Chapter 7 - The Desperate VisitAt 4:30 p.m., my secretary buzzed through the intercom again.
"Mr. Carter? You have another visitor in the lobby. It’s your father, Richard. Security tried to turn him away, but he’s causing a scene and demanding to see you."
I leaned back in my leather chair, taking a slow breath. "Send him up."
Five minutes later, the frosted glass doors of my office swung open.
Richard Carter looked twenty years older than he had on Sunday night. His expensive tailored suit was rumpled, his tie was crooked, and his hair was uncombed. The arrogant, booming confidence of a country club patriarch had been entirely stripped away, leaving behind a terrified, desperate man staring at the towering glass windows and sweeping city views of a empire he had no control over.
He stopped in the center of the office, his chest heaving.
"Brandon," Richard breathed, his voice cracking. "You... you went too far. Freezing our bank accounts? Having the sheriff serve your mother with an eviction notice at our home of twenty years? Have you completely lost your mind?!"
I remained seated behind my desk, not offering him a chair. I didn't move an inch.
"You called the police on your own family," Richard continued, stepping closer to the desk, his hands trembling as he gripped the edge of the wood. "We raised you! We gave you a roof over your head! And now you're treating us like criminals over a few accounting discrepancies?!"
"Accounting discrepancies?" I repeated, my voice ice-cold. "Dad, you stole three point five million dollars from my grandfather's estate. You forged my signature on trust release forms when I was twenty-one. And you embezzled another two million from Lily's guardianship fund."
Richard flinched, his eyes darting away for a split second before he tried to force a defensive sneer. "That's... that's a lie! Arthur wanted us to have that money! It was family business!"
I reached across the desk, picked up the metal lockbox containing Arthur's estate papers and Lily's guardianship files, and dropped them heavily onto the wood right in front of him.
Richard stared down at the box, the color completely draining from his face.
"We know about Lily, Dad," I said quietly. "We know she's Arthur's daughter, not yours. And we know you stole her two-million-dollar trust just like you stole mine."
Richard collapsed backward, his legs hitting the guest chair, and he slumped heavily into the seat. He buried his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking with ragged, defeated sobs.
"The timber market crashed in 2019," Richard whispered, his voice broken and hollow. "The commercial equipment business went under. Creditors were calling every day threatening to seize the house, seize our cars, ruin our names in front of the entire city. I didn't have a choice, Brandon... I had to survive."
"Survival isn't stealing from your children," I said, standing up from my desk and walking around to stand directly over him. "Survival is working sixty hours a week while going to night school because your father spent your college fund on country club dues."
Richard looked up at me, tears streaming down his weathered cheeks. "Please... Brandon. Drop the criminal charges. Call off your lawyers. Give us enough cash to relocate to Arizona. If your mother and I go to prison, our lives are finished."
I looked down at the man who had slammed my head against the brass-inlaid edge of the dining room table less than forty-eight hours ago.
"You should have thought about prison before you put your hands on me, Dad," I said coldly.
The office doors opened behind us, and Marcus Vance stepped in, flanked by two uniformed security guards and Detective Robert Cole, who held a pair of steel handcuffs in his hand.
Richard scrambled backward out of the chair, looking wildly toward the door. "No! No, wait! Brandon, I'm your father!"
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"Take him into custody," I instructed calmly, turning my back and walking back toward the window.
As Detective Cole and the security guards hauled Richard out of the office, his desperate, screaming protests echoed down the forty-story hallway until the heavy glass doors clicked shut, plunging the room back into absolute, peaceful silence.
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