Chapter 30 The Plan
Summer
Colt texts in the morning.
Colt
Can I come by? We should talk about the timeline.
Me
Yes
He shows up at two with two coffees and the stillness he gets when he's carrying something he's eager to execute.
He's been staying over, sleeping on the bed with all our clothes on, both of us careful, like we haven't worked out the rules yet.
It feels natural and unnatural at the same time.
We take the hard conversations at the kitchen table.
We talk about Colt branching off with Bennet Ventures, the SEC filings and criminal complaints.
He's kept much of the details to himself at the request of the DA and his attorney, but he shares what he can.
"We're close," he says. "Bennet Ventures splits off from the holding company by the end of the month. My own board, my own attorneys. My division stands clean and separate before any of the SEC or criminal filings go public."
"And then?"
"Then the DA moves. The FBI has the file. My father, three of his people, Cheyenne, all in the same week. It'll be everywhere. The name on every screen in the country for a week. Maybe two."
"And you."
"On every screen with it. They'll want to know what the son knew.
" He turns the coffee cup a quarter so the seam faces him, his father's gesture, the quarter-turn Sonny does to every object on his desk, and Colt has no idea his hands learned it.
"I drafted my statement. I worked with the DA.
There is no way around it. My father will know it was me the morning they take him. "
I wait for the rest of it. I've watched this man build a deck. I know what his face does when he's getting to the moment he built the whole thing around.
"It's done," he says. "All of it. The structure, the timing, the statement. Dade and Dom and I have been on it for weeks."
"Colt, I want you to know that I see you.
I see the work that you are doing. Before you destroyed us, you would build your whole life with somebody else in the room.
The deal, the late nights, the war you fought every single day, Cheyenne would be at your elbow for all of it, and I was at the far end of the table finding out how your day went from a text that said don't wait up.
You didn't keep secrets from me. You just turned toward her to build everything that mattered and turned toward me to tell me about it after.
I was just there. Now, I'm with you, as much as you can allow it. "
He doesn't say anything, he just watches me.
"You're tearing them down for the right reasons."
We work the rest of it out over the cold coffee, side by side now instead of across.
His mother doesn't know about the money, and he isn't going to tell her, because she'd warn his father inside the hour.
She loves Sonny. Whatever else Vivienne is, she loves him.
She is complicit in what happened whether she knew about the money or not.
"She loves him more than she loves you," I say.
"I don't know what she loves. I know what she chooses."
Until the arrests, his father won't know they know. There's surveillance. There are eyes on him. By every measure Colt can build, we're clear until it breaks.
"I'm confronting Vivienne myself," I say. "Not about the money. The part she helped orchestrate. What your father did to my marriage and what she chose to do about it, which was help build the narrative and landscape. I want her to hear it out of my mouth while I look her in the eye."
"You spoke to her in October."
"That isn't the same and you know it isn't. I have my own voice. I'm done loaning it out."
"Okay."
It costs him to hear me say I'm walking into that house.
"He's your father, your statement will put him in prison, and it's going to take something out of you."
"I know. I've known since I opened the report." He doesn't flinch off it. "I'd do it again tomorrow."
"I love you," he says, at the door.
"I know, Colt."
He goes.
I sit at the table a long time. The afternoon turns. The light walks across the floor.
Then I pick up my phone and text my mother.
Coming home soon. With Colt. I'll send dates. We need to talk.
The dots start before I've set the phone down.
The guest room's ready. I'll see you when you get here. I love you.