CHAPTER 11 — The Sins of the Father
I dialed the number carved into the wooden train. It rang exactly once before a smooth, gravelly voice answered.
"I wondered how long it would take you to call, son," Richard Bradley said.
Hearing his voice for the first time in twenty-six years made my stomach churn. "Stay away from my wife. Stay away from my boy," I snarled, my grip on the steering wheel tight enough to snap it.
Richard chuckled. It was a cold, dry sound. "A protective father. How noble. Much better than I ever was, I'll admit. But let’s skip the pleasantries, Connor. You owe my associates a great deal of money. Your mother was supposed to secure the Nashville property so we could launder half a million dollars through it. When you called the cops and sold the house, you took our capital."
"I took what was mine," I fired back. "You manipulated a greedy woman into forging documents. I don't owe you a dime, and I'm going to the FBI."
"Go ahead," Richard replied calmly. "But if you do, I’ll release a very interesting set of audio recordings to the authorities. Recordings of your lovely wife, Amy, talking to your mother about the forgery before the arrest."
"You're lying," I said, my heart pounding. "Amy had nothing to do with it. My mother treated her like a slave!"
"Ah, but audio can be so easily spliced and doctored these days," Richard mused. "With my resources, I can fabricate a narrative that Amy was a willing accomplice who turned on Teresa at the last minute to save herself. The stress of a federal indictment would tear your fragile little wife apart. She’d lose custody of Frederick. You’d lose everything."
He let the threat hang in the air, suffocating me.
"What do you want?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
"I want the $850,000," he stated. "But since I know you only cleared about $500,000 from the Nashville house sale, I’m willing to compromise. You will wire half a million dollars to an offshore account I provide. In exchange, I drop the lien, I destroy the doctored tapes, and I walk out of your life forever. You have one week to liquidize your assets, Connor. Don't make me visit my grandson again."
He hung up.
I sat in the car, the silence deafening. Half a million dollars. It was our entire life savings. The money we had set aside for Frederick's college, for our retirement, for the safety net we had fought so hard to build. If we paid it, we would be starting from absolute zero, crippled by a mortgage we could no longer afford.
I looked at Amy. She had heard everything through the Bluetooth speaker in the car.
"We're not paying him," Amy said, her voice steady.
"Amy, if he goes to the authorities with deepfake audio, it could ruin us. He’s connected to the mob."
"I don't care," she said, grabbing my hand. "We are not letting another member of your twisted family steal our lives. You said your mother was his pawn, right? That means she knows how his operation works. She knows his weak spots."
May you like
I stared at her, realizing what she was suggesting. "You want me to go see my mother?"
"I want you to go to that prison," Amy said fiercely. "And I want you to make a deal with the devil."
