Page 18 of When Kings Fall

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.”

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