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Desmond had wondered what had happened to the little kid after he used the last of his connections to make the child disappear. It had cost him every cent he had saved, but watching Ivan’s reaction the day Evangeline’s plane had supposedly crashed had been worth every fucking dime.

The day after the plane crash, he had snuck off the yacht during the middle of the night. Using his spare key, he made his last trip to Sherguevil Island and had gone to Bernard’s cottage, killing the only person who could identify him as Garrick. Then he had swum back to the boat and taken off, sinking the boat not far off from an inhabited island.

Penniless and alone, he’d had few choices. He had wanted to come back to the States, but because of his murder charge, he had known it wouldn’t take long before he was caught. Neither did he want to get King involved. With few options, he had been forced to do something he had sworn never to do.

Contacting his father had been a bitter pill to swallow. When his mother had asked for help from Nathaniel Beck, he had denied being his father. Being from a wealthy family, there was no way he was going to admit an association with a ten-dollar whore. Any attempts to collect child support had a team of lawyers bringing out affidavits of men claiming they were his father. They had even been able to produce a marriage license to a man whom she had married when she had been three months pregnant, and an application for aid where his mother had signed the bozo whom she had married as the father. Conveniently, for his real father, the bozo had died of a meth overdose when Desmond had been two years old.

Desmond had never been within speaking distance of his father until Nathaniel had approached him at his mother’s funeral. By then, he had been fifteen and hadn’t seen his mother in years. The only reason he had gone to the funeral was to pay for it.

When his father had tried to talk to him, he had spit on his shoes and told him that, if he ever came near him again, he would kill him.

Nathaniel had been unfazed by the threat, putting up a hand to prevent the bodyguard from taking his cocky ass out. The two of them had then stared at each other, the spitting images of each other. The resemblance was how he had so easily recognized Evangeline as being Gabriel Allerton’s. A by-blow could always recognize another one.

His father had handed him a card and told him to call if he ever needed him. Curling his lip at him, Desmond had told him hell would freeze over before he would ever call.

Narrowly escaping Sherguevil, he had been cautious about working on the island he had found himself stranded on. Without money to buy another fake identity and still determined to exact revenge on Ivan and Gabriel, he had resorted to calling Nathaniel.

Within five hours, his father had arrived with the same team of lawyers the Becks had used to deny his paternity. In his hand were a new passport and birth certificate.

As much as he wanted to tell his father to shove it, he had accepted the documents and the new life he was offered. Nathaniel would erase all proof that could tie him to his prior life. All he had to do was become the son Nathaniel had previously denied was his.

The irony of the situation of Nathaniel now wanting to claim him wasn’t lost on either of them. Staring down at the fake birth certificate, he saw Nathaniel listed as father and the differences from where his mother’s name and the one he had been given at birth were.

As Logan Miles, he would never be able to exact the revenge he wanted on Ivan and Gabriel, but as Desmond Beck, he could.

Leaving with his father that day had been a turning point. Gradually, he had grown to respect Nathaniel. While they never achieved the close bond of father and son, they did achieve the objectives each of them wanted.

Nathaniel got an heir to the Beck family fortune that came with a pedigree that was acceptable to their standards, and Desmond had been able to systematically begin undermining Gabriel Allerton. Unless he brought him down, he didn’t stand a chance at hurting Ivan.

The years of working on a vacation resort and the yacht hadn’t been in vain. It had taught him how to act and fit seamlessly into a lifestyle that he had been denied at birth. Incorporating King into his new life had taken delicate handling, extending their friendship that tightened the hold King had on Queens City.

Tipping the bottle to his lips, Desmond continued down memory lane.