Page 49 of The Tempo of Truth (The Monsters Duet #3)

Ky

I found myself back at the police station.

This time, I was in the morgue to identify the body of one of the few people who had never turned their back on me.

It was a surreal experience, seeing someone who was so much larger than life, like Lev, suddenly so still and silent.

It was also eye-opening that I was his closest family tie in the States.

The detective handling Lev’s case asked if I had any contact information for his family back in Russia, and all I could do was shake my head.

Lev never talked about his life before he immigrated.

He had fond memories from his time living in Europe, but he had long considered the city his home, and here I was, like the rebellious son he never asked for but loved anyway.

All my instincts were screaming at me to retaliate. No amount of payback would be enough to appease the part of me that was grieving.

I wanted to fight back.

I wanted to make whoever hurt Lev and burned down the gym suffer.

I had no qualms about making a bloody mess of things while I fought my way through the upper echelon.

I quickly realized it was impossible for someone as insignificant as me to step into a battle that was meant to be fought between the gods.

The people who hurt Lev lived the same type of lifestyle Winnie and Lowe did.

They had security upon security and the means to make any move I made blow up in my face.

So far, I’d been fortunate to stay out of prison, but I was walking a fine line.

Clearly, Winnie knew I was struggling to keep myself together and fighting the urge to spiral into a pit of self-destruction.

I found myself assigned a five-year-old bodyguard who refused to let go of my hand or be more than a few feet away from me during the days leading up to Lev’s funeral.

It was a strange feeling to have such a tiny body doing its best to shield me from the world and the barely leashed torment that was clawing at me.

When I started to think more logically, I saw how sneaky Winnie was, because she’d put the only barrier I couldn’t ignore or destroy directly in my path.

I had to keep my shit together because my son was watching my every move, and I didn’t want him to watch me become a man he would never want to emulate.

Since the police were treating Lev’s case as an intentional homicide, there was ample time to plan a funeral for him.

Once again, I was at a loss. I’d never had to say goodbye permanently to someone I cared about before.

I thought I had lost everything that mattered to me the most when I was banished from football.

That pain had nothing on the knowledge that the gym was gone and so was Lev’s annoying scheming and meddling.

It felt like I was grieving the death of a parent, even though all of mine were alive and well.

My mother even offered to fly over from France to help make the arrangements once I got the all clear from the detectives working on Lev’s case.

It was a gracious gesture; one she didn’t have to make for an old lover.

There was no need for an extra pair of hands.

Winnie gave me her assistant and carte blanche to do whatever I thought would be the best send-off for the tricky old man who’d kept me sane in my worst moments.

Despite my refusal of help, my mother and her husband planned to show up for the funeral service.

Which meant I needed to pretend like everything was under control and that I wasn’t unraveling at the seams when I thought about how helpless and useless I was in the situation.

It felt terrible to sit on my hands and watch from the sidelines as Winnie went to war for me.

I didn’t understand how to conduct a battle in the boardroom. From the sidelines, it seemed like she was doing a bang-up job of making the Byrd family pay whatever she’d decided was the proper price for harming someone I cherished.

While I spent the days spinning my wheels and wondering what in the hell I was supposed to do next, Winnie was a whirlwind of action and reaction.

It was a good thing she’d started to trust me with Lowe because she was hardly home during those dark days.

It was just me and the little boy, doing the best that we could while slowly building an unbreakable bond.

I learned so much about my son in a short period of time.

If those hours weren’t tinged with loss and despair, they would have been some of the best moments of my life.

I figured out Lowe’s likes and dislikes and found out he wasn’t nearly as easygoing as he appeared to be.

The little boy was fiercely loyal and staunchly protective.

He didn’t like strangers coming and going from the brownstone, and he was shockingly fussy every time law enforcement showed up to probe at my open wounds.

It was obvious the concepts of death and murder were too large and too complex to break down into digestible parts for someone so young.

All Lowe understood was that I was sad because my friend was gone, and his mother was very angry that someone had caused me so much pain.

The poor kid was walking a tightrope strung between two tense emotions and just trying to keep his balance.

While I fought the urge to storm into the Byrd Enterprises headquarters with a gas can and a lighter, Winnie’s revenge tactics were slower but far more effective.

Step by step, she dragged the stock price into the gutter.

The headlines shifted from speculation about our private lives to her business acumen, or lack thereof.

For the first time in ages, Halliday Inc.

was in the press for losing money and getting involved in a multimillion-dollar merger that was bound to fail.

Financial publications called Winnie a hack and questioned what the future of the company would look like with her at the helm.

It wasn’t until the other side of the merger started to crumble that Winnie’s ruthlessness and recklessness became apparent.

First, she got the entire company audited and sent several of the top shareholders on their way to federal prison for tax fraud and evasion.

White-collar crime was easy to ignore, but not once it started to affect the working class.

The hospitality unions in the city banded together.

They went on strike when the shady money handling and backroom deals involving inferior products were brought to light, leaving all of the Byrd properties understaffed and underutilized.

The hotels that weren’t shut down from the safety inspections she had previously instigated were now just as much of a ghost town as the others.

The company was hemorrhaging money at a pace that was too rapid to stop it from eventually bleeding out.

While the company was struggling to stay afloat, Winnie sent Oliver Byrd’s father and grandfather to prison.

The top brass of the company may have skated on the federal charges, but the criminal ones weren’t as easy to distance themselves from.

Oliver apparently inherited his high-handed way of dealing with women directly from his dad.

It didn’t take Winnie too long to find a history of women from their company who were silenced with NDAs a mile long, covering up inappropriate office behavior.

The senior Byrd was caught up in a #MeToo moment that rivaled those in Hollywood, and there was little that could be done to regain his public image.

The stock price dropped even further when security footage from one of the top properties in the Byrds’ portfolio revealed the oldest member of the family going on a racist tirade against several members of the staff in their top-rated hotel.

It was an ugly, demoralizing look at how their company treated its hourly employees.

The video pulled back the curtain and showed how much ugliness happened when people still operated along the lines of a class divide.

No one wanted to be associated with the Byrd name after that.

It wasn’t only the opposing company that faced major disruption.

As soon as any members of the board of Halliday Inc.

started scrambling to dump any stock they bought in Byrd Enterprises before the hostile takeover, they were immediately ferreted out and sent to prosecution for insider trading.

Ultimately, they would only end up with a slap on the wrist, but Winnie’s point was clear.

You either stood with her or against her.

If anyone decided they wanted to be Winnie’s enemy, she brought the full strength of the Halliday name down on their heads.

Several investors had to dump their Halliday stocks when things were really in the thick of it, which meant Win, Alistair, and Winnie had the chance to snap up an even bigger piece of the Halliday pie and further solidify her power at the top.

So, while it seemed like she failed by tanking the Byrd merger, she simply took a couple of steps backward, giving her a running start to trample on those who thought she was going to be weaker than any Halliday who came before her.

It wasn’t long until people started comparing her to her grandmother in less-than-flattering ways.

While vengeance wasn’t exactly mine, it was satisfying to watch an entire empire fall because they dared to walk all over us mere mortals. As if we weren’t the ones holding them aloft in the first place.

I thought Winnie would be the cruelest to Oliver Byrd.