You have the right to remain silent. The agent's voice was measured procedural. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Declan wasn't absorbing the words being spoken over him. His eyes had found me his father.
The agent moved through the charges, serious ones, the kind that land with weight. You are being charged with wire fraud, bank fraud, identity theft, forgery of legal documents, and conspiracy to commit elder abuse. That final count passed through the restaurant like an electric charge. Elder abuse, ugly words, a crime stripped of any complexity or dignity, nothing more than a grown man preying on the one who had given him everything he ever had. The investors regarded Declan the way you look at something that has finally shown you what it truly is and made you feel foolish for not having seen it sooner.
Declan seemed to shrink. The reality of his situation was settling now. Not the performance of shame, not the humiliation of the room, but the actual tonnage of what he was facing. No clever attorney and a carefully worded statement were going to paper over this. He was staring down 20 years in a federal prison.
He was staring at the wreckage of everything he'd built and everything he'd stolen to build it. 40 years of arrogance and it shattered all at once. The way glass shatters sudden and total with nothing to put back. He lurched toward me, the agent's grip going taut at his movement. Dad.
The word tore out of him raw. Dad, please make them stop. I didn't move. I watched him. I took in the tears carving lines down his face.
The panic etched into every feature. The desperation of a man who has used up every last play available to him. He looked small. He looked the way a child looks when something they've shattered turns out to be beyond repair. But what he'd shattered wasn't an object.
He had shattered a family. Dad, look at me. His voice was splitting under its own strain. It's me. It's Declan.
I'm your son. You can't do this. I'm your own flesh and blood. The agent drew him back firmly. Easy, Mr.
Dunore. There's no need to make this harder. Declan didn't hear him. His eyes never left mine. Every defense he'd ever constructed was down.
Behind them was nothing now but the plea of a man who had bet everything and come away with nothing. Dad, I'm sorry. I'm sorry about the money. We'll give it back. Every cent of it.