I had to lock myself in the guest bathroom so that I could vomit without waking him up. At dawn the next morning, my father called and asked me to meet him at his private office in the city. He did not hug me immediately when I walked through the door because he was a man who struggled with showing emotion.
But when he saw my swollen eyes and my pale face, he dropped his pen and held me like he did when I was a child. “Please forgive me, Audrey,” he murmured into my hair as I began to sob. “Why are you asking for forgiveness when you did nothing wrong?” I asked through my tears.
“I am asking for forgiveness because I was the one who brought that snake into our inner circle,” he sighed. My father had trusted Mark with everything and had given him a seat at every important board meeting. He had opened doors for him and introduced him to the most powerful business partners in the state.
Robert, our family lawyer, sat down with us and explained what they had found in less than twelve hours of searching. Mark had already promised third parties access to funds that he did not legally control yet. He had used our family name to close fraudulent deals that would have ruined my father’s reputation.
“Can we actually send him to jail for what he has done?” I asked as I looked at the legal documents. Robert looked at me with a very serious expression and nodded his head slowly. “If we can verify every single one of these transfers, then the answer is yes,” he replied.
“But first we need him to attend the meeting on Monday believing that he still has the upper hand,” Robert added. That afternoon, I received a sweet and casual text message from Lydia. “Hey girl, are you doing okay because you seemed a bit off lately, so do you want to grab coffee tomorrow?” she wrote.
I read those words over and over again while I felt a wave of pure disgust wash over me. She called me her friend while she was carrying my husband’s child and spending my father’s money. I wanted to scream at her and tell her that I knew every single one of her disgusting secrets.
