AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ayden
THREE DAYS AGO
“You ready to do this?” my lawyer, Shane Braun, asks as he seals the envelope with hopefully enough evidence to put my father away for two lifetimes. “No going back once it’s sent out.”
“Yeah, this is overdue,” I tell him, eager as hell to get these files to Judge Carmichael’s office.
Thumb drives with phone audio recordings, video footage, flight tickets, Gabby’s cell phone records, her medical records, and much more are being delivered by a courier.
“You know what this means when it comes out?”
It means my father’s going to finally pay for abusing and killing Gabby.
It’s payback for all the torment he caused me and for threatening Laney.
“Yes, sir.”
Judge Boyd Carmichael is the judge who helped my dad threaten Laney with custody papers ten years ago.
Now, he’ll be indebted to me.
Gabby—the seventeen-year-old girl my dad had an affair with—was Judge Carmichael’s daughter.
After all these years, he deserves to know the truth about what happened.
Gabby and I had been classmates since kindergarten and were friends. To say I was shocked she was having an affair with my dad was an understatement. Whether she did it to rebel against her father’s strict rules or because my piece of shit dad seduced her, I’m not sure. My gut feeling tells me it wasn’t consensual. My father’s a manipulator and could’ve easily blackmailed her about something or someone. Her dad being as powerful as he was could’ve been what my father used against her, but she never told me.
The first time I suspected something was when I saw my dad sitting in her car in the school parking lot. What the hell was a middle-aged man doing talking to a teenage girl? Not illegal but definitely inappropriate. I snapped a photo so I could ask Gabby about it later. I was worried he was doing something to her, but she’d reassured me it was for a school project. She was supposed to interview someone in a career she was interested in pursuing. She claimed she wanted to go into politics and even though I wanted to believe her, I worried something more was happening.
A week later, I saw her sneaking into my house late at night. When I checked the security footage, I noticed the camera in my dad’s office was conveniently turned off. There was no way she was interviewing him for a school paper, and that was confirmed when I peeked in and found her bent over his desk. Gabby looked terrified as his hand covered her mouth. Before I could barge in and put a stop to it, one of my dad’s guards grabbed my arm and yanked me away. He was twice my size, but even so, I tried to argue and fight out of his grip. He forced me back and then stood in front of my dad’s office door, restricting access.
The next day, when I asked Gabby about it and if he was abusing or forcing her, she promised it wasn’t like that. No matter what I said or how many times I offered to help, she claimed it was consensual.
As the weeks went on, she became more distant, quiet, and a shell of her previous self. I noticed multiple bruises on her arms. I continued to offer to go with her to the hospital or the police, but she’d get angry with me and tell me to mind my own business.
As someone who grew up being abused and manipulated by him, I recognized the signs.
She needed help, but she was ashamed and scared—just like I’d felt most of my life. The fear that no one will believe you and you’ll get ostracized.
Gabby didn’t deserve that.
I needed proof so that when she was ready to come forward, there was direct evidence.
The last thing I wanted to do was hurt Gabby or make things worse for her, but in order to prove statutory rape, I had to get them on film. The photos were suggestive, but they weren’t enough to imply they were having sex. If Gabby wasn’t comfortable coming forward herself, I had to make sure there was evidence of my father’s crimes.
The longer their affair went on, the more reckless my dad became about where he’d meet up with her. At his office with the curtains wide open, in his car in the middle of the day, and in his bedroom when my mom was gone.
It’s as if he wanted to get caught. Made my job easy in terms of getting what I needed.
As I captured videos and photos, I uploaded them to an online storage site and gave Howie access to it. I needed insurance that if something happened to me in the meantime, someone else could leak it, but I didn’t want them on my phone. I only uploaded what I knew would be enough and disposed of the rest.
Though I had my reasons for staying quiet at the time, I wish I’d said something back then. But between the risk of humiliating my friend and my father being the mayor, I was scared about the repercussions for Gabby and me. I also knew no one would’ve prosecuted him. He would’ve claimed she came onto him or it was consensual, and made a deal to cover his ass. Considering what he must have had on the judge in the first place, I wasn’t hopeful justice would be served. Worst-case scenario, he would’ve gotten a slap on the wrist, and my life would’ve been over for ratting him out.
It almost was when he randomly barged into my room one day and demanded I hand over my phone.
When I told him to fuck off, he pinned me to the wall and wrapped his fingers around my throat, demanding I give it to him. Something had set him off to believe I had something on him, but I wasn’t about to give in. I thrashed against his hand as I fought for my life. I’d never seen him in that kind of rage before. My legs kicked out, but it didn’t faze him. All it did was make his hold on me tighter. My vision blurred as he continued screaming. It wasn’t until my mother barged in and smashed a glass vase over his head that I could finally breathe again.
It was the first and only time she defended me.
