The Prodigal's Return. Anna DeStefano

familiar voice begged.

      Her head jerked around to find Neal on his feet beside his father, pulling away from Mr. Cain’s grasp.

      “Sit down!” Mr. Cain bit out.

      “Stop it, Dad.” Neal faced the judge. “Your Honor, for the sake of Bobby Compton’s family, please, call this off.”

      “Neal!” Mr. Cain looked ready to deck his son to keep him quiet, but Jenn knew he loved Neal too much to ever hurt him.

      She’d always marveled at the bond, the honesty, between them. At how much they even looked alike, despite the difference in their ages. They shared the same blond good looks, the same height and effortless athleticism and dreamy dark eyes. The same intensity when they were determined to have their way, as both were now.

      “Your Honor,” Mr. Cain pleaded. “My son’s distraught over his friend’s death. He doesn’t understand—”

      “I do understand.” Neal’s voice was the scariest calm Jenn had ever heard. “And I want to plead guilty.”

      “No!” Jenn and Mr. Cain cried in unison.

      The room burst into a sea of babbling voices.

      “That’s enough.” Judge Pritchard’s gavel rapped. He leveled an accusing stare at the spectators. “I’ll have no more outbursts, or this courtroom will be cleared.”

      When silence returned, it was harder to bear than the gossipy confusion it replaced. Because in the room’s quiet, nothing remained but the end that Jenn knew she’d never survive.

      Judge Pritchard returned his attention to the defendant’s table.

      “Have a seat, Mr. Cain.”

      “But, Your Honor—”

      “Have a seat!”

      “Son,” the judge said when Neal was standing alone. “Do you understand the consequences of what you’re saying? You’re not being charged as a juvenile. You’ll serve your sentence in an adult correctional facility.”

      “Yes, sir. My father’s explained everything to me. I’m pleading guilty to involuntary manslaughter, and I’m going to prison. It’s where I belong. We all know that. Don’t put Bobby’s parents through the motions of a trial that won’t change anything.”

      “Neal.” Mr. Cain’s voice sounded too old, too lost, to belong to the fearless defense attorney prosecutors all over the state dreaded facing in a courtroom. “Please, we can find another way.”

      Please.

      Jenn wanted to run to Neal. To beg along with his dad. But she couldn’t move. Worse, nothing she said would make the tiniest difference.

      “I told you this morning, Dad.” Neal shook off his father’s touch one last time. “I have to do this.”

      His gaze finally connected with Jenn’s, his dark eyes at first apologizing, then emptying of every promise and dream they’d shared.

      “Bobby’s gone because of me.” He continued to stare, through each awful word, as if to be sure she understood most of all. “There is no other way. It’s over.”

      CHAPTER ONE

      Midtown Atlanta, Georgia

       Eight years later

      “YOUR DADDY WOULDN’T call you himself, Neal, but somethin’s not right.” Buford Richmond’s slow Southern drawl blended into the phone’s staticky connection like a bad omen. “I’d bet money the man’s sick.”

      Since Buford had laid down good money on the Birmingham races every Saturday for the past twenty years, the man not betting might have been more cause for concern. Still, Neal gave up pretending to work.

      Your daddy wouldn’t call you himself….

      That was the God’s honest truth.

      There’d been no contact between him and his father for ages. Not since their last fight a year into his eight-year sentence. He’d refused, again, to file for early parole, still naively determined to do right by Bobby. As if pissing away his own life would bring his friend back, or give the boy’s family a speck of peace. Exactly his father’s point. But Neal hadn’t been ready to hear reason then, and his father had shouted that he wouldn’t be returning.

      Not for the next month’s visitation. Not ever. If Neal wanted to give up, if he thought rotting in prison would somehow make up for Bobby’s death, that didn’t mean his father had to watch.

      You’re a selfish sonovabitch, Nathan had railed. Thinking of the man as Dad hadn’t been possible after that day. You don’t know how to do anything but quit. And you don’t care who you’re hurting by giving up. Well, I’ve hurt enough. I can’t do this anymore.

      And neither could Neal.

      Nathan giving up had been the right thing for both of them. A fitting end, leaving all ties neatly severed.

      So why had Neal’s heart slammed into his throat at the suggestion that the man might be sick?

      He shoved aside the papers on his desk. Focus on the here and now—that’s what he’d promised himself after that final argument. Let go of Nathan. Let go of Bobby. Let go of the past.

      Survive.

      Never look back.

      That’s what had gotten him through the remainder of his sentence. Nothing much had changed three years after his early release—parole garnered by model behavior, instead of his father’s legendary briefs. Briefs Neal studied religiously now, to learn everything he could.

      He wasn’t a lawyer like his father. He never would be. But kicking legal ass consumed his time all the same, the way studying law books had those endless days and nights in his cell. Giving back, making up, it was a decent enough life. It made forgetting possible. At least it had until Buford’s call.

      His father’s ex-law partner, Neal’s only remaining contact to Rivermist, touched base from time to time to discuss financial matters. Rarely by phone. A registered letter from prison was all it had taken to give Buford temporary power of attorney over Neal’s mother’s sizable trust, set up for Neal after her death when he’d been only five. Ever since, they’d had an understanding. If Neal wanted to talk about his father, he’d ask. And he never had.

      “My father’s a very wealthy man.” Neal rocked back in his secondhand desk chair, in the shabby office that was more a home than the tiny apartment he rented. Rubbed at the tension throbbing at the base of his neck. It was late in the afternoon. He’d cast off his suit coat and rolled up the starched sleeves of his dress shirt hours ago. And a long, solitary night of work stretched ahead—exactly the way he liked it. “If Nathan’s sick, he’ll find himself a doctor and get it taken care of.”

      “How much do you know about your daddy’s situation?”

      “I know he’s alive. That he wants me out of his way. He has the means to take care of himself. There’s no reason for me to be involved.”

      “I’m not sure Nathan wants to take care of himself—hang all that money he has in the bank.” Buford, a litigator skilled at finessing juries into believing whatever version of the truth he represented, sounded a bit like a man feeling his way barefoot through shattered glass. “I wouldn’t have called you if I thought he was doing okay, or that he’d listen to anyone else.”

      “Have you even talked with him since he dissolved your law partnership?”

      “I tried.” Buford chuckled. “The bastard actually challenged me to a fistfight the one time I stopped by the house.”

      One of Buford’s first letters to Neal had explained the breakup of his and Nathan’s friendship, as well as their law practice. He’d asked if it made a difference in Neal’s feelings about Buford handling his money.