Chapter 266
Chapter 258: The Account
LOGAN
My lawyer came to the apartment instead of calling. That should have told me everything before he said a word.
“This needs to be in person,” he’d said on the phone. Coming from a man who billed by the six-minute increment, that meant something serious. Serious enough to justify the wasted time.
He sat across from me with his briefcase still closed. Untouched. Like he hadn’t decided yet whether he’d need anything in it to back up what he was about to say.
“The DA’s office has opened a formal inquiry,” he said. “Not a preliminary review. A formal one. Grand jury territory, Logan. They’ve subpoenaed records from three of the shell entities p>
I didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Which three p>
“Does it matter which of three?” He looked at me strangely. I hadn’t seen this. from him before, not quite alarm, but close to it. The specific caution of a man recalculating how much of his own reputation he was willing to keep attached to mine. “It means they have a line. Not a guess. A line, Logan, from the prepaid number to the cooperating witness to an account with your signature on the authority documents. I told you weeks ago this could happen. I’m telling you now it has p>
I want to be precise about what I felt, sitting there, because precision had always been the thing I was good at, the thing that had built everything I’d built.
I did not feel guilt. I want that understood clearly, the way I understood it clearly myself in that exact moment, there was no guilt sitting anywhere in me, no quiet voice asking whether I’d done something that deserved this. What I felt was the much simpler, much older sensation of exposure. The specific cold drop of a man who has spent his entire life keeping every door locked finding one standing open that he hadn’t checked closely enough.
“What’s my exposure,” I said. “Practically p>
୮
“Practically, you need a criminal defence attorney, not just a family law team,” he said. “Practically, you should not be making any further moves regarding Sedona, Nick, the custody case, or anything adjacent to this investigation without running it through me first. Practically, Logan, I am advising you, strongly, to do nothing right now. Nothing. Sit still. Let this play out through proper channels p>
“Sit still,” I repeated.
“Yes p>
I looked at him for a long moment.
I had spent my entire adult life being told, by people who worked for me, exactly what I should do. I had built a company by ignoring approximately half of that advice and trusting my own read of a situation over the cautious instincts of men who got paid to be cautious. Sitting still had never once been the strategy
The Accoupl
that worked for me.
I’ll consider it,” I said.
He looked at me with the specific tired skepticism of a man who already knew I wouldn’t.
Claim
He left at six. I poured a drink at six-fifteen, and somewhere in the space between those two times, the thought arrived fully formed, the way my best decisions always had – not gradual, not deliberated, just suddenly, completely there.
I needed to talk to Sherry.
Not for comfort. For management. My lawyer’s instinct was to retreat, to go quiet, to let the slow machinery of legal process grind forward while I did nothing and waited to see what it produced. That had never been how I operated. If a story was going to get told about me, I intended to be the one telling it.
I called her.
“Mum,” I said, when she picked up. “I need you to start saying something specific, if anyone asks. About me. About all of this p>
“Logan, it’s late p>
“This is important.” I kept my voice level, the way I kept everything level, the version of myself I had perfected across thirty-four years of needing people to believe I had things in hand even when they were sliding through my fingers. “If anyone from the press, or anyone at all, asks about the investigation, you say I’m fully cooperating, that this is a misunderstanding involving business associates I trusted too much, that I’m focused entirely on being a good father to Nick during a difficult time p>
A pause on her end. “Is that true? That it’s a misunderstanding p>
“Mum p>
“I’m asking you a real question, Logan.” Her voice had something in it I hadn’t heard from her in years, not quite suspicion, but something adjacent to it, the first crack in the version of me she’d been protecting since I was a child. “Is it true p>
“It’s true enough,” I said. Which wasn’t an answer. We both knew it. I let the silence after it do the work, closing the question instead of answering it.
ľ
She agreed, eventually, the way she always eventually agreed. I hung up and sat with the whiskey and the specific, hollow satisfaction of having done something, anything, instead of the nothing my lawyer had ordered.
It wasn’t enough.
I sat with that unfinished feeling for another hour. The apartment was quiet around me. And somewhere in that quiet, a second thought arrived. Sharper than the first. Less like a decision. More like a need.
I needed to see Nick.
I told myself this was about him. About reminding myself, in the middle of everything collapsing around me – the filing, the investigation, the financial trail closing in from three directions at once – what all of it had actually been for. The company, the fight, the years of careful construction. Nick was the reason. I
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What A Motherbees
Claim
What A MotherDoes
Florence
A passionate storyteller who brings emotions to life through her words. When she’s not writing, she finds peace nurturing her garden.