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“You want a kiss and some orange juice, too?”
Jed glares at me. “Fuck off,” he mutters under his breath. “I come all the way out here to the middle of nowhere, just to give you good news, and you repay me with a fucking bang on my foot. Thanks for that.”
I snicker. “Next time I’ll make sure there’s a real candy striper here, okay?”
“Very funny,” Jed says drily. He sighs and leans back in the chair. He looks fatigued, like he’s been working long hours with little sleep. “Now about the case.”
My heart sinks in my chest like a lead balloon.
“If I’d known you were coming here to talk about that, I never would have let you inside,” I say gruffly. “That’s not fucking funny, Jed. That case is long over and it should stay buried, where it belongs.”
“That’s just it, though,” my lawyer says. He clears his throat and passes me a sheaf of paperwork printed with tiny letters. I frown as I hold the papers in front of me and squint. “It’s not over.”
“I’m a convicted felon,” I snort rudely. “Somehow, I don’t think anything is going to change that.”
“Will you listen to me for a fucking minute, Dane? I found something big and it’s going to help you.”
I stare at him, more in disgust than disbelief. A tidal wave of emotions crashes through my body but I do my best to ignore them as Jed rambles on.
“I don’t see how anything could possibly help me at this point,” I say in a low growl. “I spent years in prison, Jed. I did hard time. Nothing is going to erase that. Nothing can make those memories go away.”
Jed raises an eyebrow at me. “I get it. I get that you suffered in that hellhole called Rikers. But we’ve caught a break,” he says. “I finally found evidence that Jason Hadley was plotting against you from the beginning. Or do you not want to hear about it?”
I sigh. For a long time after I was convicted and sent to prison, I dreamed of hearing those exact words. I dreamed that Jed would come to visit me with hopeful papers tucked in a briefcase. I hoped that something would happen – anything! – to uncover the truth and I’d be able to walk out of prison the very next day, a free man.
But my hope began to dwindle after years of being locked up with no end in sight. I’d been sentenced to ten years and I’d served eight. Getting released early for good behavior wasn’t the same kind of thing as getting released on my own merit. Everyone in the world still thought I was a criminal, and at this point, I’m not sure anything’s going to change that.
I wasn’t even sure if Jed himself cares, to be honest. More like this is a way for him to rack up additional legal fees. Because whenever he looks at me, I’m sure all he sees is a money tree that sheds dollar bills. In fact, if it weren’t for my massive bank account, there’s no way he would have taken this case.
But maybe the years under lockdown have made me hard and cynical. Maybe my lawyer did believe in me and my case, and things just went awry. Can I afford to take that risk and trust another human? I take a deep breath, trying to assess the situation.
“What did you find?” I ask warily. “And why did it take so long?”
Jed clears his throat. “It’s all there,” he says. “It looks like Jason was planning ahead of time to trick you. If you look at the bank statements for his offshore accounts, he did a lot of transfers in the two months before he had you arrested and convicted for embezzlement. It looks like he was trying to make sure that his own part of the fortune was secured before turning on his partner.”
Jed’s words should bring me hope, but instead they make me sick. I get to my feet and rush to the bathroom, vomiting a gush of brown stew into the toilet. My head is throbbing by the time I stand up and wipe my mouth at the sink.
Betrayed by my own goddamn partner.
It’s like something out of a bad film noir, except it’s real life, and it happened to me.
“We can appeal your conviction,” Jed said. “Clear your record. It would be good for you, Dane. You could start to think about returning to the world, you know?”
I glare at him. “You think that I haven’t ever thought about that?”
Jed crosses his arms over his chest. “Dane, be reasonable. I know it’s been a long time, but you’re a good man. You didn’t do anything wrong. You can go out into the world and take your life back. Build a house, you know, get out of these woods and start living.”
