Preston had been granted early release for good behavior, contingent upon his completion of the federal restitution program and mandatory employment constraints. He was moving to Ohio, to live with a cousin who managed a regional trucking logistics firm.
The letter was a formality, a legal notification required because I remained a primary creditor under the court-ordered restitution judgment. Every month, twenty percent of his meager salary would be automatically funneled back into the Lawson Holdings recovery fund—a drop in the bucket compared to the millions he had stolen, but a permanent, inescapable reminder of his debt.
I read the notification once, tossed it into the secure shredder beneath my desk, and listened to the satisfying whir-crunch of the blades reducing it to gray confetti.
Some stories don’t end with a dramatic confrontation in the rain or a tearful reconciliation. Some stories simply end when the math finally balances out.
That evening, I stayed late at the office, but not because I was drowning in work. I stood by the fourteenth-floor window, watching the city lights flicker to life across the dark expanse of the lake. The sky was the deep, bruised violet of an October twilight.
My phone chimed on the desk.
Downstairs, Raymond’s text read. Bring your jacket. We’re getting tacos.
I smiled, grabbed my coat, and turned off the desk lamp.
The office was quiet, peaceful, and entirely my own. The small camera in the bottom drawer was nothing more than a piece of obsolete plastic—a relic from a night when someone had tried to watch me sleep and control my future.
They hadn’t understood who they were dealing with.
I locked the office door behind me, walked down to the elevator, and stepped out into the bright, unwritten evening.
