Page 16 of Daniel's King

I would make them all pay for what they had put me through for the past four and half years. I knew that Katherine’s parents hated me. Her father had made that clear when he’d first fired me and told me that he would never let me marry his daughter. The fact that we were already engaged and had planned the wedding didn’t matter to him. So, he had fabricated this story and spun it for Daniel’s parents. They were gullible enough to believe it and made them get married. I was surprised that Daniel had agreed to it, if I was honest. His father must have come up with an extremely good excuse for him to do it or paid him a lot of money. Either way, things weren’t going to have a happy ending for anyone except me when I was finished.

Their argument was just the ammunition I needed to make my plan work. Whilst I had been sitting here, listening to how my faithful fiancée/girlfriend was trying to bed her gay husband after saying she would never sleep with him, I decided exactly what I was going to do.

I needed to gain control of at least Katherine’s part of the business, and to do that, there was only one way. It wasn’t something that I wanted to do, killing two lives was never on my plan. But it was what I needed to do. I needed to make sure that it wouldn’t come back to me, needed a scapegoat, and this argument had just landed the perfect person right on my lap: Daniel. I knew he wasn’t actually capable of murder, especially an innocent unborn child, but I needed to make sure that the police had enough evidence to make it stick.

Hearing Daniel leave, I waited another ten minutes and then slid away from my hiding place, out of the house, and walked towards my car, which I always parked down the road. I got into the driver's seat and pulled out my phone. He answered almost immediately with his trademark sarcasm.

“What the fuck do you want now, Kevin? I was on a promise with this woman and now, thanks to you, she pissed off.”

Ryan was a liability, but he was good at what he did. That was the only reason I kept in contact with him after leaving University. He was good at forgery and hacking into systems, both of which I would need to pull my plan off.

“Ryan, by the time we are finished, you could have any woman you wanted. I just hope your wife is cool with it. Now, I need your help with a couple of things.”

I sat there and went through my plan with him. To say he was worried about it was an understatement. I told him not to worry about Katherine and the baby; that would be down to me. All he had to do was switch off all the cameras in the house, and I needed him to come up with a will for Katherine leaving everything to me. The only other thing I wanted him to do was to contact the police anonymously, tipping them off about the argument this evening and even perhaps letting slip about the pregnancy.

After a long discussion and countless disagreements about how much this was going to cost me, he agreed to do it. All I had to do now was arrange to meet Katherine and put the main part of the plan into action.

Chapter Eleven

Richard

After a really good day yesterday, I only had to face my colleagues and then I would be out to the entire world. That was the most worrying part though. Deep down, I knew that my mum and Arthur—or, should I now say, Dad—would accept me, but I still wasn’t sure about all my colleagues at work. We were currently all in our morning conference call with the guys at Kings View, discussing the jobs we all had and who would be heading up the teams. Part of me wished I had asked Tyler to come up here today. At least then I would have two friendly people sitting with me. As it was, I only had Jayden.

Jayden was just starting to go through Daniel’s case, explaining the situation without mentioning anything about me, when I decided that if I was ever going to do this, it would be now. I took a deep breath and interrupted him as he went through the case.

“Jayden, sorry to interrupt, but I think now is the right time to tell the team.”

I looked at Nathan and Kye, who were sitting next to me with slightly perplexed looks on their faces. On the screen, I could see both Mason and Brandon with the same look. It was only when I looked at Tyler on the screen and Jayden sitting next to me, that they both gave me a nod to tell me the time was right.

“Go ahead, Richard. I’m telling you it won’t be as bad as you think.”

Jayden tried to give me some words of encouragement, but inside I could feel my stomach churning as though I was about to throw up. I was visibly shaking as I sat there. It was only when Jayden walked over to me, placed his hand on mine, and smiled that I started to feel myself relax. I looked around again and saw the concern on everyone’s faces. I needed to do this now before I completely backed out.

“From what I have been told, you probably already know some of this, but I guess I’ll start with the Cooper case. I met Daniel a couple of nights ago in a bar. I didn’t know anything about his situation then, except for one thing. Like me, he was gay.”

There, I’d said it. It might have been in a roundabout way, but I had finally come out to everyone that I cared about. I felt a relief wash over me when no one gasped or took a sharp intake of breath. I decided that, as no one was speaking, I would carry on.

“We decided that night that we would explore where our feelings for each other could go. Then he came here yesterday to employ our services to prove his wife was having an affair. Before you ask, yes, she does know he is gay, and like him was forced into the marriage. We have spoken about everything, and I really think he is the one.”

I sat there waiting for someone to say something, but I was met with complete silence.

Had Jayden and Tyler gotten it that wrong? Had I shocked everyone with my coming out? Could it be that they were now going to look and treat me differently because of it?

The next person to speak was the one that I had been dreading. The one person I thought would have a serious problem with it. I knew Abigail would be supportive, as would all the other women in the team’s lives, but Kye was still a mystery to me. We learned a lot from him when he admitted to us all about his struggles with mental health issues and his past as a mercenary. I guessed that was why he scared me so much.

“Well, thank fuck for that. Does that mean I don’t have to skirt around the fact that I thought you were homosexual from the first moment I met you? Be careful what I say in case I upset you or offended you in any way?”

I looked over at Kye who had a massive smile on his face. He looked more relieved than I did. Was that how everyone had felt? Worried about what they said to me in case they upset me?

“Do you really not mind? Any of you?”

“Richard, we’ve all known. We were just waiting for you to admit it to us. And knowing that, do you think we have treated you any differently? As Kye said, we may have watched what we said around you to make sure we didn’t upset you in any way, but I hope we haven’t treated you any differently.”

I looked at Mason as he spoke from the Kings View office. Everyone seemed happy that the truth was finally out.

“I don’t think you have. I was just worried how you would all feel about having a gay guy working with you.”

It was Kye that had to say something at this point. Try as he might, he just couldn’t keep his sarcasm to himself.

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