My jaw clenched. “Does it matter?”
“It does to me.”
I stared at him, searching for some hint of what he wanted to hear. But King’s face gave nothing away. He just stood there, waiting, his presence filling the small cell like a storm cloud.
“He wanted her,” I said finally, the words tasting like ash. “Zero wanted Kat. And when he realized she was choosing me, he decided to burn it all down. Threw my past with Sam in her face, and made sure she knew exactly what I’d done, how brutal I could be. He calculated every word to destroy any chance I had with her. It was pure jealousy. He wanted to sabotage me because he couldn’t have her himself.”
King’s expression didn’t shift. He already knew. They all knew.
“He destroyed any chance she had of seeing me as anything other than the bastard I used to be,” I continued, my voice rough. “And now she’s gone, and Frankie thinks I’m a monster, and I can’t...” My voice cracked. I stopped, swallowing hard against the tightness in my throat.
King studied me for a long moment, his jaw tight.
“You’re ashamed,” he said quietly.
It wasn’t a question.
I looked down at my hands. At the blood still caked under my nails. “I beat my wife. Put her in the hospital. Nearly killed her.” The words felt like poison on my tongue. “Zero made sure Kat knew exactly what I’m capable of. Made sure she understood that the man who stood in front of her, the one she was starting to trust, is the same monster who did that.”
The silence that followed felt like a physical weight pressing down on my chest.
“That was a long time ago,” King said.
“Doesn’t matter.” I looked up at him. “She knows now. She knows what I really am. And she’s right to keep Frankie away from me.”
King studied me for a long moment. Then he moved to the wall opposite me and leaned against it, crossing his arms.
“Grew up thinking my grandparents were my parents.” King continued, his voice carrying the weight of old grief. “They diedwhen I was ten. After that, my brother raised me. Tried to keep me on the right path. Gave me everything a kid could want. A role model. Structure. Someone who believed in me.” He paused, his jaw clenching. “And I still became a criminal anyway. Still chose this life, this club, this path. Thought maybe I was just broken, you know? That no matter what good influence I had, something in me was rotten.”
He looked at me then, and I saw the raw understanding in his eyes.
“Then, eleven months ago, I found out my biological father is the head of the Irish Mob. The worst version of everything I was afraid I might become. And I had to ask myself, was it always in my blood? Was I always going to end up here no matter what my brother did, no matter how hard he tried to save me? Or did I just make my own choices and they happened to lead me to the same place?”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
King’s eyes locked onto mine. “I get it, Derek. The fear. The anger. The certainty that you’re one bad day away from turning into the monster you’ve been running from your whole life.”
Something twisted in my chest. “Then you know why I can’t—”
“I know why you think you can’t,” King interrupted. “But here’s the difference between you and me. When I found out about my father, I didn’t run. I didn’t lock myself in a cell and decide I was too broken to be saved. I looked at the man I’d become, the choices I’d made, the people I’d protected, and I realized I’m not him. I never will be.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Neither do you.” King pushed off the wall and took a step closer. “Gunner told me what you did in Pennsylvania. You beat a man who was hurting a child. That’s not losing control. That’s choosing to be dangerous for the right reasons.”
“I didn’t choose anything,” I said bitterly. “I just reacted.”
“Bullshit.” King’s voice hardened. “You think I haven’t seen men lose control? You think I don’t know the difference between rage and purpose? You went after that man because you couldn’t stand by and let him hurt her. That’s not the same as being your father.”
I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe him.
But all I could see was Kat’s face when she looked at me in that hallway. The fear. The disgust.
“She’s gone,” I said quietly. “Took Frankie and left. And I don’t blame her.”
King’s expression shifted again, this time into something colder. Harder.
“You know what pisses me off about this whole situation?” he asked.
