Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 52663 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52663 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 263(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
My father posts bond without a word.
The charges stick to my name.
And if I hadn’t met Emily the night I came back to Nashville—if she hadn’t looked at me like I was worth knowing, worth saving—maybe my version of Warned You would’ve been simple:
Don’t ever speak to me again.
But instead, he whispered:
“You know I’ve got a lot at stake. If I go down for something like this… you’ll lose out too. You’ll lose me.”
I looked him in the eye.
“What the hell are you saying?”
He smiled, confident. Delusional.
“Come on, son… You don’t really need me to spell it out for you, do you?”
39
COLE
Back Then
Cole Banks.
Istare at the name as the detention officer presses the label onto my prison badge. Black letters on laminated plastic. Like it belongs to someone else.
Technically, I’m supposed to be placed in adult general population, but they’re letting me serve my sentence in the transitional juvenile wing. A “compromise,” they called it. Because I’m eighteen—but barely.
I’ve never been more grateful for my mother’s laziness.
She never corrected the typo on my birth certificate. Never filed the change after she married him. All my records—from school to court to hospital paperwork—have always read Cole Banks. It was a running family joke. Something they teased about at dinner tables and laughed over when official mail showed up addressed to the wrong last name.
I was supposed to fix it. Supposed to change everything to Dawson before heading off to art school. Tie the name to the family. To the brand. To him.
But now?
Now it’s the only thing protecting him.
The only thing separating his public legacy from my criminal record.
This name—the one I never meant to keep—saves his. Keeps him clean. Lets him go on with his podcast, his book tour, his carefully curated public apologies.
No one will ever know.
Not unless I tell them.
And I won’t.
Because somewhere in the twisted part of me that still wants to believe he’s capable of love, I keep thinking: maybe he’ll use the chance I gave him to become better.
Even if I know he won’t.
40
COLE
Back Then
My father doesn’t visit me while I’m here.
He barely even calls.
His preferred method of communication is snail mail—long, neatly typed letters printed on thick cream-colored paper. He includes motivational quotes at the top of every one, like I’m enrolled in some self-help course instead of serving time. He always signs them the same way: “With love and faith—Dad.”
There’s always money in my commissary. Always an extra twenty slipped in when the week rolls over. As if that somehow makes up for everything else.
His letters talk about forgiveness. Over and over again. Like if he says the word enough times, it’ll eventually sink in. Like I’ll stop remembering what actually happened and just let it all wash away.
I don’t write back.
What would I even say?
The guards are huge fans of his.
They pass around his paperbacks during downtime and nod along to his podcast in the breakroom like it’s gospel. They call him “a good man,” a “truth-teller,” someone who “owns his mistakes and lifts others up.”
And all I can think is—if only they knew my real name.
If they knew the son he was always bragging about, the one who supposedly “decided to take a year to focus on himself,” was sitting right here—right in front of them—eating state-issued cereal and folding his laundry with trembling hands.
Maybe then they’d understand who he really is.
Then again, probably not.
People see what they want to see. And my father’s been selling the fantasy for so long, they wouldn’t recognize the truth if it punched them in the face.
41
COLE
Back Then
Weeks after my release—armed with a padded bank account courtesy of my father—I take a trip to New York.
It’s supposed to be a fresh start. A way to channel the chaos into something cleaner. Legal. Strategic.
But the city doesn’t let me forget him.
I walk out of every law firm the second I see one of his books sitting on a shelf. Hardcover reminders of the man I took the fall for. Of the lie I let bury me alive.
By the time I reach the last name on my list, I’m ready to give up. Ready to take the silence as a sign that I should just deal with the hand life gave me—the one I played poorly—and walk away.
But something stops me.
It’s the most expensive firm in Manhattan.
Hamilton & Associates.
I know I can’t afford it. Not really. But I remember my father bragging about being one of their clients once. Loudly. Publicly.
He isn’t. I checked.
That makes this the perfect place to start.
The building is all glass and silence. Modern art on the walls. Security that doesn’t smile. The receptionist offers me a cup of fresh coffee and escorts me to the elevator with the efficiency of a five-star hotel.
“Mr. Carter will see you in three minutes,” another assistant says, guiding me into an empty boardroom with panoramic views of the city.