Page 59 of When Kings Fall

I swallowed hard and forced the words out, “Yeah, Dad. It’s me.”

“I can’t fucking believe it. First Roman, now you. After all this time.”

“Dad, I—”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re… what?” He never apologized.

“I’m so fucking sorry. Your mom… what happened to you… this coming back around now… it’s all my fault, being so power-hungry… it cost me what meant the world to me… cost me everything I loved.”

“It’s too late for apologies.”

“Brianna—”

“No. I mean, we’re beyond that.”

Hearing his voice again was different than the last few times he’d tried to contact me over the years and I hadn’t picked up and had instead just listened to his voicemails.

Before Levi had come back into my life and changed things, awakening me and helping me to kill the fear of admitting to the awful past we shared, I hadn’t been able to stand entertaining anything from my past.

Not even my dad.

Part of me had blamed him.

The decisions he’d made as club president had been partially responsible for me being taken. He’d made some bad calls when trying to find me too, which had led to my mom going it alone, and her subsequent brutal murder right in front of me.

But now, talking to him, I could stand the pain.

Because that wasn’t all there was now.

And because I could admit it and take it, I could also see beyond it, see all the other things regarding my dad and my past that weren’t associated with those dark and twisted days Levi and I had spent being held captive by those demons.

“You mean that?” my dad asked, the need for it to be the case bleeding into his voice.

“I do. This won’t be my last call.” I sucked in a breath. “But for right now, I need to know something. Did you refuse to work with Roman Knight?”

“It was going that way until he told me that you were involved. I told him, of course I’d back you in any way I can, even if it could only be indirectly and from a distance. Why?”

“Tommy told me otherwise. He warned me off doing this, laid down a threat on your behalf.”

“Brianna, I haven’t been in contact with that shithead since I beat him down two years ago after I found out he’d been messing around with you.”

I started. “You knew?”

“Intel reached me, yeah. Gotta say, you covered it up real well. It took the information being handed to me on a silver platter and laid out all undeniably for me to learn about it.”

The realization hit me and I swung my head toward Levi. “You told my dad about Tommy and me?”

“Shit, yeah, that was me.” He held up his hand quickly. “I honestly forgot to tell you during our revelation session, that’s all. It wasn’t important compared to all the rest. Sorry. I mean it, not telling you wasn’t intentional. There’s a lot of intel I acquired back then, a lot I passed on to key individuals over the years too in order to further my quest against Lynch, and to protect you. Passing information onto your dad was my way of protecting you from that fucker ex of yours. I recognized that he was keeping you weak and furthering your denial of who you really are.”

“Fuck, Levi,” I breathed.

“You believe me, right?” he asked, urgently, so worried that I wouldn’t, that it would mess up what we had.

Especially this special day where we’d actually exchanged our I-Love-You’s.

These moments of vulnerability from him, the raw emotion, it told me all I needed to know about his true intentions.

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