Filed to story: Submitting to My Bestie’s Daddy Read Online >>???
“You do have experience with this stuff, don’t you?” he muttered.
Before I could answer, my phone started to ring. I pulled it out and frowned at the unfamiliar number.
Vinny glanced over and indicated the number. “It’s Mrs. Morton,” he said.
“The lawyer?” I asked.
He nodded and I accepted the call quickly.
“Hello?” a stern female voice greeted.
“Hello,” I replied. “Mrs. Morton?”
“I hope this isn’t a bad time,” she said.
“No, I’ve been expecting your call.” I put the call on speaker phone and sat the phone on the table. “Vinny is here with me and you’re on speaker,” I informed her.
“Do you have an update?” Vinny asked.
“Unfortunately,” she said.
My heart sank and I could tell by Vinny’s face that he felt the same. I wasn’t sure either of us could handle any more bad news today.
“Go on,” Vinny prompted her. “What is it?”
“I don’t know if I’m going to be able to get Tallon out anytime soon,” she admitted. “The police chief himself is determined to, and this is a direct quote, nail him to the wall.”
“So he’s made it personal,” Vinny said angrily.
“How long can they hold him before trial?” I asked.
There was a long pause that made my heart sink even further.
“Six years, but three is the average,” she said. “He has no right to pretrial relief and the judge isn’t going to grant it. Unless we can find strong enough evidence to facilitate his release, Tallon is going to be in custody for a very long time.”
“How long?” I asked. I already knew the stakes, but I needed to hear it spoken out loud. It wouldn’t feel real until someone spoke it.
“Six years at most if he’s found innocent,” she said. “But with the evidence they have currently, I don’t see that happening. Given the family’s judicial history and Tallon’s reputation, it would be nearly impossible to convince a judge that he’s innocent.”
“What about a jury?” I asked.
“We don’t do that in Italy,” she said. “The trial will be decided by a judge, or a few judges if the case is deemed serious enough.”
“No jury?” I said in surprise.
In Russia, a defendant could ask for a jury trial if their charges were serious enough. I felt even less hope about the outcome now that I knew Tallon’s fate would be decided by a judge.
A jury you could sway with sympathetic character witnesses, but a judge would be far too desensitized to be convinced by anything less than cold, hard evidence.
“Six years before the trial starts,” I said. “What about his sentence? What is he facing?”
“Life,” she said without hesitation. “He could be put away for life.”
*Tallon*
I had been held in custody a few times in my life, but never for any significant length of time. I could be reckless when I was young, but the family was well prepared to deal with any minor run-ins with the law, and most detectives were too smart to pick a fight with us. It was very likely that I had become jaded by those early experiences.
I felt like I was untouchable. I was always careful about what my men did, and I made sure to take precautions to protect the family, but when it came to my own legal jeopardy, I was never worried about serving time. I thought I’d get killed before I ever ended up in a cell.
I was wrong.
I was accustomed to a certain lifestyle and, as much as I liked to pretend that I wasn’t spoiled, I was quickly learning differently. I wanted nothing more than to go home, and I felt ridiculous for feeling that way.
The only thing keeping me levelheaded through this ridiculous ordeal was Natalia. I knew that if I couldn’t hear her voice every day, I would go crazy. Hearing her determination to resolve the problem and her confidence that I would be exonerated gave me hope.
It did nothing to alleviate my anger, which was growing every hour that I spent here.
Being locked up might not have pissed me off so badly if I’d been there for something I had actually done. There were plenty of crimes that I was guilty of, and were I there because of any one of them, I wouldn’t have felt so bitter.
The fact that I was there because of a setup filled me with rage. If I focused on it for too long, my hands would shake with the force of my anger.
I tried to keep my mind focused on other things, but there wasn’t much else to think about.
I thought about Natalia a lot. I thought about our wedding and tried to picture her in a white gown. The thought made me smile. I had no idea what kind of dress she wanted, and I wanted to keep it a surprise, but picturing her in a variety of dresses was oddly comforting to me.
As soon as I was out, I was hiring the best fashion designer available to make her a custom dress. It would be a thousand times better than the dress that Bianca had swiped from her.
She deserved at least that much for putting up with all of this.
Fantasizing about Natalia was the only thing that brought me any relief in this pit. I dreaded every time I had to step outside of this cell.
It wasn’t that anyone was giving me a hard time here. It would be suicidally stupid to do that. There were enough of my guys on the inside that I could be confident that someone was always watching my back.
When a member of the family got into legal trouble, I couldn’t always get charges dropped, but I did always make sure to provide for those who were loyal to me. I made sure that they had all the money they needed for their legal team and enough to keep them as comfortable as possible.
It was paying off for me now. I didn’t have to worry about anyone trying to make a move against me to bolster their own reputations or to get some kind of revenge.
That wasn’t the only thing that was working in my favor. There were a few guards here that were sympathetic to my situation. I was able to learn from my men who I could talk to about getting a little help from the guards.
It was a tricky negotiation and cost me more than I would have liked, but I was able to offer a couple of the guards some compensation in exchange for bending the rules a bit.
I knew it was worth every penny if they followed through with their end of the deal.
I was informed by my men that there was an area of the yard that is a blind spot for the security cameras. It was in the seating area of the yard where several stone tables and benches were located. If you were to sit at the furthest table from the door, you would be just out of frame of the cameras. There was a side entrance that the guards had access to, and there was usually a guard or two standing near it in case they needed to rush someone inside for any reason. That entrance was just a few feet from that table. That was probably why they’d never bothered to address the camera issue.
If someone were to enter and exit through that door and not pass beyond the table, the cameras would never see them.
It took some convincing and a lot of financial compensation, but we finally got one of the guards to agree to sneak Natalia out of that door so that I could see her out of sight of the cameras and guards.
I had to see Natalia in person. I wanted to see that she was safe, and I wanted to hold her again. More seriously, I needed to speak to her openly about what was going on.
Her stubborn insistence on being actively involved in the hunt for the real killer put her in harm’s way, and I feared every day that Mrs. Morton was going to arrive with bad news.
When the guards came to my cell to get me, I was hopeful, but I didn’t dare show it. I had no idea if or when they would follow through on our deal. It wasn’t as though I could do much about it if they didn’t.
