Page 49 of Due Process
FELIX
“My recommendation… Take the plea deal, Felix.”
“But I’m not fucking guilty!”
“All evidence to the contrary. This isn’t looking good for you.”
I was sitting at the kitchen table across from my father’s bulldog lawyer, Michael, truly flabbergasted at the evidence splayed out before me.
It had been a month since my arrest, and things kept going from bad to worse. I had tried to find out as much information as I could on my own, but I kept on running into dead ends and convoluted loopholes. My backup team and support system had all but disappeared overnight. I was left with only one option.
Cue stupid move number one million and one: Enlisting Edgar Johnson, my father… And I was soon reminded of why I’d cut him off nearly ten years before.
He slammed my front door open and swaggered into my house, sporting a perfectly tailored suit and the grimace to match.
“What’s the damage, Michael?” he asked, dumping his briefcase on the empty chair between us before those beady black eyes swung to me.
I didn’t have the energy to react to his aggression, or I just didn’t give a fuck. There were only three people I truly cared for, and I had irrevocably destroyed their faith in me.
Michael ignored the hostility and flipped through the papers, following the command of the manactuallypaying his bills.
He then rattled off the potential implications of my future as if he wasn’t burning my world to ash. “…conspiracy to commit wire fraud, aiding and abetting wire fraud, wire fraud in general. But I’ve managed to negotiate a plea deal to reduce his sentenceifhe agrees to cooperate—”
“I told you.I’m not guilty,” I saidagain.
My tongue was heavy from the overuse of those words. It was never-ending. But no matter how many times I said them, Michael always gave me a droll expression that I wanted to fucking carve off his face.
“Well, the evidence deems you an accomplice. There’s six months of transactions here. There is no denying the affair.”
I huffed, the usual frustration making my fingers twitch. “Look, I admit that I wired her money a couple of times in that last month, but she was blackmailing me! Surely you can use that?”
“That’s not what the records show, Felix,” Michael said with an exasperated sigh. “You have failed in your duties as a CEO. And now, Miss Hilary Copeland states you were planning to run away together, with the money that youbothembezzled.”
That dumb fucking bitch. Is it not enough that she gave me an STD?Sure, with some antibiotics I was cleared, but the trauma remained.
“FOR FUCK’S SAKE!” Dad roared. I had almost forgotten he was there,almost.“Didn’t I teach you a fucking thing, Felix?! You’d think you’d learn to keep your mistress hidden, or at the very least, keep that bitch on a tight leash!”
“Like father, like son, I guess… Is anyone else getting déjà vu?” I snarked.
“Don’t get smart with me, boy. The only reason you’re not rotting in a jail cell like your precious side piece is because ofmymoney…”
He then went on a predictable rant about spoilt children and ungrateful spouses. My mother had divorced him four years before, finally brave enough to leave his serial cheating ass. And how was my father coping? Well, let’s just say he still hadn’t come to terms with her absence. What a cliché that I had fallen into the same trap as dear old Papa. Fuck, he was a miserable bastard… Then why’d you invite him back in?
Because I had no one else.
It was a miserable joke of cosmic proportions. And it just so happened to be my life.
And Heather, Hilary or whatever the fuck her name was hadn’t quite finished ruining me. Straight after the confrontation in the boarding room, she was arrested just outside the office building and had been remanded in federal custody ever since. As per Michael, Hilary held no remorse, had prior convictions, was a high flight risk and was being obstructive and uncooperative with authorities—except for implicating me, of course.
It wasn’t enough that she had fucked herself over with her frivolous schemes. The thief also had to drag me down into hell with her. God, I truly hated her… but I hated myself more.
Despite the stress of the past four weeks, my energy was finally focused on where it should have been all along—my boys.
After that drunken night outside the Fosters’ and seeing the aftermath of my sins play out before me, I knew drastic measures had to be made.
Reality had never been so cold and vicious, but I could not forget my son’s distraught face as he screamed at me to leave, or his shaking fists as he stepped in front of his grandpa to protect him. That shit was seared into my brain chemistry.
I had never felt so low and despicable. Yet, it was the wake-up call I had needed, subsequently vowing that I would in no waymake him feel like that again. I refused to be my father.
