She opened her mouth to speak, but King cut her off when he joined me. “I’ll have a whisky, too.” His eyes met hers. ?
?And some privacy.”
After she threw a pout my way, she left us alone, and I directed my attention to King. “I thought we were meeting later at your place.”
“Something’s come up that I need to take care of, and I figured I’d find you here.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah, just some family bullshit.” He settled into the seat across from me and crossed his arms over his chest. “You leaving tonight?”
I nodded. “I want to get there early tomorrow morning.”
King remained silent for a few moments. “I don’t fucking get why you never told me about your family, brother. Not after the shit we went through together years ago.”
I hadn’t told anyone about my family, but I’d come close more than once with King. Staring at him, I thought back to the night he saved my ass the first time. “Do you remember how fucked up I was the night you saved my life?”
Jilly placed our drinks on the table, and King reached for his. After drinking some, he said, “The night you decided you could take five assholes on and win? I’d seen you at that pub a few times, always jacked up on something, and I remember thinking you were one crazy motherfucker. The way I recall it, though, is that you didn’t really need me to help you that night. I was just looking for a fight, and yours seemed like a good one to get in on. I didn’t save your life, that’s for fucking sure. You were capable of doing that yourself.”
“No, I wasn’t. And you know that. Saving my life had nothing to do with that fight.” I knocked back some whisky, savouring the burn as it slid down my throat. “If I’d never met you that night, I’d have been dead within weeks. I wanted to fucking die back then.”
“I know. But no one wants to die in a filthy back alley with a needle stuck in his fucking arm or beaten to death by a bunch of assholes he doesn’t even know.”
“I did. I didn’t want to deal with life. And I sure as hell didn’t want to talk about it or my family. Not to you. Not to anyone.” I threw back some more whisky. “Fuck, King… you’re always saving the fucking strays. What the hell possessed you to save me from myself?”
He didn’t have to think about his answer. “I knew you’d make a fucking good VP.”
I stared at him, processing that. King had been twenty-three at the time, seven years off becoming president. I was twenty-two and a man with no future. King had helped me win that fight, and then he’d given me a reason to live. He’d also spent months making sure I kicked my drug habit. “How the fuck did you figure that?”
He held my gaze, his eyes hard. “You were almost as crazy as me, but every now and then you hesitated and thought shit through. And you never failed to tell me when you thought I was wrong. I knew I’d need someone like that.” He glanced around the pub for a moment before looking back at me. “Turns out I was right to fight for you. Some of the shit you’ve done for me….”
I shrugged. “It’s what we do.”
He lifted his drink to his mouth. “You gonna tell me why your wife thinks you’re dead?”
I ran my finger around the rim of the glass in front of me. “There was a fire, and our home burnt to the ground. My remains were supposedly found in it.”
King didn’t blink, didn’t show any reaction at all. He simply said, “Why?”
I emptied my glass and signalled to Jilly to bring us another. Getting into this with King wasn’t something I had the patience for without more alcohol. “Let’s just say I was young and made a fatal error about where to put my loyalties. The guy I worked for, Gibson, was being investigated for all sorts of shit, but mostly they were desperate to pin two murders on him. I was the guy he called on to handle any problems in the business, so the cops hauled me in for questioning. After I was released, Gibson gave me an ultimatum—fake my death and walk away or he’d get rid of me his way. Part of the choice involved Tenille and Charlotte’s safety. If I didn’t choose to walk away, he’d kill us all.”
King frowned. “Walking away doesn’t sound like your style, Hyde.”
The guilt I’d carried with me for fourteen years roared to life, squeezing the fucking air out of my lungs and coming dangerously close to flipping the switch that sent me from controlled to crazed in under a second. “Jesus, King, I was a fucking twenty-two-year-old with no family and no fucking resources. They caged me in and threatened me, beating the shit out of me and almost killing me in the process. It wasn’t like I had much fucking choice. And back then, I wasn’t the man I am today, that’s for fucking sure.”
“Why didn’t you use Storm’s resources once you had access to them? I would have helped you get your family back.”
I scrubbed my hand over my face while my gut churned with regret. “I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t. In the end, though, I didn’t want to put Tenille through that. She remarried within a year and was happy. I’ve kept an eye on them, and the guy seems to have done right by Charlotte. Me going back would only have stirred shit up for them.”
“So now you’re ready to deal with this Gibson asshole?”
“No, now I’m simply heading to Melbourne to find out what shit my family is in and help get them out of it. Then I’m back here.”
King stared at me like I had two fucking heads. After drinking more of his whisky, he said, “Who the fuck are you today? Because you aren’t the Hyde I fucking know.”
I scowled at him. “You know much about Gibson Transport, King?”
His movements slowed as understanding dawned on him. Whistling low, he said, “Fuck me. Shane fucking Gibson is the asshole you used to work for?”