Levi
THREE MONTHS LATER
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
I don’t feel the need to reassure Taewon for the fiftieth time since I walked out. So I don’t respond.
Instead, I keep walking through the hall toward the exit. The officer who escorted me earlier is following us a few steps behind.
This was never something I thought I’d ever want to do. And I hadn’t driven an hour and half out of city limits just to back out.
After the arrests happened, I was told about every single time my mother requested to add me to her approved list for collect calls. But that stopped after a few weeks of me ignoring them. I don’t know ifshestopped, or my lawyers just gave up on getting a positive outcome. Cece suggested that I shouldperhaps confront my mother if she’s that desperate to connect. But not at the cost of my sanity. So I’d been mulling over that for the past few weeks.
Odette Astor, according to the initial investigation, was not coming out to be the mastermind in all this. She was simply another name to be used to distribute and diversify their failure points.
She was reduced to the ink of her signature on papers that were never meant to see the light of day. Now they were being blasted to the investigative panel.
The second the cold, brisk air hits my face, I relax. I couldn’t stand the smells beyond that outer foyer. It felt like a hospital had somehow collided with a slaughterhouse.
Well, my mother seemed to have adjusted poorly. Which I found equal parts hilarious and incredibly anticlimactic. Especially since she was still so much like the Odette Astor who was slapped with the cuffs on her wrists that day in the conference room.
I don’t even know how she had eye makeup on, but she did. Her eyelids darkened up, albeit haphazardly. But the wrinkles straining her face told a different story.
I had no idea how to start the conversation. So I decided to wait for her to do it.
But when I sat across from the thick pane of reinforced glass, I regretted ever walking into this federal prison.
Nothing—absolutely nothing—had changed.
Same calculated manipulation.
Same counterfeit concern.
Same woman who only ever knew how to love through control.
Her first words to me had been—
“I heard you got voted back in, son. I couldn’t believe it when they told me you resigned. But I knew you wouldn’t abandon the legacy we built for you.”
Of fucking course.
NotHow are you?
Not evenAre you happy?
Just the tainted mess they left for me to clean up.
The conversation only spiraled from there.
Every explanation she offered was another excuse.
Every excuse conveniently shifted the blame somewhere else.
She might’ve been a blind participant of my father’s embezzlement scheme, but she was still awillingone. She had still signed papers, approved transfers. Looked away whenever it benefited the Astor name.
But I wasn’t here to argue about her financial crimes. Hell, now that this train wreck of a conversation was over, I couldn’t even remember why I came.
Did I really think she’d apologize?
