He gets In his car and makes his way to one of his villas at the edge of the city. No one knew he owned it, not even his lawyer. It was his hideout for whenever he wanted to be alone. He got to the villa and went straight up to his room. The entire villa was maintained by one woman, and she did a great job of keeping the house clean. Arriving at his room, Antonio tried to call his lawyer, trying to assess the damage, but his line had been barred.“What the hell? Barred? But it was functioning just a while ago,” he muttered angrily and tried another line but the same result. Out of anger, he flung the phone across the room, and it fell, breaking upon impact.“Fuck!” he frowned and paced about his room for a while, and his maid quickly rushed into the room, hearing the sound of something breaking.“Sir Antonio, are you alright?” the matured lady, Rosa, asked as she rushed in.“Yeah, yeah,” Antonio sighed and looked at his damaged phone.“You know what? Can you do me a favor and get
In the city’s penitentiary, Ava and Estelle sat on a bench, with a thick glass in front of them, waiting for Leonard, and soon enough, he came, dressed in his orange coverall.“Daddy!” Ava exclaimed immediately she saw him.“Hey Pumpkin, how are you?” Leonard smiled as he sat down and turned on the mic on his side. “I’m not fine Daddy,” the little girl said and tears began rolling down her face.“I hate it out here without you. I want you to come back home daddy, I miss you,” she cried.Leonard felt a pain in his heart at the sight of his crying five year old daughter, and tears found their way down his cheeks.“Don’t worry Pumpkin, I’ll be home with you soon, sooner than you expect,” he said, trying to cheer her up, but it was not working.“You say that every time Daddy,” Ava sobbed. “Are you going to be here forever?” “No Pumpkin, don’t think that way,” Leonard quickly said. “I promise, I promise I’ll be home soon, and I mean it this time,” he said with a smile. “Cross your heart
In the boardroomThe atmosphere in the boardroom was thick with anticipation. Silas, a commanding presence with an air of authority, stood at the head of the table, his eyes scanning the faces of the gathered board members.“Thank you all for coming,” Silas began, his voice steady and firm. “Today, we address the matter of the DNA test results.”He looked over at the corner where the police officers he was here with today stood. And with a flicker of his wrist, one police officer came forward, handing him over a brown envelope.Silas took the brown envelope, bringing out the documents within, lifting it up in the air so everyone present in the boardroom could see so there'd be no chances of anyone accusing him that he'd slip anything in.“May a neutral person come forward?” Silas announced and a junior officer appeared before him from the crowd. He hands the documents over to him. “Distribute them.” With that the junior officer nodded, beginning from the first person, he went one aft
Estelle adjusted herself on the seat provided before Leonard, sitting upright so she could get a clear view of her brother's face through the security glass partition.“What do you mean by that Leonard? You don't want to work for the company anymore when you come out?” Estelle asks, trying to clarify.Leonard noded, “Just as I said Estelle, I don't think going back to that company is what I want to do.”“Don't think like that Leo,” she started in a convincing voice. “I mean, the company's faith depends on you. Speaking of which, it has already run down significantly, although we haven't run into any debt. What I'm saying is if you leave now, it will be in total shambles.”Leonard looked away for a moment sighing and if he thought Estelle would give up so easily then he was mistaken.“I honestly don't understand how Antonio is running that company, people literally loved you Leonard! In fact it was those same people who advocated for you to be released after all the evidence came out a
A week laterIn the courtroom, filled with a shimmering sense of hope, Leonard stood in his small wooden cubicle before the judge.Everyone present, expecting nothing but good judgment. Through the thick lenses of the judge looking down on everyone from her high seat, with a hand she picked up her gavel with one hand and struck it twice on the gavel stone.“Leonard, you are hereby acquitted and released from all your charges,” she declared with a sounding voice as light applause began to fill the room.As Leonard made his way out of the court, a whole flock of people including the press, news reporters, broadcasters, the media were outside waiting for Leonard to emerge and once they got sight of him, they all came running to him at once.Lenoard tried his best to stay composed as multiple cameras and mics were getting shoved in his face. “Leonard, look here!” One reporter said, “No, Leonard look here,” another blurted out. “So you were really accused?”The questions kept rolling and
The next dayAs Leonard looked up at the exterior of the company's building, memories started flooding in, he began feeling a sense of nostalgia.The company was a sleek and modern marvel! It appeared as a gleaming giant, its facade a vast expanse of silver-gray glass and steel that seemed to stretch up to the very sky. The entrance was marked by a bold, oversized logo in a bright, electric blue color that seemed to pulse with energy. The walls of the building appeared to be made of a shimmering glass material that reflected the surrounding light, giving it a sense of depth and dimensionality.Overall, it was one damn of a cutting-edge technological company and Leonard couldn't imagine how Antonio might have managed to ruin it.As he climbed the wide stairs leading to the entrance, he cleared his throat trying his best to ignore the nervousness he was feeling.Questions like–would he even be able to fit in? What if no one wanted him there? What if he couldn't catch up and missed ever
Sophie paced back and forth in the place she had decided to take shelter which wasn't anywhere comfortable but was some place in the slums, her past self would never once have even imagined that she would ever have a day of such humiliation, a day when she would be trying so hard to fight a losing battle against the monster that was the law. And as it was in that moment this monster was mere minutes away from finding her and choking her to death, as she pondered she recalled what Antonio had said before, both what he said about having more affluence and what he told her to do then with Emma, but it was as she thought about it that she shook her head and decided not to, she was already in hot enough soup, she didn't need to add any more fire. She really didn't know everything about Antonio or what his endgame really was, but one thing she knew that she could count on if she decided to work with him was the fact that somebody was going to have to die, it was just a matter of who, and
Leonard began to go through the accounts book and began to see a large number of errors regarding the money going in and out of the firm, at this time Antonio had been arrested so it was up to him to take over the company and oversee all that was going on within it. But what he was seeing in the books did not put him at ease at the very least, on the contrary,, it made him feel rather disturbed, what exactly had Antonio been doing for so long in the company, what had he been spending so much money on that he didn’t care about the losses it incurred so frequently?He asked himself inwardly and then with a sigh he stood up and decided to question the people who worked for Antonio starting with Alice.She was the only one he actually trusted to tell the truth about what was really going on in the company and every office, as for the others he could not exactly be certain which ones among them were still in contact with or still willing to work for Antonio. He couldn't be more angry at