Adam called late that night, sounding pleased with himself. “Buddy, I’ve got the goods,” he said. “And I think I know exactly how we can use them to help you.”
By the next morning, only the laziest people in town weren’t talking about the explosive video spreading online. The clip was titled: “Prosecutor’s Son Takes Bribes and Runs Wild—You Need to See This.” Naturally, the footage reached Glen’s father, a man widely respected in the city.
The prosecutor had long since accepted that his son was a disappointment. Glen had dropped out of school, never held a real job, and lived entirely off his father’s influence and money. But a public humiliation on this scale was more than the prosecutor was willing to tolerate.
The video racked up views fast and stirred up public outrage. Once word got out whose son was at the center of the scandal, it reached not just the public but higher-level authorities as well. Before long, Glen’s father received a very serious phone call from above.
No one knows exactly what was said in that conversation. But soon afterward, Glen packed a suitcase and disappeared in a hurry. Fortunately for Annie, her useless husband never came back to town.
She was able to finalize the divorce quickly, and in that matter, Glen’s father actually helped. The prosecutor didn’t want his only grandson paying the price for having a criminal for a father. Once the uproar around the video died down, Mike and Annie finally began living together.
Before long, they made it official and got married. A year later, they welcomed a baby boy of their own. Mike had no trouble building a bond with Annie’s older son and became the father figure the boy had never really had.
At last, the child had a loving and dependable dad. As for Glen, no one in that town ever saw him again. And truth be told, nobody seemed especially bothered by that—not even the prosecutor himself.
Glen’s own father didn’t go looking for him. Instead, he helped Mike land a good job. In the end, that made sense: Mike had become the kind of man the prosecutor wanted as an example for his grandson. So the former inmate ended up becoming far from a stranger to one of the most powerful men in town.
