Chapter 22 Chapter Twenty Two
CANDY’S POV
Nothing ever prepares you for the shock of seeing your dad laying lifeless on the floor of his study No, that shit stays with you, keeping you glued to the floor even after the ambulance comes to get him and the paramedics confirm to you that he’s still alive and very lucky you found him when you did. I’m not sure how I’d even managed to call them, I have zero memory of it and everything that happened in the moments after my heart plummeted right into my stomach and I almost threw up on him.
It’d stayed with me still while I’d waited hours on end for anymore news on him while the doctors worked, shrouding me like a big wet blanket with crushing weight and unfathomable discomfort. It only lifted a little to allow my frustration and fears manifest themselves in the form of uncontrollable tears, washing over me in waves, especially when mom and Peach got here and I’d had to explain everything to them from the scratch.
Every time I catch myself imagining what would have happened if I’d decided to check on him a day later or so, I want to bend over and throw up until there’s nothing left and my entire body has been purged of guile.
Could we have done better even though he’d been the way he was?
Was this our fault?
Was it my fault?
Fuck! Fuck!!
After hours of waiting in agonizing silence and signing of consent forms for an emergency surgery he needed to implant a pacemaker or something like that, I was too zoned out to catch it, one of the doctors finally come to inform us that he’s stable and will be fine. He’d worked himself into a damned heart attack.
In the days that follow, I throw myself wholly into work in the study, attempting to sort out the mess that’d nearly taken my father from me before it has a chance to try again. It’s either this or risk him crawling back in here to continue the minute he gets out of the hospital.
Who knows, maybe then he’ll really work himself to death.
I drive myself to the brink of insanity everyday with his mess, only leaving the study to go visit him at the hospital to see him and for every time I’ve been there since he’s woken up, he just gives me reasons to work even harder to get to the bottom of this and more reasons to be fucking worried. He’s just had a major surgery and all he goes on about from dusk till dawn is coming back home and finding a way out of the monstrosity he’d created, because everything in the balance hangs on it.
And once, alone and vulnerable, he’d told me he needed to find that way out sooner than later before “they” come for him and he’d looked scared shitless about it. My dad, he’s never scared of anything, I’ve never seen him scared, not even when mom had had cancer years back and the doctor had told him she only had a fifty-fifty chance of beating it. So whoever this “they” is, that makes him almost tremble with fear, I know they must be the devil’s incarnate and I must protect us from them.
Calling in a favor, I manage to get one of the best brains I know take a look at the papers so I’m sure it’s not just my brain working out the fact that my father, who’s been quite famous for his impeccable business and investment skills, have somehow ran his company into the ground for the second time in less than four years.
It rakes Leah only but one look to clock the anomalies In the records that’s worried me to death for days now. In truth, I forget most times how brilliant she is with numbers. That brilliance had been the thing to attract me to her when our path had crossed at Harvard business school. We’d been roommates while I’d taken my program and after the first week of awkwardness, we’d sort of drifted to each other. I guess the only reason we didn’t get to become better friends is the distance that came up after both our programs ended and we both went back to our different states.
We show up when either of us needs the other, like now, but we never have the time for occasional drinks or trips or even binge watching shows together like I did with she whose name shall not be mentioned.
Wait, fuck that, her name shall be mentioned. Lindsay! Award winning betraying bitch Lindsay Montgom….
“I mean no offence to ask this Candice, but do you think your father had things he kept from you about this? Like businesses he ran using the company as a front? Anything?”
“No, but if you’re thinking something just out with it already, Lee, I can handle it. So what do you think?”
She sighs, a deep drawn sigh that doesn’t sound good, adjusting her glasses the way she does only when she feels conflicted.
“I doubt this is all the records so I’m not saying anything conclusively but from what I have here, on this table?” She takes a small pause that feels like eternity. “It seems your dad might not have been totally honest with you. I think he’s involved in some kind of money laundering venture here. I’ve seen this before, mostly when I ran accounts for casinos in Vegas and all and this has all the markers.”
My dad? The Jeremy Kane? No, no way this is true…….right?
“These probably weren’t even supposed to be on this records, or maybe this is his private record for just himself, but if you look here and here and here…” I force my eyes to follow her index finger around the different records she’s indicating, even though my head feel like it’s splitting, and all the blood has drained from it.
“There are unexplainable influx of funds, big funds that stand out from every other thing on record like here and then here. Here and here, you can see an approximate amount being paid out in the same manner it came in after being cleaned up through the business. The missing chunk I assume is his commission for the job.”
“It’s probably what happened the last time too, now that I think about it, but we didn’t have access to these records so it was harder to connect. There’s probably missing funds, I’m thinking. Maybe someone who knows he can’t go to the police for this got daring and dipped with huge amounts and the owner of the money who is now expecting his cleaned up money is breathing down his neck, demanding for it. And this time, I imagine even the company’s current funds can’t cover what’s missing without raising brows and there’s board members to go around. At the end of the day, it’s him and which ever crime boss he’s working for and those guys are brutal when it comes to their money, believe me.”
What the fuck is this? What the hell an I listening to? The fuck, dad!?
“But that can’t be possible, the IRS would have flagged it or something “ I say in denial, looking for something to cling onto that can exonerate him.
“Yeah they typically would, except he has someone or even people on payroll that looks the other way while he does his thing or….. maybe he has a mainly cash business with books that can be easily manipulated and that’s where he cleans up the money.”
She pauses like she’s having a light bulb moment.
“I think that’s it. I think these are records from a different business and that’s where the money went missing from and just like the last time he’s trying to pull funds from the company to replace it but unlike the last time he’s coming up short.“ She says bright eyed as she flips through the pages.
“I guess I understand why he’s trying to work himself to death just to recover the money and settle his real boss before they come looking for him. I’ve seen what they can do first hand Candice, I’d needed therapy to move on.”
She slumps back against her chair as she watches me pitifully.
“It’s all theory, a likely theory but still a theory. Have an honest conversation with your old man once he gets out of the hospital.”
A conversation? Am I the only one that thinks that ship has sailed? I need answers.