23. Jake
Chapter 23
Jake
I f you poll a kindergarten classroom, most kids want to be the President, or a movie star, or a rock singer. Not me. All I wanted to be was a dad. I thought my dad knew everything. He was the closest thing I’d ever met to a real superhero.
Of course, that was largely because of all the lies he told me.
I thought, obviously, about reporting my dad’s past crimes and plans to defame the Fansees and getting him sent back to prison. At the end of the day, I don’t feel good about it. It’s using my dad’s own playbook against him, and I’d rather throw it away.
The problem is that I do actually like my job, and the only other way I can think to defuse the situation is to drop a bomb on my career and walk away. If I didn’t care about acting ever again, that would be fine. That was what I did for years and years—walked away.
But I don’t want to do that anymore.
Thankfully, it turns out Dave and Octavia did have the same idea.
While risky, their idea was intended to try and preserve my ability to work as an actor. Their suggestion sent me to the internet, researching extensively. It turns out, the key to managing bad information if you’re a celebrity is twofold.
First, it’s important to be honest. When it came out that Hugh Grant had hired a prostitute, he didn’t prevaricate. He didn’t make up excuses. He apologized on primetime television, and he said he’d made a terrible mistake. No excuses. No story. Just a confession and an apology. I found countless other examples of celebrities who actually fessed up to bad things they’d done, and the public outcry was cut much shorter.
But secondly, when you can control the narrative, you can often almost eliminate the pushback. Not all the bad things a celebrity deals with are scandalous. Sometimes, our biggest hurdle is choosing a film or series that bombs. When Ryan Reynolds did the Green Lantern , one of the most epic flops ever, it could have spelled disaster for him, but he didn’t let it. He mocked himself and the franchise freely, and he used it to push his other stuff.
Most relevant to me, David Letterman was being blackmailed by someone just like my uncle for having an affair. Instead of paying the blackmailers off, he went on his own late-night show to confess to what he’d done. He apologized to everyone involved and to the public for what he’d done and begged for forgiveness. Another similar incident happened in 1991, when Magic Johnson chose not to hide his HIV diagnosis. He announced it right away and asked people to support him.
Which is why I’ve called a press conference for this morning.
“Why, hello.” I force a smile, but I really miss facing something bad without Octavia’s hand on my knee. “Thank you for coming to hear me out today.”
“What’s going on?” one reporter shouts. “Did you have an affair with a married woman?”
“I wish,” I say.
They freeze, and then they laugh.
“What is it then?” a woman shouts.
I hold up my hand. “I have a statement, so if you can hold questions until I’m done, that would be great.”
They do settle down, thankfully.
“Today’s news may be unsettling to some of you. When I say it was unsettling to me, you will understand why. Something most people don’t know, because I’ve largely kept it quiet, is that the man who raised me for the first ten years of my life has been in prison for the last fifteen or so years for theft. He was the consummate conman, and now he’s out of prison on parole.”
That’s definitely not what they were expecting me to say. When they start clamoring, I shake my head.
“I’m not quite done yet. Bear with me.”
Lots of flash bulbs keep blinding me, but I plow ahead.
“The thing is, when he got released, he came to find me. He planned to use some information he had hidden about me to force me to harm people I cared about. He threatened that if I didn’t let him manage my career, he’d expose the truth about my past, a truth I didn’t know until that night. At first, I let him.” I don’t have to fake my remorse. “I thought I was protecting the people I loved by living a lie, but one very special lady cornered me, and she forced me to fess up.”
I wish she was here with me.
“Octavia Rothschild has always been way too good for me, but she helped me find my way here today. She’s probably the reason my so-called father had to finally threaten me with the truth about my past.”
When I confess who my real biological father and mother are, every single reporter looks appalled.
“I think I can safely say that none of you would have welcomed that kind of news about yourself, and all I can say is that it shook me. I knew that if he leaked this information to all of you, you’d no longer want to come to movies I made, and I wouldn’t blame you for it.”
The murmuring returns. That’s a good sign, maybe.
“I dumped the one girl I’ve ever loved, to try and keep her away from me. At that point, I didn’t think I was worth much at all, and I just didn’t want anyone else to discover it. I hope none of you have ever felt the way I felt, but if you have, then maybe you’ll be able to understand. I pushed people away because I loved them. But when I bumped into my darling Octavia in. . .let’s just say it was under strange circumstances, she pulled the truth out of me, and to my shock, she said she didn’t care who my parents were.”
Thanks to a ridiculous swell of emotions, I stop for a moment.
I bang on my chest with my closed fist. “Sorry, thinking about that moment, about my total shock when Octavia loved me anyway, in spite of what I’d found out I was. . .” I cough. “It still wrecks me. But she gave me the courage to tell my foster parents, and I found out that they’d known all along, and they loved me just the same, too.”
I don’t cry, but it’s a near thing.
“They gave me the courage to tell you what that conman who claimed to have raised me was holding over my head, to take away his power. I’ve also reported the crimes he’s committed that I knew about to the authorities, and I’ve fired him from the job he extorted me into giving him. I’m sorry that I kept this information from all of you for so many weeks, and I’ll understand if you’re less understanding about all of it than my foster parents and girlfriend have been.”
Oh, boy. Now they have questions.
“I think I should ask the first one.” A voice—a gorgeous voice—from the back rises above the others. “As your girlfriend, I’d like to ask what you would like to do if the public, like me, doesn’t care at all what your parents are like. If they choose to place their value on what you do and who you are, and not what your parents did.”
I can’t help my smile. “Oh, man, I really love you.”
Now the flashes really are blinding. “I love you, too,” she says, “but that’s not an answer.”
“Well, isn’t this where I’m supposed to say, ‘I am Ironman’?”
I do not expect everyone gathered to clap.
“Clearly I’m not Ironman,” I say. “He never wept like a pathetic little baby. But I will say that I’m very grateful for the support I’ve received, and I’d like to encourage everyone who still supports me to let the former fans express themselves without criticism. I’ve been lied to most of my life, and I know it feels lousy. I’m sorry to have done that to you.”
I answer questions for twenty minutes, but then I close it down.
“I will just say one last thing. On the horrible night my uncle—who claimed to be my father until recently—told me about my true father, I recorded our conversation. So, for those of you who still feel like I might not be telling the truth, I’m releasing the recording to the media outlets who request it.”
My uncle calls me moments after I walk out of the conference. More accurately, he’d already called a dozen times, since it was being live-streamed, but I finally answer.
“Why hello, Uncle.”
“What the h?—”
“Ah, ah,” I say. “I’m recording this call, too. Let’s keep it polite.”
“Have you lost your mind?”
“No,” I say, “but I’m pretty sure you’ve lost your leverage. And in case you get any bizarre ideas, let me just tell you that with the help of your old friend Vincenzo, I emptied out your Cayman account. I’m happy to release that money, as I believe you’ll need it for your legal defense, but only if I find that you don’t make any public statements or try to make this worse in any way over the next month. You can take the money after that, and you can slink into a corner so deep and so far that I never hear from you again. And if you don’t do that, I’ll find a new way to deal with you. That’s a promise.”
“You think you can do this to me?” He snorts.
“I think you forgot who my real parents are,” I say. “They’re two very good people and two murderers, and I got something from each of them. You better not ever push me hard enough that you discover which set I favor more.”
He definitely doesn’t stay polite, so I go ahead and hang up.
Then I block his number.
He’ll find another way to reach me, but it might take him a few days, and I won’t release his money until I’m sure he hasn’t tried to sell a conflicting story to anyone. Ironically, he’s the one who taught me to always have a failsafe. Now that the police have the dossier of information on his past that I compiled, I doubt he’ll be brave enough to come after me publicly.
I actually feel a little guilty about how I forced my uncle into a corner—at least, I do until I see Octavia. She’s coming around the corner, and when she sees me, she smiles.
It’s my favorite thing in the entire world.
“Hey,” I say. “You weren’t supposed to be there.”
“Are you kidding me?” She shakes her head. “With as hot as you are, I needed you to say you loved me on air, or you’d be hounded for the next few months. Women love a man who’s willing to say he’s sorry. It’s like finding a unicorn.”
“Maybe not so much with the crying.”
She brushes my cheek with her thumb. “A good solid cry is fine, as long as you man back up and don’t make it a habit.”
I laugh. “I’ll try.”
“Good.” She stands on her tiptoes and kisses me then, and I stop caring about how things are going. Even if my career is over, at least I’m not standing in the shadow of any threats, and the truth is out there.
I didn’t realize until this moment what a freeing thing the truth can be. But as it turns out, I have nothing to worry about. People are overwhelmingly forgiving of my hiding who I was, and no one particularly seems to care about my birth parents.
Over the next few days, I hear from quite a few people who also want nothing to do with their parents. They may not be as bad as mine, but they’re close enough that they get it.
I actually have quite a few speaking requests for schools. I turn them down—I’d be a horrible role model for children—but it’s nice all the same. And when I get dressed up for my sister’s wedding, and I pick up my plus one, it feels really nice that I’m not going with a secret.
“You’re not wearing the dress,” I complain.
Octavia rolls her eyes. “I told you, that’s not a dress you wear on someone else’s wedding day.”
“But no matter what day it is, when you’re with me, it’s your day,” I say. She slaps me, but I grab her hand. “I mean that.”
“Yes, well, that can be true every day but today. I love Bea, and nothing’s going to happen today that’s going to take the attention off her.”
I can’t help my smile then, because poor Octavia doesn’t have a clue.