Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
Beckett Harrington
My nerves were a tangled mess as Theo drove me to the federal jail where my father was being held. I was grateful when he offered, because I wasn’t sure I trusted my hands not to shake on the steering wheel.
Father insisted we meet in person. No phone calls. No details. Just a date and time, arranged through the phone like it was some formal business appointment instead of whatever this was.
It felt like he was about to detonate something in the middle of my life.
Otherwise—why the theatrics?
Maybe he just wanted to see me. His son.
But even as the thought surfaced, I knew better. Lucas hadn’t visited, too busy helping the police build their case. Ian claimed work kept him away, but we all knew the truth. That left me.
It was na?ve to think my father wanted to see me just to see me. Every move he made had an angle. Every word carried a hook.
We sat in the parking lot for a moment before I had to go in.
“Whatever he says in there, just know I’m here for you, Beckett,” Theo said quietly. “I love you. You’re not alone.” The knot in my chest tightened.
“I love you,” I replied. I took one steadying breath before stepping out of the car and heading inside alone.
The jail processed me with clinical efficiency. They took my ID, ran me through an X-ray scanner, and patted me down with impersonal hands. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, cold and unforgiving.
By the time I made it through security, I felt less like a visitor and more like an inmate who’d taken a wrong turn.
Theo stayed in the car. He couldn’t come back to visit with me, anyway. And the glamorous Theo didn’t belong in a place touched by darkness.
This was something I had to walk into by myself.
They led me into a small visitation room and sat me at a metal table bolted to the floor. A moment later, they brought him in and placed him across from me.
The room wasn’t the grimy, mildew-stained box I’d imagined. It was sterile. Bright. Almost disappointingly normal. And Father wasn’t shackled the way I’d expected. A minimum-security facility for white-collar crime didn’t call for theatrics.
Still, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d already charmed half the guards. That was his specialty.
Sitting across from him, I realized something strange.
He didn’t look powerful.
He looked thin. Drawn. Fragile in a way I’d never allowed myself to see before. Dark circles bruised the skin beneath his eyes, and his shoulders seemed narrower, as if something essential had been carved out of him. Breakable. I didn’t understand how I had ever been afraid of him.
And yet he smiled at me as if nothing had changed. Like he was hosting dinner instead of serving time. The sight almost unsettled me more than if he’d looked furious.
Calling him Father suddenly felt outdated, like a habit I’d outgrown. He was just my dad now. A man in a county jail uniform.
“Son,” he greeted, his voice warm enough to pass for genuine. “It was nice of you to come see me. I haven’t had visitors. Your mother says she can’t be seen in a place like this.”
He sighed softly, as if the idea insulted him. For half a second, guilt pricked at me.
Then I crushed it. I wasn’t here out of devotion. He’d cornered me into this meeting with his insistence that it had to be in person.
“You said you had to tell me something,” I replied, keeping my voice flat. “Something you couldn’t say over the phone. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
His gaze sharpened, sweeping over me in quiet assessment.
“You’ve changed,” he said. “I heard you quit the business program.”
Of course he had. Even in here, he still had his hooks in everything.
I shifted in my seat under the weight of his penetrating stare, refusing to let the old, weak, father-pleasing version of myself resurface.
I had to keep my head up high. I had to.
But it was harder to do without Theo or Asher beside me.
They steadied me. They reminded me of who I was.
In here, across from him, I felt that certainty wobble.
“Yeah, well. A lot has changed,” I said, forcing my voice to stay even. “I’m continuing to study film. I’m paying for school myself now, so it doesn’t really matter what you think. And I’m dating and living with two boyfriends.”
I laid it all out at once, like ripping off a bandage. No hesitation. No room for him to interrupt. Everything on the table.
He chuckled. Not surprised, not offended—just amused.
The sound made my stomach churn. He acted as if none of it was new information, which meant someone had been talking.
“Oh, I know,” he said calmly. “That’s actually why I called you here. I got a call from my old pal Dean, of all people.”
My jaw tightened. I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I knew it wasn’t good, even if I didn’t remember any Dean. Dad was in jail for screwing over people he knew; he didn’t have any friends left.
“I stole most of his fortune years ago, so I knew it wouldn’t be a pleasant conversation.
He told me he’s going to ruin you. Said it’s payback for what I did to him.
Apparently, once everything was gone, he couldn’t hold down a job.
Life spiraled. He pushed away the people closest to him.
Lost everything. Now he wants me to feel the same loss.
” He leaned back slightly, watching me carefully.
“He said he’d take everything from me. That his son was helping him.
Getting close to you. Feeding him information.
Waiting for the right moment to destroy you. ”
I didn’t believe him. Not for a second. I was only close to two people. And neither of them would ever betray me like that. Theo’s dad was named Steve. I’d known that man my entire life. There was no secret vendetta hiding there. And Asher… Asher had nothing to gain from something like this.
“Get to the point, Dad.” I sighed. I didn’t have the time or the patience for his theatrics.
“My former pal Dean has gathered everything he could possibly need on you,” he said evenly.
“Enough to get you expelled. Enough to disgrace our family. Enough to make sure no respectable employer ever touches your résumé. He told me he’d reconsider releasing it all under one condition.
You hand over your trust on your birthday. ”
For a second, I just stared at him.
There was no way he, or anyone, could know about what I’d done. And even if they did, it wasn’t life-ruining. Not expulsion-worthy. Not career-ending. He was inflating it, dressing it up in catastrophe the way he always did.
“That’s funny,” I replied, letting out a short, disbelieving laugh as I shook my head. “Mom already emptied my trust. There’s nothing left to hand over.”
I leaned back slightly, crossing my arms to hide the flicker of unease in my chest.
He was lying.
He had to be.
This was just another angle, another attempt to scare me into compliance, to manipulate money out of me before I even had access to it.
He’d built his entire life on bluffing people into folding. I wasn’t going to be one of them.
“I’ll hand it to you, son. You’re braver than I am, but not in a good way. Behaving like this in class was the worst offense you could do. You broke many rules, but especially about not recording porn in a campus building.” He tsked. My skin went cold, then hot, then cold again.
At first, it was just a skipped beat. One stutter in my chest, like my heart had tripped over something unseen. Then it sprinted.
Not a jog. Not nerves. A full, blind dash that slammed against my ribs as if it were trying to break out and leave me behind. My ears filled with the sound of it. I could hear my pulse in my throat, in my temples, everywhere at once.
Breathe.
I tried.
The air went in, but it didn’t land. It felt thin and wrong, like I was inhaling through fabric. I drew in another breath, sharper this time, and it only made things worse. My lungs tightened, straining against the effort.
My fingers started to tingle. Pins and needles crawled up my hands and over my wrists. I curled them into fists, but they didn’t feel like mine anymore. Too light. Too distant.
The room shifted. Not visibly, but subtly, like it had tilted a few degrees off balance. The lights were too bright. The walls felt too close. Every sound sharpened and swelled. The scrape of a chair leg felt violent. His breathing sounded enormous.
I tried to focus on his mouth moving, but the words blurred together. I couldn’t hold onto them. My thoughts fired too fast, ricocheting off each other.
He knew.
How did he know?
The son of a bitch knew my deepest secret, and he was right. It could destroy me. It hadn’t mattered that we filmed in our room. Somehow, the video of Asher and me in the classroom had ended up in the wrong hands.
My stomach dropped so hard it felt like plunging down an elevator shaft. Heat flooded my chest, then vanished just as quickly, replaced by ice. My vision flickered at the edges, darkness creeping inward like spilled ink.
I thought I was going to pass out. Or throw up.
My heart was beating too fast. This is what people described before a heart attack. I knew I was too young for that, but my body didn’t care about logic. It was sounding alarms, pulling every lever it could reach.
My legs twitched like they wanted to run. Run where? It didn’t matter. Just away. Away from the room. Away from him. Away from whatever else he knew.
I tried to speak, but my voice came out thin and strained, barely recognizable.
“But I—”
The air wouldn’t come. I swallowed again, and it felt like forcing down shards of glass.
I gripped the edge of the desk to ground myself. It felt real. Solid. Cold. I focused on that. The texture beneath my fingertips. The small dent near the corner.
My heart was still racing. My chest was still tight. And I couldn’t tell if I was about to collapse or completely unravel right there in front of him.
“Save it. I know. You can’t lie your way out of this one, son. But you better come up with the money he wants if you wish to save yourself and this family the embarrassment.” Realistically, I knew Dad only cared about himself and our image, which was ironic for a man in prison for fraud.
I couldn’t give a shit about the family’s image.
Hell, I hardly cared for my own at this point.
Most of all, I didn’t want to ruin Asher’s future.
He needed this. Needed his education and degree.
I didn’t have money or a trust, but I’d always land on my feet.
I liked making videos with them, and I would do it for the rest of my life if need be.
“Who is this piece of shit threatening us?” I asked.
Dad’s face lit up, his eyes crinkling at the corners, teeth flashing white against his stubbled jaw, a manic energy radiating from him that made my stomach clench into a cold, hard knot. His excitement wasn’t the warm kind—it was the wild gleam that always preceded the worst thing he could say.
“Dean Montgomery,” he said, calm and collected.
My stomach dropped.
No.
“I think you know his son.”