She led me into my father’s study.
My father’s leather chair. My father’s mahogany desk. My father’s books on the shelves.
She’d hung a huge oil portrait of herself over the fireplace. Where my mother’s picture used to be.
Vanessa poured herself more champagne from a bottle in a silver ice bucket. She didn’t offer me any.
She sat down in my father’s chair.
Damien paced slowly around me. Like a cat.
“You know,” Damien said, “you really should be grateful, Danny. We could’ve gotten you twenty years. Not three.”
I looked up at him. Slowly.
“You arranged my sentence?”
Vanessa shot her son a warning look over her glass.
Damien didn’t see it. Or didn’t care. He was having too much fun.
“I arranged everything,” he said. He grinned. “The invoices on your computer. I made those myself. Took me a weekend. And Leonard? Leonard was easy. He had a gambling problem and two kids in college. Two hundred grand, and he’d have sworn you were Jack the Ripper.”
He laughed.
“You should’ve seen your face when the jury came back.”
My heart was pounding so hard I was afraid they’d hear the recorder.
“And Dad?” I said.
The room went silent.
The grandfather clock in the front hall ticked.
Vanessa took a slow sip of her champagne.
“Your father was sick, Daniel,” she said. “Very sick. His heart gave out. It happens.”
“That’s not what his cardiologist says.”
Her champagne glass stopped halfway to her mouth.
And for the very first time, I saw fear in her eyes.
Just for a second.
Then she smiled again. That cold, perfect smile.
“You have no proof of anything,” she said. “You’re a convicted felon. Nobody will ever believe you.”
I stood up.
“That’s the mistake you made three years ago, Vanessa.”
I touched the spot on my chest where the recorder was taped. Right over my heart.
“You thought prison made me powerless.”
Sophia Rivers is an experienced News Content Editor with a sharp eye for detail and a passion for delivering accurate and engaging news stories. At TheArchivists, she specializes in curating, editing, and presenting news content that informs and resonates with a global audience.
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