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T
oby was walking around the matchbox-sized apartment; Angela was sitting on the couch the next morning watching him pace from one side to the other repeatedly; she sighed as she placed her hand over her head. The moment she closed her eyes, she saw a certain face, dark black hair falling over his eyes as he threw his head backward, laughing at some silly joke she had made.
She gulped, wondering why he was still in the back of her mind; she knew that she was in trouble. Angela was suddenly pulled out of her thoughts when she heard a loud thud in the distance. She looked up with her eyes wide open and faced a huge wooden box that was practically dumped before her. She stared at Toby with her eyebrows raised, and he pointed at the box with all the energy in his body.
"Just open it; it has all the evidence that I have gathered over time. I hope it’s enough for us to sue him and bring him to his knees.”
She could sense the hatred burning through his voice, and it pinched at her heart, knowing very well that she had just spent the whole night with the same man who had ripped apart this kid’s life. She took a deep breath, and she noticed the way Toby's fingers were shaking as he stood there; she gestured towards the couch opposite her and spoke.
"Hey, Toby, why don't you take a seat, and I'll look through this, okay?"
He looked skeptical about it at first, but then he nodded his head, telling her that he was right there to explain it all to her. She was almost scared of what she was going to find on the other side. Angela slowly opened the wooden box; she could see cutouts placed neatly in the box. The boy stayed silent; her eyes landed on what looked to be a recording device in the box.
She looked up at Toby, and he scrambled to his feet suddenly; he picked up the device and turned it on, Angela was still lost as to what was going on, and he rolled his eyes. As he waited for the recorder to turn on, he spoke up.
"This was at the storage unit he shared with me...I didn't know it at first, but he was recording some of the phone calls he had with people. Just wait until you hear what’s on this.”
She gulped; before she could say anything, the room was suddenly flooded with what sounded to be Daren. The boy's voice was shaking as he spoke; the speaker was muffled, but she could still make some sense of what he was saying; she was just putting the words together.
"This is Daren Frost, and I would like to tell the world that David Harlow and his industry are heavily involved in gang-related activities. I would like to stand as a witness to these wrongdoings and crimes against humanity that have been going on under the cover of an organization."
Before the boy could go on, a sudden interruption was heard; it sounded like someone was banging on a wooden door, and before they knew it, the recording was cut short. Toby was still standing in the middle of the room with the player in his hand, and he watched as Angela cursed under her breath. She raised her hand and slammed it onto the coffee table, and it was enough for Toby to know that something was wrong. He looked up at her and spoke up right away.
“What? What’s wrong?”
Angela sighed; she tried to get a hold of herself; she knew that Toby wasn't fully aware of how such high-profile cases worked as he spoke again.
"Come on; this is good news; it says his name. It's practically a confession! We can get the time and date from the recording, too."
She looked up at him, and she knew that it was going to hurt when she would burst his bubble of excitement and hope as she spoke.
"I'm sorry, but the recording isn't merely enough; they can say it's fabricated, and he didn't mention he wasn't saying this under pressure and that he was sane of mind. You know that’s the first step when it comes to a confession of any sort. This can easily be disregarded in court.”
Toby's shoulders dropped, but she knew he wasn't giving up so easily. He gestured towards the box and spoke as he began to pull out the clippings of newspaper cutouts.
"Look at these; he was gathering them. All of these prove something little by little."
She looked down at the clippings, and her heart skipped a beat when she saw David. It was an image of him as always he was dressed, head to toe in a tux, and he seemed to be caught shaking hands with a man, a man she had definitely seen before she recognized his silver-gray hair tied up into a ponytail right away, and she spoke up without even giving it a second thought.
"This is Richardo Alveris, isn't it?"
Toby nodded his head immediately, and he watched as Angela stood up with the picture in her hand. She placed it on the fridge by the breakfast bar using a magnet, and she turned around to face Toby. Suddenly, she felt the fire of wanting to fight a case that was so dangerous burning inside her, and the adrenaline started to pump through her veins as she spoke.
"This is it! This is the one that we will start with; Richardo is one of the biggest gang leaders and mob heads in the city. The fact that there is an image of him with David is enough for the Feds to scramble to our feet and want everything else we have.”
A smile appeared on Toby's face; he could sense that the case was finally moving forward, but at the same time, fear flashed through his body, and he spoke what he was thinking right away.
"But this isn't enough; if we really want to bring him down, we need something direct and personal, something even he can't deny when he's put on the spot."
Toby was still going on, but Angela had stopped listening. Her phone vibrated in her lap, and when her eyes landed on the screen, she felt as if she was about to pass out. She could see the words "Unknown Number" flashing across the screen; her eyes read over the text and her heart skipped a beat right away.
Unknown Number: Don't worry; it's just the stranger from the pizza place checking in on you. Hope you're okay.
At that moment, the words that Toby had spoken to her came back, and she knew what she needed to do. She took a deep breath and turned towards Toby with fear in her eyes as she spoke.
"Toby, I may have an idea, but you may not really like it; there's actually an off chance that you probably will end up hating it."
He stared at her with his eyes wide open; Toby sat down on the chair across from her as he spoke up in a calm tone.
"Angela, you know that we need anything we can get to bring him down; if you have anything in mind, just spill it out."
She knew that he was assuming a plan far from what was about to come out of her mouth as she spoke up.
"Well, I think that we need to get more personally close to him. I know the idea seems impossible, but what if I used my presence in the industry of rich assholes to get close to him?”
At first, she noticed his facial expression dropping; he was contemplating the thought for a few moments until he finally spoke.
“Do you really think you can get to him?”
She could see the way he was having trouble seeing the idea come to life; she didn't want to push him. Further, she was about to tell him to let the idea go, but she was suddenly taken out of her thoughts when Toby pushed himself to his feet. He pointed towards the fridge with the image attached to it, and he spoke with excitement suddenly flowing through his system.
"You know what, Angela? If you managed to get a confession out of him, anything at all, and we combined it with the tape we have, we could literally...."
Before he could go on, Angela was the one who also stood up with him. This time, she was the one who cut him off and spoke up with the energy now reaching her as the idea began to make sense.
“We can practically obliterate them in court.”
Their eyes met, and they knew that they were finally onto something. Angela watched as the smile started to fall from Toby's face; she raised her eyebrows as she spoke up with concern in her tone.
“Hey, this is supposed to be good news. What’s wrong?”
He stared up at her with a distant look in his eyes as he spoke.
"I don't know; I don't want you to get hurt. The last time someone I cared about was close to that man, he managed to wipe them off the face of the Earth with no proof."
His voice trailed off, and she knew that he was talking about Daren. She gulped as she thought of the same man who had gently held her hand and made her feel unbelievably safe to be capable of such acts. She took a deep breath and looked up at Toby as she spoke.
"You don't need to worry about me; it's my job to deal with men who are good at hiding the worst parts of themselves."
She carefully placed her hand on his shoulder as she spoke.
"We're going to get him, okay?"
The boy looked up at her, and for the first time in a while, she noticed a smile on his face. Angela pointed towards the wooden box as she spoke to him, pulling him towards the work that needed to be done now.
"Alright, we still have all this to go through, and maybe, just maybe, by the time we're done, we can have more on the fridge."
He smiled back at her, and there it was, the beginning of something new.
