TWO YEARS AGO, Michael “Flex” Gibbon had run his security enterprise from atop a beautiful glass building that sat alongside the Thames. So great were the views, and so heavy his workload, that he had lived in the same building.
A lot had changed since Jack Morgan had beaten the SAS soldier down, blowing out the man’s knee and sending the rumor mill wild. Flex was a soft-arse. Flex couldn’t cut it anymore. Why were the heads of two security firms fighting in the first place? I’ll take my business elsewhere. Now Flex’s operation was run out of a town-center office in Tottenham, sandwiched between a chartered accountants and a failed business whose windows were covered with wood panels and graffiti. It was a big fall for a big ego.
Peter Knight sat lonely in his car, looking at the bricks-and-mortar reasoning that had driven Flex to seek out Morgan and cause him pain.
“All because of his bloody pride,” Knight said sadly, shaking his head.
He was in a small car park a hundred yards from the buildings that showed no signs of life. Even if Flex still ran operations around the globe, Knight guessed that the smaller-scale business would now employ a duty manager that worked from home, or wherever his laptop and phone happened to be. It was that way for many of the smaller security companies, of which Flex’s business had undoubtedly become one.
Knight looked down to his lap, where he held a dossier on Flex Gibbon. It was possible to read it by the street lights, and he thumbed through its pages, marveling at how a solid SAS trooper could go from national hero to murdering monster.
It was ego, Knight decided. All ego.
That and pride had pushed Flex to join the army as a young man, after being beaten his whole childhood by his father. Ego had pushed him further, to volunteer for selection for the SAS. Ego had kept him going over the arduous hills phase of training in the Brecon Beacons. Ego had kept him going in the jungle. Ego had kept him going during escape and evasion, where he had been beaten and waterboarded. Ego had allowed Flex to endure so much. It had allowed him to build a thriving business. But then, when that ego had been damaged, it had exploded.
Knight turned the next page.
It was a picture of Flex’s children, now young adults, one studying at Liverpool University and the other in Manchester. The kids looked bright and athletic. A note in the dossier said that custody of the children had gone to their mother. The grounds of divorce had been that Flex was forever away on service for his country, and that when he’d returned he’d be angry and violent. On one occasion he had locked his wife in the bathroom for a day to “teach her some respect”—the police in Herefordshire had dropped the case in deference to Flex’s meritorious service. In what then looked like a trade with his wife, Flex had not fought the divorce.
Knight looked again at the picture of the man’s children. What effect had their father’s choice of career had on their lives? Were they able to live like their other classmates at university? Were they able to settle disputes with calm words, or did they fly to anger and violence? Did they feel abandoned, or resentful? Were they ambivalent toward their father, or did they hate him? Was he a part of their lives, or was he forever estranged? Forgotten.
Knight rubbed at his eyes as he realized he was asking these questions as much about himself as about Flex. Though Peter Knight could say honestly that he had never intentionally caused his children any harm, they had been harmed because of him. The death of their mother had been traumatic enough, but Knight’s role as head of Private London brought with it a constant threat of danger. He thought of how he’d almost lost them six years ago when they were kidnapped as part of Cronus’s vicious attack on the London Olympic Games. How could Knight live with himself if his children were brought into this? He couldn’t, he knew.
And the children were growing older. They were understanding more and more each day. They were reading moods, and reacting to them. Danger aside, Knight’s workload at Private was enormous. He could not have it any other way, as he was responsible for the lives of other people, but did he want to be just another absent father who put his business life before his children? With his beloved wife gone, did Knight really want to continue risking his own life, and potentially orphan Luke and Isabel?
He didn’t know the answer.
But one thing was clear: once this mission was done, Knight would have to seriously evaluate his life. He would have to choose between being the father he wanted to be, or Private.