AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“It’s lies.” Dad mumbles.
“Jesus, I would have had more respect for you if you spat in my face.” Jericho sneers and pulls out a series of email print outs from his envelope. He gets up and hands them to me.
I look over the first few and see for myself that everything Jericho s saying is true. Dad has been in touch with Sasha this whole time.
In touch and bargaining my life as if I’m a piece of meat.
“How could you?” I stare at my father, shock consuming me whole. “After what he put me through you did this?”
“He loved you,” Dad maintains. “He told me he didn’t mean to hurt you. He said he was sorry and he’d changed. You never gave him a chance. Instead you put him behind bars.”
My legs wobble. “Does he know that?”
Dad doesn’t answer which tells me everything.
“You told him.”
“He’ll forgive you, River.”
“I can’t believe you did this. I didn’t do anything wrong. I just wanted my life back.”
“It’s you who needs forgiveness,” Jericho says to Dad, turning his attention back to him.
“I don’t need forgiveness for anything. Get out of my house.” The rage on Dad’s face is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
“I have one more thing to show you and you can decide why you mightneedforgiveness.” Jericho looks away from Dad and turns back to me. “Your father was in contact with the hackers before they approached me.”
At first I have to think hard to work out what he’s talking about, then I realize what he means.
“Stop it,” Dad yells. “Stop it now.”
“Your father was trying to sell his designs to them but he wanted more money than what they were offering.”
I switch my gaze from Jericho to Dad who looks like he might implode.
“Stop it now,” Dad continues.
“That’s when they came to me, a kid who would accept ten grand. What a bargain they must have thought I was. “ Jericho ignores Dad and continues unearthing his dark secrets. “Your father got fired because his company suspected he was trying to sell the designs. Not because they were stolen, but the worse thing he did was this.”
Jericho takes out his phone, taps a few buttons and holds it up for us to see the screen.
I watch a recording of Dad walking into his office at the company. Rory is sitting at the desk. They start arguing and the truth is revealed seconds later when I see Dad pull out a gun. My legs give and I collapse back in the chair.
Dad shoots Rory, then they fight and I hear another gun shot.
Dad gets up and the clip cuts when he shouts to Rory to put the gun down.
Slowly and carefully I look at Dad and notice he’s gone deadly quiet and ghost pale.
The same deadly silence that shut him down fills the room. It’s not the kind of silence that comes when you’re reflecting on your actions, but more the sort that awakens when you know everything is about to change in ways you never wanted.
Dad lied. He lied about everything, killed his friend and made himself to be the victim.
Dad killed a man and lied to everyone abouteverything. Even the whole situation with Jericho and the hackers was a set up to undercut Dad because of his greed.
Jesus, Dad set things up to make Rory look like a psycho and every time he opened his mouth to talk about what happened he lied.
I can’t help but think what Mom would think of this.Of him.
