“Okay, okay,” he said nervously, holding his hands up. His bravado had dissolved once again. “At ease, boys.”
Neither Lucien nor Dylan moved a muscle.
“For mom’s sake, I’m going to let you walk out of this place alive,” Dylan said, his voice low and steady.
“And for Matthew’s sake, I’m going to give you until night fall to leave the island before I send out for those envelopes,” Lucien said in his ear, his fist itching to smack into their intruder’s jaw. Hearing his emphasis on the name, Dylan couldn’t meet Lucien’s eye.
“And I came all this way just to deliver your mail,” Justin said, rallying slightly, drawing a beige, official-looking envelope out of his back pocket. Dylan took it from him, not even glancing at it.
“Get out,” he said heavily, feeling the fragile new life he'd built for himself unravelling thread by slow thread.
He watched his brother leave with Lucien close on his heels. He sank down onto the nearest chair, shoving the envelope addressed to Matthew McKenzie into his back pocket and dropping his head into his hands.
Outside, Lucien pinned Justin up against the wall with a hard shove. Edgy and rigid with fury, he towered over the other man in both stature and power. In that moment, he wasn't Lucien Knight, lover and father. He was Lucien Knight, loyal friend, the man you'd want in your corner when the chips were down. The man you really didn't want to be on the wrong side of.
“You speak to no one, or I will know. You go straight to the airport, or I will know. You board a plane, or I will know. Set foot on Ibiza again, and I will know.” He leaned his arm against Justin’s wind pipe, his face inches from the other man’s. “Have I made myself clear, or do you need me to fucking spell it out?”
The shifty fear in Justin’s eyes answered for him. He was on his way. He was a low life of no substance or worth, and he thought too much of his charmless face to risk its rearrangement by such a formidable foe.
Lucien watched the younger man walk away, certain that he would never lay eyes on him again.
Justin made his way back to the airport, his pride stinging and his throat sore, but satisfied that he’d thrown a grenade into his brother’s life in the form of a screwed up, beige envelope.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lucien walked back into the club, passed by Dylan’s table, and strode straight to the bar. Two glasses and a bottle of vodka in his hands, he returned and pulled up a chair at the table.
“Do you mind if I stick to Dylan?” His tone was neutral. “I’m kind of used to it.” He poured two good measures and pushed one across the table.
Dylan scrubbed his palms into his eye sockets. “I’m sorry, man.” He didn’t have any words to explain the weight his brother’s unexpected appearance had dropped back onto his shoulders. His hard won peace had dissolved around him like ice on a hot day, showing up his life on Ibiza for the cheap illusion of smoke and mirrors it was.
There was a long silence. They both drank a measure, not meeting eyes.
“So. You’re nothing like your brother,” Lucien said, eventually.
Dylan swallowed the remaining contents of his glass in one mouthful.
“That’s just about the best thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
Lucien refilled Dylan’s glass.
“There were three of us. Billy. Me. Justin.” Dylan didn’t raise his eyes from the bottom of his glass. “Billy was the best of all of us. Now there’s just me. And him.”
“What happened?” Lucien watched Dylan’s face as he searched for the right words, and he recognised the expressions that twisted his features. Grief, and guilt. He recognised them because he’d shouldered the same emotions for too many years himself over someone he’d loved too.
“Billy… he was my big brother, and… my best friend. Sunshine followed him into every room, you know?”
Lucien didn’t know. Not when it came to family, anyhow, but for the first time he was learning it now about a friend. Dylan had brought a new aspect to his life that he hadn’t even known had been missing. Brotherhood.
“He got himself into trouble… gambling… debts he couldn’t make… I missed the signs. Too busy on my way up to notice, and he was too proud to come to me.” Dylan swirled the vodka in his glass, and Lucien sat still, in silent solidarity opposite him.
“They found him hung by his own belt out in the woods behind his house. Open and closed case.” Dylan shrugged, his face etched with disgust.
“Was it?”
“Hell, no. Billy was no coward, and no matter how much shit he was in he’d never have broken our mother’s heart that way, on purpose.”
Lucien’s affinity with the man opposite increased with his every word. Both of their lives had been overshadowed by loss and consumed by guilt. The difference between them was that Lucien had worked his way out the other side, thanks to Sophie. Dylan was still living in his own version of hell, and his brother’s appearance had just turned up the heat to unbearable levels. To Lucien’s eyes, he looked very much as he had the first time they’d met. Beat.
“Justin has been spoiled his whole life. He grew up with a sense of entitlement, for no good reason. He was always going to get himself in trouble, and I was always going to be the one who had to bail him out. I think he gambled too just to prove he could succeed where Billy failed, to be the big man. Except he wasn’t. He got in way over his head, debt on debt, and then he came to me with his hands out. ‘They’re going to kill me, they’re going to take mom’s house.’” Unconsciously, Dylan adopted his brother’s drawling tone, his expression miserably disgusted. He shook his head, his eyes still downcast. “So I bailed him.” He shrugged. “It took my club and my home, but I did it, because I couldn’t fail a brother again.”
“And then you came here?”
Dylan nodded. “I didn’t plan on lying.” He knocked back the vodka. “I just wanted to be someone else for a while. To get away. Just…” He tailed off.
Lucien sighed heavily. He could understand that.
“Seems to me that you’ve pulled it off pretty well up to now,” he observed.
“I was a fool to think I could make it work.” Dylan’s tone was savage, castigating himself.
“Way I see it, nothing has changed.”
Dylan’s laugh held no trace of humour. “I don’t think Kara is going to see it that way. She deserves so much better than another liar in her life.”