Page 144 of Caution to the Wind

He sent his buddies away, and they catcalled, jeered at him for fuckin’ the prostitute.

But he didn’t.

They stayed up all night talkin’.

He became obsessed with her.

His life wasn’t soft or easy, but his affection for Kate was.

I got him, ’cause even though our love’d never been romantic, I’d felt the same way about her.

Even though he hated the lifestyle she was forced into by poverty, by circumstance, he wasn’t in a position to get her out. He couldn’t even get himself out.

Maxwell was a 49er for the Seven Song triad, a lowly foot soldier desperate to climb the ladder.

When I asked him how he became a white member of a Chinese gang, he’d smiled thinly. “Wrong place, right time. Kasper Kuan was still establishing his foothold in Calgary, and a group of rednecks caught him outside a bar where he was doing business. They were beating him to death in the back alley where I was bartending. I saw them when I took out the trash and chased them away.”

“Kasper owed you his life.”

“He would never admit that, even to himself. But he did bring me into his fold after that. There was a kind of…softness he had for me, and he was not a soft man. He brought me into his protection detail, and I worked myself up from there. By the time Kate got pregnant later that year, I was ready to marry her. Take her out of one life and into my own. It wasn’t safe exactly, but it was safer.”

“But you abandoned her.”

“No,” he said, fierce and stone cold, piercin’ me with his eyes. “If I did, it was only as Mei abandoned you.”

“Keep her name out of your mouth,” I growled, openin’ my hand.

Priest stepped forward and placed a pair of pliers in my palm. Without hesitation, I clamped them around Maxwell’s pinky finger on his left hand.

“You lost that finger saving her,” he told me, and when I shot my gaze up to his, he had that same thin smile on his face. “I know everything about you, Henning Axelsen. Did you think I wouldn’t keep an eye on the man raising my daughter?”

“If that was true, if you’re implyin’ you’ve been watchin’ over Cleo, then why the hell didn’t you step in when she needed help the most?” I seethed.

He flinched, just slightly, a tiny recoil in his throat. “I didn’t see that coming.”

I snorted.

“You didn’t either.”

Without remorse, I pressed the pliers together, cuttin’ into his finger until he hissed.

“I didn’t see what was happening back then either,” he admitted, raisin’ burnin’ eyes to me. “I became so obsessed with Kate, my friends in the triad started to take notice. So did Kasper. Maybe he was just curious. Maybe he wanted a bead on me as I started to make a name for myself in the crime world. Either way, he started to visit Kate.”

He swallowed thickly, and I found myself doin’ the same.

The idea of Kasper’s hands on Kate made me physically ill. A sense of portentous doom dug roots into my belly.

“He fell in love with her, if you can call it love,” Maxwell continued, but it clearly pained him to do so. “I didn’t realize it, but he started keeping her from me. Paid her pimp Jimmie Page for exclusive access. But Kate was pregnant, and I was in love with her. I couldn’t let it go. One night, I followed Jimmie to find out where he was keeping her and found her in a swanky hotel. I waited for Jimmie to leave and then broke down the door. Kasper was inside.”

He looked wane, as if he’d vomit any minute.

“I lost it,” he admitted. “There were bruises all over Kate, and he was…touching her, and I went ballistic. I still don’t remember the cops coming, prying me off his body. I beat him so badly, I heard later he lost partial vision in his right eye.”

“He had you locked up,” I surmised.

He nodded. “Locked up with attempts on my life every day for the first six months of my stay. He knew a lot of people inside, and others would do anything for the money.”

“Clearly, you survived.”