Page 10 of The Tempo of Truth (The Monsters Duet #3)

He asked, “What’s your next move? If you’re gonna be in the kid’s life, you’ll have to give up fighting for Lev.

There’s too much shady shit happening in the underground circuit.

If any of your competitors find out that you’ve got a kid worth billions, who knows how they would use that information against you?

I’m sure some of the promoters are salivating over the fact that you know Winnie at all.

That relationship stayed a secret until those pictures came out.

If you don’t fight, what else is there for you to do?

It’s not like you have an accounting degree to fall back on. ”

I sighed heavily and squinted into the sun.

“All of that is why I haven’t given Winnie an answer yet.

If I say I want to be Lowe’s dad, that means I have to stop being who I am.

The guy who has always had to hustle and fight for what he wants, and someone with no bottom line isn’t a man a boy should look up to.

But I don’t know how to be anyone else. It’s super fucking complicated. ”

Mino tossed his sweaty arm over my shoulder, and I shook it off while giving my friend a dirty look.

He grinned at me while moving to enter the phone number from the bottled water into his phone.

“Let’s be real. That girl followed you all over the place for years.

She took advantage of you when you were drunk.

She lied to you without remorse and kept such a big secret all this time.

She’s not exactly winning any morality awards either.

If you were smart, you would keep as much distance between you and her as possible.

Every time you get close to her, she ruins your life.

You should’ve let those rich kids keep on bullying her at that fancy prep school.

Maybe they would’ve taught her how to be a bit more humble.

There was no reason for you to involve yourself in the games those rich assholes play, unless you secretly believed the two of you had a shot at a future together. ”

It might seem to anyone looking from the outside that Winnie made me suffer, but I knew that if she hadn’t shown up that night in the bar, I had been depressed and desperate enough to take drastic action.

It wasn’t an exaggeration to say she saved me from myself that night.

I had no doubt I would’ve been dead by the morning if she hadn’t dragged me out of the bar and stuck to me like glue until I sobered up and started to think clearly.

Plus, Mino didn’t know, because I never admitted to anyone other than my mom, that I had ulterior motives for getting close to the Halliday heiress many years ago.

Someone fooled me into believing Winnie’s Aunt Channing was my biological mother and warned me that she and her wealthy husband were going to try and take me away from the only family I’d ever known.

I couldn’t abide my adoptive mother being steamrolled and threatened by one of the most powerful families in the world, so I hatched a plan to get close to Winnie.

I planned to use her to keep control of the unfolding situation, not realizing that her maternal grandfather was using me as a pawn from the start.

He manipulated Winnie through me, ultimately leading to him kidnapping her and setting off a chain of events that would have her forever questioning what type of underhanded dealings I was capable of.

The truth was, I owed Winnie a lot. And I owe it to my son to make choices not driven by selfishness for once in my miserable life.

I pulled my damp shirt off over my head. Loud whistles and catcalling followed the movement. I spent so much time in the boxing ring without a shirt on, facing guys built even better than I was, that I forgot having abs and tattoos was worthy of applause in the regular world.

Mino shoved me off balance and rolled his eyes. He muttered, “Show off,” under his breath and followed it up with something in Korean that I was sure was less than flattering.

After I had a dry shirt on, I grabbed my black gym bag and told my friend, “I have to hit the gym. Lev has a new kid he wants me to put through the paces. Thanks for the game.”

Mino pushed his hair back and flashed an easygoing grin.

“No problem. You’re the one who has to come all the way to our old stomping grounds to catch up.

You know you can find me exactly where I’ve always been.

You’re the only one from the neighborhood who made it out and became all international and shit.

You’ve seen more of the world than all of us in the neighborhood combined.

All I’ve ever seen is the city and the occasional trip to Seoul.

And we both know I always fly economy. I’ve never even seen a private jet in real life. ”

It was true. I’d been blessed in many ways. Unfortunately, I excelled at squandering any opportunity that seemed too good to be true. There was an undeniable truth when Winnie accused me of doing exactly that.

“The K-1 League is no joke. I’d always wanted a chance to play against them.

” The dreams that died on the vine were never far from my mind.

However, Mino wasn’t about to let me avoid the reason I dragged him to shoot hoops in the brutal summer heat in the first place.

“And I’ve only been on a private jet once or twice.

” Dating influencers who wanted to post content showing how big they could ball did have its benefits outside of the sex.

Mino stopped me at a corner with a hand on my elbow.

“What are you gonna do about the kid, Ky? I can joke about the situation all day long, but I’m worried about you.

Messing around with the wealthy is way more dangerous than mixing it up with criminals and thugs on Lev’s behalf.

You’re used to making your own rules. If you start messing with the Hallidays, you’re going to end up following their decree because you won’t have a choice.

Starting with gaining nothing by agreeing to be in your kid’s life.

No sane person would agree to that kind of restriction when dealing with one of the richest families in the world.

You deserve to gain a little something if you’re willing to give everything else up in order to play daddy the proper way. ”

I rolled my head around to pop my neck and release the knots of tension collected there.

The motion made an audible sound, and I swore as a tingle shot down my spine.

“I dunno, man. When I was a kid, if my mom’s husband had agreed to lose something in order to keep me and her in his life, I would’ve been pretty excited about it.

It always pissed me off that it was so easy for him to take that money and run.

” I refused to call either of the men who had a brief appearance in my childhood “dad”.

The only parent I recognized or needed was Julie Kent.

“I don’t think I can go about my life pretending like I don’t have a son just because it might be easier on me.

” I wasn’t that cold-blooded. “He’s gonna need someone in his life who can show him how the other half lives.

” I laughed at the irony of the other half in this instance being the poor and downtrodden.

“I can’t have any kid of mine thinking the world is always going to be private jets and penthouses.

I don’t want him to grow up to become unbearable. ”

Mino snorted and clapped a hand on my shoulder before we went our separate ways.

I said goodbye and jogged across the street.

I kept up the run as I turned in the direction of the gym.

When I first came back to the city, full of disgrace and embarrassment, I stayed with Mino and a couple of my other friends who still lived in the old neighborhood.

I was a professional couch surfer for six months.

My mother wanted me to come to France with her and her new husband.

She was distraught that I ended up taking the fall for her gambling habit and that I’d admitted to purposely losing games, making me a national disgrace and persona non grata in the football world.

I had to decline her offer because I was honestly still pretty disappointed in her, but mostly because I didn’t want to rock the boat.

Her new family had zero ties to anything illegal or nefarious.

I believed it was best to keep my distance so all the ugly things I covered up for her didn’t come to light.

I never asked if she explained to her new husband how things had gone so wrong for me.

I figured that was between the two of them and had no effect on me.

It didn’t take long before Lev heard I was homeless and came calling.

He offered me a chance to make money training his fighters.

It took him even less time to convince me to fight for him off the books.

Once I had some money in the bank, I found a tiny apartment near the gym, since that’s where I spent most of my time.

Even though it was in a different part of the city than where I grew up, the neighborhood made me feel like I was back to square one and starting my life over.

It took over twenty minutes to reach my destination.

By the time the gym was in sight, I had sweated through my clean shirt and had perspiration running down my face.

I paused outside the building and took a minute to catch my breath.

Before going inside, I took my phone out of my gym bag and flipped it around in my hand.

I’d started and erased no less than a hundred different messages to send to Winnie.

Half of them ranted about her keeping our child a secret from me.

Some accused her of trying to trap me into some sort of twisted relationship with her.

A handful of them begged her to tell me every single thing about my son that I missed while he was growing up.

All of them asked her what exactly she wanted from me.

After all this time, how was it possible for the two of us to still be orbiting around each other? She was the sun, and I was a black hole.

The only message I hit send on was the one telling her I wanted to meet Lowe.

It wasn’t an agreement or acquiescence. It was a plea from the bottom of my heart.