Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 37885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 189(@200wpm)___ 152(@250wpm)___ 126(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 37885 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 189(@200wpm)___ 152(@250wpm)___ 126(@300wpm)
James stepped in front of his family. That’s what Drake and Abby were—his family.
“Let’s get a move on with this,” her father said.
It had been a long time since he had the pleasure of seeing them in person. There was nothing pleasurable about it. They were disgusting.
“Let’s deal with this,” James said.
He moved to his seat behind his desk. Drake stood on one side of him and Abby on the other.
They were a united three against these assholes. They had the evidence, from the moment his PI had found one tiny piece of evidence, a CCTV video that the doctor had kept of his conversation with Abby’s parents. They’d been talking about her sister, about what they allowed him to do, and of course the death of her sister. They had laughed. He wouldn’t allow Abby to see it. The footage he’d seen sickened him. They had the doctor, and now they were going to deal with her parents.
Abby held one of his hands, and Drake his other.
“You’re going to give James the tapes and everything you’ve been blackmailing him with,” Abby said, her voice firm.
Her mother glared at her. “No, we’re not doing that, and you better hold your tongue!”
“Or what?”
“You forget your place, girl,” her father said.
“And you forget yours. You think you have power here. You don’t. You will either give James his stuff or you’ll unleash them,” Abby said.
Their gazes landed on James.
“It doesn’t bother me,” James said.
“The world will know.”
“They will?” Abby asked. “Or will the entire world look at the people whose daughter tells the truth about what happened to her big sister? How the same people blackmailed an upstanding member of society and you forced another daughter to marry him. Either way, there will be a sticky problem for James with those tapes, but I promise you, Mom, Dad, that I will make sure the world turns its attention to you. To your years of emotional and mental abuse. Not just to me, but to Maggie too. They need to know who you are. What you did.”
“No one would believe you,” her mother said. “You don’t have any evidence.”
“What makes you think they’ll believe you?” Abby asked. She held up the file. “We’ve got proof of the money you’ve taken. Of the blackmail. You’re not a victim here. If you want to take that chance, do so. If not, hand over the tapes and get the fuck out.”
James wanted to stand up and applaud her.
He gave her this moment.
Watching her parents, he saw the shock on their faces.
To help this along, he clicked play, giving Drake a nod to hold Abby as he played the footage he’d been given.
He spun his laptop around and showed them what he had.
“The doctor has already signed a statement that says what you did. What you paid him to do and you didn’t report him. Right now, he’s heading for a lot of jail time for what he did, and he’s willing to take you down with him. Without this, he’s got no proof. Your word against his. Give me the tapes.”
There was a chance that people wouldn’t look toward them, but he had a lot of favors he could pull in. That tape of him and Drake could be unleashed, but he’d make sure it didn’t see more than ten minutes of air time before it was pulled.
The rest he’d leave to Abby.
As he sat back, her parents relented. He offered to pay them a final payment but only when he had the evidence in his possession. Abby promised to keep her silence so long as they kept theirs.
They left his office, and he knew he’d keep an eye on them, to make sure they stayed gone. The moment he had the tapes, he had every intention of giving this to the cops. There was no way he was going to let child abusers and murderers go free. First, he was going to get the damn tape, and then, it would all be over.
Once the door shut, he pulled Abby into his lap and Drake rested against the desk. “That was easy,” Drake said.
“I’ll keep an eye on them.”
“They won’t bother us again,” Abby said. “We’ve got too much on them.” She held the file open to them. “All the money, the texts, the phone calls. It’s all there. They can try, but it won’t do them any good.”
He stroked her hip, loving the feel of her against him.
“What now?” Drake asked.
“Now, we enjoy the rest of our lives.”
Epilogue
Five years later
Abby couldn’t believe she’d been married for five and a half blissful years, and was the mother to a young girl. Not only was she married to one man, but she shared her life with another as well.
She stood outside of the nursery as James and Drake sang to little Eliza. She’d given birth two weeks ago, and it had been a hectic time for all of them. They were a family, and both men were the father as far as they were all concerned.