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Didn’t have to take care of his wife or his daughter. Didn’t have to make sure that he was financially stable anymore.
Which also meant the four thousand dollars I sent over to him once a month would dry up.
I could’ve made those payments automatic, so when I was in prison, they’d still come to him. Yet, now that I’d gotten the sentence, and he’d informed me that my sonly duties weren’t something he expected anymore, that absolved me from doing anything that I was going to do to prepare for the future.
My future of spending the next how many ever years—because let’s fuckin’ hope that I got parole—in prison was absolute.
Holy fuck, I was going to prison.
As a dual citizen and decorated military man from the United States of America, I’d always been a rule follower. I’d done my best to always make sure that I did everything that I could to color between the lines.
When I opened my own business, every single aspect of my work was done in the most legal way possible. If I couldn’t do it legally, then it wasn’t going to get done. Because I was that much of a rule follower.
And look where the fuck that got me.
A whole bunch of no-fucking-where.
“Did you hear me?” my father asked, annoyed that he thought I wasn’t listening to his important declaration.
“I heard you,” I confirmed. “I just don’t know what you want me to say. Thank you?”
My father’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not taking this seriously.”
Then, suddenly, the dam burst.
“No,” I said, silently seething. “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously. Your daughter used my fucking apartment to play sex games. A sex game that had her getting raped, beaten, tied down and practically killed. He had a freakin’ knife and he was cutting her. What, exactly, would you have done had you seen that?”
That night was like a crystal-clear memory in my mind.
Walking in, seeing her blood staining my white sheets underneath her body. Seeing that man on top of her…
I’d never forget it. Not for as long as I lived.
My dad didn’t say anything, so I continued.
“And she had to have it at my house because she met this man on the freakin’ internet. Craigslist, for holy sake. She was so nervous about meeting him, and doing this, that she chose my house because she didn’t want that man to know where she lived. She didn’t want that man breaking her things, so she used mine. Broke mine. My loft will forever be tainted with the memories of walking in and seeing that. My heart felt like it leapt out of my throat at the sight of her like that. So no, I don’t really give a single crap whether or not you feel the need to ‘drop’ me as a son. As far as I’m concerned, if you choose her side over mine in this, then you aren’t the man I thought you were. You aren’t anything to me, and I don’t want anything to do with you. Being your son means bad things for me mentally, so you saying ‘you are no longer my son’ is actually a really big favor to me. I’ll save a whack in both mental health and monetary wealth. So as far as I’m concerned…win-win.”
My father’s mouth opened as if he’d just now thought about the consequences of his words.
But I was done.
There would be no more going back.
Heading out of the courthouse—thank God I’d been given a few days to wrap up a few cases—I went straight to work.
The judge was actually a really good friend of mine.
I’d worked with him for several cases lately and had also testified at my fair share of them as well.
I found people for a living.
One of those people I’d found was the judge’s grandson.
He’d been missing for three weeks from a playground in town. I’d been the last resort—I usually took anything locally that I needed to, but I’d been gone out of town for a month working an abduction case of a senator’s daughter.
I’d received a call two weeks into that case explaining about the judge’s grandson, and between working on my current case, I’d worked on that one, too.
I’d found him, locating him two states away at his mother’s best friend’s cousin’s place, and had brought him back home using a buddy, all without leaving my temporary office space.
