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He took a seat at the bar, and it was like his entire body slumped in defeat.

I didn’t like the look on him.

It was disconcerting, because Black had always seemed larger than life to me.

“Because everyone else has families,” he replied simply.

He’d had a family once.

Then his ex-wife had disappeared with their daughter, never to be seen again.

It’d happened when I was a teenager, and it’d been the talk of the town.

Black had torn the whole county apart looking for them, but they’d been long gone.

I’d actually started my own search when I was fifteen or sixteen, convinced that my limited computer knowledge could help me find her.

But I’d been young and dumb.

I hadn’t stopped searching, though.

Every once in a while, I’d search all of social media for her name, or any variation of her name that I could think of.

But so far, I hadn’t found anyone even close to resembling his child.

She’d be eighteen right now.

Leo’s age.

“And to answer your earlier question, no, he didn’t talk with me about it…per se. He’d been drunkenly mumbling about getting back at you, throwing out scenarios that would hurt you the most. I truly didn’t think he’d remember them, with how drunk he was, or I’d have shared.”

“There isn’t much that I could’ve done with that information,” he admitted. “I could ask him questions, but mostly it’d have been hearsay.”

I went to the coffee pot and got started on brewing him a cup.

I did the same for myself, though I used hot chocolate instead of coffee due to the time.

If I had caffeine now, I’d never go to sleep.

“Thanks,” he grumbled.

I sat there watching him drink his coffee in silence for a couple of minutes before he said, “You don’t have to defend me. I know that I’ve done nothing for you but give you trouble. But I want you to know that I appreciate it all the same. That all came out of left field, and I wasn’t prepared for it. You defending me and saying what you did really stopped anything before it could get too out of hand.”

“If you’ll go back in your cameras, you’ll see him talking his nonsense,” I suggested. “I should’ve told you before now, though.”

“Thanks.” He took a healthy sip of his coffee, closing his eyes and rubbing that spot between his brows.

A scream came from the living room, and he was on his feet with his gun in his hand before I could blink.

He stared, gun aimed at the TV, as my player died a gruesome death.

“What the fuck?”

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m beta testing a new video game for Jeremiah Rains.”

“The computer tech guru?”

“One and the same.” I nodded.