Good Girl Gone Mad

Chapter 6: Road-trip

TRIGGER WARNING: The following chapter contains mentions of violence.

"You know when I met your mother...I was just broker than broke.

I'd always wanted to be a lawyer but when your parents are construction workers and you yourself barely bring home a mechanic's salary...law school's pretty much out of reach.

But I knew when she and I had kids, I wanted to be able to provide for our family. I wanted to have a...legacy to leave behind me when I'm gone.

So all these years, when we were living in that trailer up in New Square, I was still, slowly but surely, putting aside every penny to go to law school and become a lawyer. And I did.

When you were born, I was in my second to last year. But after the long-awaited diploma came the debt to repay. I guess I thought that once I had just secured a job, I'd all be easy. But being a public defender, with no connections, no experience at 36...I may have been very good at what I did, it didn't matter. No serious firm was willing to give a guy like me a chance.

So when this young man approached me, told me I could make six times what I was making before if I just agreed to become his family's private lawyer, you understand...I knew it was a little sketchy but I just couldn't pass it up. You and your mother were counting on me to put a roof over your heads and put food on the table."

Randall spoke calmly but his voice was weak. The heart monitor's beeping punctuated his speech, as did Anna's sniffles, as she held his hand, sitting next to his hospital bed.

"Everything started out alright. We won the first two trials, the money started coming in, everything was going well. That was, until this other lawyer, Robert Nowak, came up to me at a party. He struck up a normal conversation with me, y'know, lawyer to lawyer, about the cases we were working on. I wasn't from this world, I wasn't in the habit of...distrusting anyone I met.

Well, as it turns out, I definitely shouldn't have been talking to him. A couple weeks after that, one night, when I was on my way back home to you both, I was attacked. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in a dark basement, all tied up. Turns out the Abadelli family had suffered a surprise attack, and it was all because of the information I told Nowak. I stayed down there in that basement for a year and a half. They were going to kill me at first, but the boss suggested they could still get some use out of me. And they did. They gave me an alternative. They would let me live if I left the country, went to Croatia and served as an informant for a different guy they were trying to take down, who happened to live there. I figured the only shot I had at ever seeing you both again was to do it. I thought I might even have a shot at escaping or contacting one of you, what with them being so far away. But these guys are professionals. They kept me under a tight grip. This man they had sent me to spy on was another member of Nowak's family. So in Croatia, they very quickly realized what was going on, but since I was already on their good side for giving them the tools to attack the Abadellis, albeit unknowingly, they decided instead that I would double-cross the Abadellis and become their informant."

"Jesus Christ–"

"Yeah, this gets very fucked up. Four years ago, they agreed to move me back around here with Robert's side of the family."

"So you were right here under our noses these past four years and never came back to see us? Never even tried to contact us?"

"At many times I was in very hot waters and had all kinds of shady people threatening my life. I couldn't bring you or your mother into this mess. I wanted to protect you both.

Running into you at this party was...unhoped for. Although I do wish it had been under better circumstances"

"I'm so confused. I have so many questions."