upstairs,” I said.
The elevator ride to the penthouse was a study in tense silence. Diego leaned against the mirrored wall, his good eye closed, looking like a man who had just seen the end of his world. Ben stood by his side, a silent, worried guardian. When the doors finally slid open, Leo was waiting. His face shifted from relief at seeing me to controlled shock at the sight of Diego.
“What the?—”
“Long story,” I cut him off. “Can you get an ice pack and the first aid kit?”
Leo nodded once, disappearing toward the kitchen as Ben and I guided Diego to the large leather couch. He sank into it with a groan, his head falling back against the cushions.
Tara had already followed Leo, and she returned with the kit and a bowl of warm water. She knelt in front of the couch, her movements efficient and all business.
I stood over them, crossing my arms. “You owe me an explanation, Mano.”
Diego’s good eye fluttered open. The shame in it was a foreign look on him. “I know,” he rasped. “First thing tomorrow, I’m withdrawing the police report. From the other day.” He shook his head, a pained, self-deprecating motion. “I had it coming. I provoked you.”
He then shifted his gaze to Tara, and the usual arrogance was completely gone, replaced by a raw, genuine remorse. “And Dr. Swanson… Tara… I’m sorry. For the way I’ve been acting. The things I said to you, to him about you… there’s no excuse. It was bullshit.”
Tara paused in her work, her eyes meeting his. She simply nodded. “Apology accepted, Diego.”
The apology hung in the air, a fragile truce. It didn't explain nearly enough.
“It wasn’t just you, was it?” Tara asked, her voice quiet but sharp as she started cleaning a cut on his cheek. “The provocations, the hostility. It felt… organized. Who was paying you, Diego?”
His eye widened slightly. He looked from her to me. “How did you know?”
“We know more than you think,” I said grimly. “Start talking.”
Diego let out a long, shuddering sigh of defeat. “It started when I got here. I got in deep with some bookies… sports betting.Thought I had some inside track, but it just kept going wrong. Suddenly I owed fifty grand. Then a hundred.”
“And Hank found out,” I guessed, the pieces clicking into place.
Diego nodded. “Don’t know how, but he knew everything. Called me into his office, laid out every single one of my debts, and offered me a deal. He’d cover all my payments if I’d do him a ‘favor’.”
“Make my life hell,” I said flatly.
“Yeah.” He had the decency to look ashamed. “He wanted me to get under your skin. Provoke you in practice, talk shit to the press, make you look like the out-of-control hothead everyone already thought you were. He said he needed to show Tara what kind of man youreallywere. If I could get you to break, get her to finally dump you, he’d wipe the entire debt clean.”
Tara’s hands stilled for a fraction of a second, her knuckles white around the gauze. “And you agreed.”
“I was desperate,” Diego said, his voice pleading. “And it wasn’t like I had to fake not liking you, McCrae. You came in with the big contract, taking all the attention. It was easy to hate you.”
“So why did Torres’s men grab you today?” Tara asked, her voice devoid of emotion as she resumed her work.
Diego’s face darkened. “Hank said I wasn’t delivering. That you two were getting closer instead of falling apart. He said you weren’t breaking like he wanted.” He shrugged, a gesture of futility. “He stopped paying my markers. Told me I was on my own.”
“But your signing bonus was worth over a million,” Tara pressed, voicing the question I was thinking. “Why not just pay the debt yourself?”
Diego’s gaze dropped to the floor. “Back home… in Colombia… I owed some people. The kind of people you don’t say no to. They took everything before I even left the country.”
