Sharks, Matt Rogers [shoe dog free ebook TXT] 📗

adopt your parents’ views, especially if you’re homeschooled like we were, but our parents were spineless cretins. Archie shaped us in his final years. You want to know what was coded into us? That other people are peasants, weaklings, not worth anything, so it doesn’t matter if you have to exploit your customer base or ruin their lives to get ahead in business, because it’s survival of the fittest and anyone who’s hapless enough to fall victim to predatory schemes deserves it. And we believed him. We thought we were enlightened. I’m sure you’ve seen how it rubbed off on Dylan.’

Slater nodded.

Teddy said, ‘I went the other way with it. Realised it was just one cynical old man’s perspective as soon as I left home, and then spent the rest of my life trying to break free from it. Which is harder than you’d think when it’s all you’ve ever known.’

‘So you hid it from Lyla?’ Slater said.

In a roundabout way, he understood.

‘She didn’t need my baggage,’ Teddy said. ‘I met her in America, soon after running from my family. I was in my thirties by then, and I didn’t know Archie was on death’s door anyway. I thought he’d live forever, haunt me forever. So I met Lyla, and I pretended to be a British vacationer for our first few dates — don’t ask me why. Maybe because I wanted to get as far away from my real upbringing as possible. Then I realised she was perfect, so I had to stick with it. Now it’s part of me. I wanted the world to be perfect for her. I didn’t know what I’d do if I ever lost her.’

‘Couples should—’ King started.

Teddy gave him a look that could wither anyone. ‘Couples should what? Communicate? Go through trials and tribulations together? Maybe. Sounds good in theory. In reality, you don’t want to jeopardise the best thing that ever happened to you by explaining you’re a paranoid wreck under the surface. Every day, I had to battle those voices. Telling me not to trust anyone, telling me to avoid and despise organisations and businesses, telling me that all people are two-faced monsters who’d stab me in the back the first chance they got. Lyla was the first person I ever met who I didn’t harbour suspicions about. Who I trusted completely. You know how rare that was for me? How rare it still is?’

‘You’re controlling because you don’t ever want to be controlled again,’ Slater said. ‘Like you were in childhood.’

Teddy shrugged. ‘Yeah, whatever. Thank you, armchair psychologist.’

‘So if you had such a good thing,’ King said, ‘why did you ruin it?’

Teddy looked at him. ‘It’s not ruined yet.’

Slater said, ‘And why did you ever come here?’

‘What?’

‘You met Lyla in America. Dylan would have already been out here, taking over from Archie. I thought you wanted to escape the Walcotts…’

Teddy shrugged, forlorn. ‘Guess it’s called conditioning for a reason. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I came here so I could be near my brother, keep an eye on him. Lyla never knew. I suggested the Bahamas one day…’

And the rest is history.

Slater said, ‘So you did nothing for decades, and then you borrowed eighty thousand dollars from Dylan. But he cut you off because he didn’t want to see his own brother hit rock bottom through gambling addiction. But you never gambled it, did you? You were always going to put that money to use, and you needed more of it to carry out your plan.’

King soaked in the words.

They hit him hard.

He looked over. ‘Oh…’

Slater said, ‘Yeah.’

Teddy bowed his head.

King picked up the baton and ran with it. ‘Dylan felt sorry for you, thought you were a degenerate, wasting it away at the casinos. That’s why he cut you off. He actually had good intentions for once in his life. He didn’t know you needed it to destroy him.’

Teddy didn’t answer.

Just stared at his feet, as if he could pretend he was somewhere else.

Slater saw from the look on the old man’s face it wasn’t working.

Slater said, ‘You used false names to borrow more money from Vince’s coworkers who didn’t know you. I’m sure your brother wasn’t revealing your existence to everyone in his organisation. Just a handful of people he trusted, like Eric. And by now it’s clear you’re very good at masking emotions. You could play the cocky gambler one day, and the sorrowful old man with debt up to your eyeballs the next. You switched it up, right?’

There was something there, awfully close to a nod of confirmation.

Slater said, ‘So you got enough. And when you had it, you gave Vince an eighty k starter fee via an anonymous dead drop. To gain his trust. Then you told him to kill one of his colleagues.’

Like stepping onto a conveyor belt.

Once you’re on, you can’t get off.

You’ve got to ride it until the bitter end.

68

‘I put out hits on any loan shark of Dylan’s that exploited hurricane victims,’ Teddy said. ‘And good riddance.’

But he didn’t sound so sure.

Slater knew better than anyone, except maybe King. They’d seen countless people fall victim to it. Getting caught up in the rush, the disbelief that you’re actually pulling it off. The consequences don’t feel real until you get exposed. Now Teddy was exposed, and Slater could see how perplexed he was at what he’d become, what he’d done.

King said, ‘You realised they weren’t onto you, so you kept borrowing.’

‘And spending,’ Slater said. ‘On Vince, and others. You couldn’t believe how effortlessly you can convince mobsters to whack each other. All it took was the money you’d borrowed off them in the first place.’

‘And when Vince started chasing up the names in his logbook, he hit dead ends. Over and over again.’

‘Until this,’ Slater said. ‘Until it all got torn apart.’

‘You weren’t banking on us showing up,’ King said. ‘But you were in too deep. You saw a way for us to expedite the whole thing. Vigilante operators,