7. ~Levi~

7

~Levi~

The diner was dead silent.

There was literally nobody inside.

No patrons, no staff.

I eyed my dad across the ugly brown plastic booth, looking jarringly out of place sitting in a joint like this in his navy striped Brunello Cucinelli suit.

He reached into his pocket and tossed a protein bar down on the table in front of me. "Here. Eat."

How did he know I really needed something to fuel me right about now? "Thanks," I said, not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. I opened the bar and took a bite, chewing quickly as he just stared at me—or more like studied and analyzed me.

Once I'd swallowed, I cut through the silence and asked, "You bought this place out for a couple of hours?"

"No. I bought it, period."

Oh no. That didn't bode well.

Best to just address it directly then, seeing as though he wasn't giving it to me upfront.

"You hate the food services industry from a business investment perspective."

"It's a gift."

I cocked an eyebrow.

"For your girlfriend's father."

Fuck.

I was usually as cool as they came, able to remain calm in the face of pretty much anything, to stand my ground and come out on top.

But when it came to Roman Knight, it was different.

I'd met my match.

I actually had to clear my throat before responding, "Girlfriend?"

"Would you prefer I term her your obsession?" he asked, evenly, not missing a single beat as per usual.

"Dad, listen, I—"

"I haven't laid eyes on you in over a year, Levi." He looked me up and down studiously, as I munched on my protein bar. "You've put on a lot of muscle. Not always a good thing with you, because it's beyond being about mere physical fitness. You look tired. Not just due to being up all night running that errand ."

Christ, he knew way too much.

He reached out and laid his hand on mine. "You had an episode , didn't you?"

Instinctively when it came to that subject matter being brought up, I went to pull away.

But he didn't allow it.

"Son?" he pressed.

"It wasn't about what you think. I just flashed back to five years ago."

"That's what you were experiencing in that van for close to ten minutes?"

He'd been watching me since then?

"Yes."

"You merely put down the threat that those vermin posed, nothing more than your street fighting, so where was the link to that night five years ago?"

"It's still enough to activate my bloodlust."

"Which you have under control. You have for years now." He released my hand and sat back, folding his big arms across his chest. "So, I ask again, where was the connection made in your mind?"

Son of a bitch! I slammed my fist down on the table, rocking it from the force. "You know where and why! You know! That's why you're here!"

He kept his cool, like I hadn't just snapped right in front of him.

In an even tone, he said, "Say it then."

I grabbed the edge of the table in a white-knuckle grip and took some time to control my breathing to tamper down my rage.

Just like he'd taught me to do after the kidnapping—and again after I'd lost it the night of the massacre.

"Because," I managed to answer in a strained voice. "I need to go to that headspace again." I glared out at him. "I won't let you stop me this time. I have to do this. I need—"

"I know what you need, son."

"What?"

"I had hoped that the last year away would have given you what you needed when you discovered just how difficult it is to even get a lock on Lynch for a moment in time."

"You knew that was what I was doing? You didn't buy the internship story?"

"Not to knock the impressive smokescreen that you fashioned, because it was indeed intricate and well-choreographed, but it was also too perfect. So I put eyes on you a couple of months in. That was why when you returned to the location that you'd tracked Lynch too, he'd already moved on."

I started. " You let him get away?"

"My man on the ground did. You were outnumbered. Even if he'd stepped in as had been his orders if you hadn't stepped back when you had, you would have failed against that many. Thirty-to-one are unacceptable odds, Levi."

"I could've got off a kill shot."

"And simply walked away with not one of them making you?" He scoffed. "Impossible."

"You don't know what I'm capable of anymore."

"I'm well aware. That's why I'm not simply putting you in the back of my Lexus and driving you back home to put you under close watch."

I frowned. "Wait, that's not what you're here to do?"

He leaned forward. "I'm here to make you a deal."

I cocked a highly skeptical eyebrow. "A deal?"

"Relocate to Boreas and continue your search for Lynch through his associate, using him as a buffer, but create one of your favored smokescreens and take it further, making it appear as though Royce Humphrey is coming for him, rather than you. I'll feed reports that you've been hospitalized following a failed battle with several of his mercenaries, so that you can't possibly be responsible for tracking Lynch, nor even seen as a threat to him and his organization. I'll have my people draw Kyle Trass into the situation too, to be seen as working alongside Royce Humphrey. Their reasoning? That Osiris has become too powerful and Humphrey is concerned Malcolm Lynch will run right over him and try to command him again. Of course, Trass will always follow Humphrey like a lost puppy, so his motivations are clear."

"You'd do all of that for me?"

He held up a finger. "I said a deal , not a handout. Besides, we both know you never liked being handed anything, always insisting on working for it yourself. You even bought that mansion in Stonewell from your own funds that you'd acquired from hiring out your ingenious technological skills over the last few years. Commendable, of course. Although, given your obsessions, also oftentimes dangerous."

"Dad, I get it. What's my side of the bargain? Aside from running to a safehouse like a fucking pussy, anyway."

"You mean a responsible young adult who understands what it would do to his father if something awful befell his son?"

I slumped back in my chair. "All right, I'm sorry. Go on."

"In exchange for me allowing this, assisting quietly, and not interfering in your relationship with Brianna Walker, in addition to going to the safehouse until the heat on you dies down, when you locate Malcolm Lynch, you will not launch a strike."

"What? No. No fucking way. No deal." I went to rise to my feet.

"Sit. Down," he ground out in that no-nonsense tone. The one that had his employees and business partners alike pissing themselves.

"There is no way in hell—"

"I didn't say you can't be there when a strike is underway. I merely said you can't launch it. You can't head it, you can't devise it. Myself and Curt Walker will see to that."

I sat back down, taken with his words. "You'll do what?"

He gestured around the diner. "Why do you think I need this gift to approach him with? It's not just this, there is an entire lucrative chain of these roadside diners. All his now. This is sore subject matter for him, as it is for me. I need something positive to open with. Suffice to say, once I am able to smooth things over—especially the part where your slipup with going in hot at Kyle Trass caused you to put yourself, your friends, and his daughter in the crosshairs of Royce Humphrey—he'll recognize what I have. That this is our chance to finish what we started before Lynch disappeared off the map and was actually believed to have perished."

"If I agree to this, swear to me that you won't go in without me."

"Son, I know how much you need this… closure. There's so much rage and pain that the trauma of those weeks in their captivity caused you. But the truth is that it's rooted in shame. Shame that you couldn't escape on your own, that you couldn't spare Brianna. No matter how many times I tell you, or your many therapists told you, that it wasn't your fault, that you didn't possess the power to play the hero, that you were just a child, you won't accept it. So, I believe the way to solve that is to overpower the man himself—to put him down."

I stared at him in absolute incredulity. "You're really going to allow this to happen? Allow me to do this?"

He sighed and slumped back in his chair also. "I've tried everything else to help you to move past this. Nothing has worked. You've been pursuing this non-stop since you discovered that Lynch and his two cohorts didn't die that night as we'd all believed. Your instincts are drawing you in this direction. So this is what we'll try." He smiled sadly. "Perhaps it will finally give you and your girlfriend some peace."

"She's not just mine. Mason and Colt are involved with her too now."

"Interesting. I doubt very much that Curt will be pleased about that, so let's keep that aspect quiet until we're well underway with this mission."

"I'm all for not further complicating matters."

He arched an eyebrow. "Since when? You usually barrel through everything."

"Since it's not just me who stands to take the brunt of things now."

"You don't just mean the boys, you mean her."

I nodded. "Whatever it takes to protect her." I could feel him staring at me intently. "Although, that would be made easier if she was actually communicating with me right about now."

"She found out you kept Lynch's survival from her?"

"No. Something else… a miscommunication I haven't gotten the chance to clear up yet."

"So she doesn't know at all?"

I scrubbed my hands over my face. "No. Christ."

"Levi."

"I just… it took everything I had just to get her to admit it had even happened, then to pull her close to me."

"Tell her as soon as I let you take your leave."

"I will. I just wanted something concrete first, a location to move on against Lynch."

"Life isn't about perfect circumstances, or things lining up the precise way you intend. Sometimes you must work with what you have." He shifted his weight. "Also, be careful with how you protect a woman like her who was subjugated most of her life by overwrought misogyny. She deserves the right to a choice. You don't get to decide what's best for her, she does. If things go south there, then you be there for the fallout to support her. That's the most interference you can have, Levi. Trust me on that. If I'd done the same with your mother, things may have turned out differently." He shook his head to himself. "After you were born, though, I became extremely overbearing in my mission to protect you both. It was too much. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't stand being a part of our high-pressure world, she felt like she was under a microscope, and with no life of her own outside of my shadow and domineering influence. So she ran, she left us. Sometimes good intentions aren't enough, not when the execution is all wrong."

I took the weight of his words in.

"I understand." I reached out and took his hand. "Thank you, Dad. And not just for the advice. Thank you for not reprimanding me for the lie of the internship, thank you for supporting me with something so fucked-up like this. For all of it."

"You're my flesh and blood. I'd do nothing less to give you peace of mind." He eased from me then rose to his feet and rounded the table toward me.

I pushed out of my seat to meet his approach.

And then he threw his arms around me.

Emotion overtook me and I held him to me tightly.

"Be careful. Swear it to me. Swear it."

"I swear, Dad."

And, for once, I would actually hold myself to that.