No Father's Son

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redsox907
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No Father's Son

Post by redsox907 » 26 May 2026, 12:35

Chapter Forty-Seven: St. Regis Part II

In a way that I hadn’t experienced for most of my adult life, words suddenly seemed impossible to form. I stood there, dumbstruck just inside the mahogany door, staring at someone I hadn’t seen, nor thought of, in 25 years.

“Really, Armando? I know it’s been a while,” she quipped, “but the way you used to beg your father to come to the office, just to say hi to me, I thought for sure you’d recognize your childhood crush.”

“He used to joke the only one who loved me more than him, was you,” she added mockingly, the subtle jab at my mother landing exactly where she wanted.

“Leslie,” I finally said. The dig at my mother had had the opposite effect Leslie was hoping for, instead of jostling me and giving her the advantage, it had given me just enough of a rise to feel that competitive edge kick in, the one where you feel the need to be one step ahead.

“I recognized you, it’s just…you weren’t who I was expecting.”

“Oh?” Leslie answered, her eyebrows drawing up in curiosity.

“I thought for sure it was—well, there was this man in Houston-“

Leslie’s humorless cackling cut me off mid-sentence.

“Raul? You really think that some low-level criminal like Raul could set this whole thing up?”

She shook her head with something between amusement and contempt, once the bout of laughter had subsided.

“Raul robs gas-stations and follows orders, Armando. I’m after bigger fish. Always have been.”

Once again, the surprise on my face gave away my inner thoughts, as Leslie continued to debunk my Raul theory in one quick motion.

“Don’t act so surprised, Armando. I knew all about your father’s cover stories and the little offspring that came with them. Unfortunately for Raul, his was one of the less integral cover stories for the cartel, one he abandoned well before his eventual demise.”

“He didn’t have your level of luck,” she continued, relishing in knowing all the answers while I stood blank-faced, like a high school kid hit with a surprise chemistry exam.

“His mother abandoned him shortly after Arturo did, leaving Raul to fend for himself. I didn’t pick up his trail until a few years ago, but at that point, he was of no use to me.”

Leslie’s dismissiveness towards people was meant to be disarming, to get me on edge and intimidate me, but much like the dig at my mother, only refocused me back to the matter at hand.

“So, Raul was of no use to you. But I am?”

A menacing grin spread from ear to ear on Leslie’s face as she pointed one perfectly manicured nail in my direction.

“You’re everything Raul is not, Armando,” Leslie affirmed, “Successful, prosperous, and independent.”

“But most importantly,” she continued, eyes narrowing, “You have everything to lose.”

Leslie finally stood, walking nowhere in particular in the hotel room, simply going through the motions of someone finally vocalizing a speech they’d rehearsed in the mirror a thousand times, if not more.

“You see, Armando. I want my due. And clearly, Arturo isn’t going to be able to give it to me, so the burden falls on you, as the most eligible heir to his legacy.”

“My father is-“

“Dead,” she said, whirling on her heels mid stride, once again locking eyes on my own.

“His head cut off and affixed atop a safe full of cash, put on display for all to see. Do you know why that happened, Armando?”

“Because he was stealing money from the Juarez Cartel,” I said matter-of-factly, as if it was the most logical conclusion.

For the first time since I entered the room, Leslie seemed genuinely surprised. Me knowing about the cartel apparently wasn’t in her script. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, before pacing back across the room to gather her thoughts.

By this point, I’d made my way across the room and was leaning against the cool-granite countertop of the breakfast bar that separated the kitchen from the rest of the hotel room.

“How did you know about the cartel?” Leslie finally questioned.

“Air Force. I got expelled because my application contained falsified information.”

Leslie ran her fingers through her hair, the gray at the roots showing more as she flipped it over her shoulder. “I should have figured that one out. I knew you got expelled, but I couldn’t find anyone who could divulge as to why.”

“No matter,” she said, falling right back into the rhythm of her prepared tirade. “Ask me how I knew.”

“Because you were involved?”

The humorless chuckle made its way out of Leslie again as she shook her head in disagreement.

“No, Armando. Well, yes, but no.”

“The cartel told me, as they tortured me. You see, once they found out your father was slowly siphoning his own money to join La Familia Michoacán, they assumed that his personal accountant had to be involved. The one who managed the entirety of the main cover story for their most trusted courier liaison.”

“The joke was, Arturo had always been siphoning money,” she fumed, “that, I was involved in. He always told me once he had enough to disappear, we would abscond together.”

My body bristled again, remembering all the times my mother had accused Arturo of cheating on her with the very woman standing in front of me.

“What, you didn’t think little miss homemaker Tara Briggs was enough for Arturo, did you?” She scoffed, swerving off the path of her prepared dialogue to gleefully take another jab at my mother.

“She was just a means to an end, they all were.”

Another jab at my mother, the woman who had saved me from suffering a similar fate to Raul, or even Leslie. The irony was not lost on me, even in that moment, but I let the moment pass, letting her believe her jab landed exactly where she wanted.

“We all were, apparently. Because he left me high and dry with the rest of them.”

She crossed back to the desk and downed the half-tumbler of clear liquid on the desk in one long gulp, grimacing at the burn of what appeared to be Mezcal, before diving back into her speech.

“I thought we were saving money for us, but it turns out it was only for him. They let him continue the charade until he made his move, seizing him with his money in Ocotlan when he was going to arrange for his acceptance into La Familia Michoacán.”

“They tortured him and when he wouldn’t disclose his contacts at Michoacán, or reveal who had helped him stash the money, he started threatening those close to him.”

“They put us in the same room and made him watch as they took my fingernails off, one by one,” her voice had gotten low and shallow at the memory, her hands involuntarily closing gently around the fingertips on her left hand.

Leslie pressed on, her voice in the same low tone. “When that didn’t work, they decided they weren’t going to get anything out of him and just made an example out of him.”

“That was the end for him, I, however, wouldn’t be so lucky. They kept me for two more weeks, torturing me, starving me, and raping me. I can only assume, from what I was able to figure out later, this is about the time you and Tara fled Las Cruces, chased by black SUVs.”

“I’d told them about the safe, in your house, the one that was emptied. They almost killed me after that, deciding that I had no more valuable information. It wasn’t the rest of the money they were after, they wanted information. Who Arturo was talking to, so they could finish sending the message that started with his severed head.”

“He was in the room, Armando. The same man who cut your father’s head off with a machete. I’ll never forget his face. Bald head, trimmed goatee, wearing a white suit and white snakeskin boots.”

“You know what’s funny. One of the first thoughts I had? Wondering why he wore white when he was the executioner. Seemed like a poor choice of wardrobe.”

“He was sharpening his machete when I finally had a stroke of genius. The other families. I was the only one who knew every pocket of family Arturo had in the United States and Mexico. I convinced them, he had to have stashed the money and information in one of those safe houses. I had the info, but it was in a safety deposit box in Las Cruces. One only I had access to.”

“They left me in the locked room for two whole days, chained to the chair they’d intended to execute me in, the machete still sharpened on the table across from me. Finally, the one in charge—Emilio—told me they were going to let me go.”

“I had a week to get the info on the other safe houses or find out who else knew about Arturo’s planned defection. The week came and went, and I’d been able to find nothing aside from Raul’s mother, who was a ghost in the wind at that point, and Raul in the orphan system. The other five families I knew of? Scattered, gone the moment the money disappeared.”

“When no one showed up after a week, I sat in my house and waited. Thinking for sure, they’d come at night. Kidnap me like before. Maybe I’d get lucky this time, and they’d just kill me straight away, rather than having their way with me first.”

“I was a mess, Armando. Jumping at shadows. Scared to even leave my house. One week turned into two, two turns into four, and suddenly I’d been living off the small groceries I’d been brave enough to venture out to the gas station and procure for over a month. I don’t know what happened. Maybe they forgot about me, maybe Emilio got killed and the cartel moved on. But they never came for me.”

“I spent years moving from place to place, never attaching myself to anything I couldn’t leave in ten-seconds flat, should a black SUV suddenly appear outside my house. I still had a degree in finance that I was able to use to maintain employment and more importantly, I knew how they operated. I knew what to look for, what to avoid, and how to stay invisible. Eventually, I found myself fortuitously employed by a Wall Street stockbroker who was good at trading, but terrible about managing his money.”

“He never noticed an extra thousand or two missing from his account after one of his drunken gambling binges. I worked for him for years as his personal accountant, then eventually moved into a place in upstate New York that was far away from the city, somewhere I thought should the cartel come looking, they’d never find me.”

“Then one day, absentmindedly scrolling through Facebook, who should I see? Why, Armando Leon. FCS National Championship winning coach, whose speech about his mother on the podium went viral.”
She stopped pacing and crossed the room slowly, stopping close enough that I could see the years in her eyes, before she delivered the ultimatum.

“It was then and there that I realized what I needed. Revenge.”

“How did you and little miss homemaker Tara Briggs turn out better than me? How did she not only outrun the cartel but somehow thrive enough to raise you into a successful member of society, while I was stuck skimming off the top of a Wall Street trader who spent too much time playing in the snow to notice his trust fund dwindling away.”

“So you see, Armando. What I want is simple. It comes down to two things, and the beauty of it is: you get to decide the outcome.”

“You’re either going to give me enough money that I can disappear for good. Or I’m going to expose you, who you really are, to the entire world. Because, when you look deep enough, Armando, you are your father’s son.”
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djp73
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No Father's Son

Post by djp73 » 26 May 2026, 12:50

:ohshit:
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Caesar
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No Father's Son

Post by Caesar » 26 May 2026, 14:13

Armando about to end up like his pa.
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No Father's Son

Post by redsox907 » 28 May 2026, 01:48

djp73 wrote:
26 May 2026, 12:50
:ohshit:
Image
Caesar wrote:
26 May 2026, 14:13
Armando about to end up like his pa.
turn the chise into a story of survival about Jessica taking care of two kids on her own? :kghah:
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No Father's Son

Post by redsox907 » 28 May 2026, 01:49

Chapter Forty-Eight: Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire

“Really, after all this, all you’re after is money?” I hissed at Leslie, still reeling from the accusation that I was no better than my father, the man whose own actions resulted in my current predicament.

Leslie let loose another humorless laugh, “Oh, on the contrary, Armando. I’d much prefer you call my bluff.”

“The money is for my pain and suffering. If you should balk? I’ll get to watch you publicly crucified, everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve, come crashing down. How long do you think the university is going to stand behind you as alumni and national brands turn away from the son of a cartel operative?”

I ran my hand along my stubbled cheek. This had officially become the most challenging confrontation of the season, bar none. Georgia be damned.

“If people like Kendall Briles and Jeff Lebby can keep finding jobs, I’m sure I’d fare just fine. Winning heals all, so they say,” I retorted, though I was unsure why I was arguing. This was Leslie’s angle, her whole plan. Anything that I could come up with on the fly, she had surely already thought of a counter-argument.

As if on cue, Leslie quipped, “Oh, you wouldn’t be without work. But you would be a disgrace. Anywhere you went, your father’s shadow would follow you. You would never be able to win enough to cast it away.”

“And think about little Tara Lydia, or AJ. Do you want them being hounded at every school, every job, everywhere they turn in their lives about how their grandfather helped smuggle drugs, women, and guns into the country? Do you really want to be the person who couldn’t protect them?”

She really had planned for everything.

“So, what’s to keep me from just calling the police, right now, and telling them everything?”

It was a last-ditch effort, and again, Leslie was more than prepared.

In the blink of an eye, Leslie crossed the short distance from where she had been standing by the desk to the adjacent bedroom, stopping in front of the mirrored French doors that separated the bedroom and the deep-soaking tub. Without hesitation, she flung open one side of the French doors, then moments later brought it flying back closed, her hand in between the latch between the doors.

The crunch of her hand being sandwiched between the two doors echoed off the bathroom walls and engulfed the room for a split second. With nothing more than a grimace, Leslie held her already swelling hand up in front of her as if it were a weapon.

“Call the cops and tell them what, Armando? How are you going to explain to them why you’re in a hotel, that your name is on, with a mystery woman, who is suddenly beaten, crying, and saying you tried having your way with her?”

As if to prove she could hold her end of the threat, tears immediately began to well behind her perfectly sculpted mascara.

“I don’t know what happened, officer. I knew his family back in Las Cruces, I worked for his father even, so when he invited me up for a drink I didn’t think anything of it. But the minute the door closed, he changed,” she broke into theatrical sobs before abruptly halting, showing the ease she could slip into the story if needed.

I pressed both hands against my face, fingertips digging in right below my hairline, as I tried to contemplate my next move.

“So what, I’m just supposed to drain my bank account, wire it to you, then try and deal with the aftermath?”

A look of disappointment flashed across her face as she shook her head, “No, Armando. You’re no good to me if your cover is blown. You got your father’s looks, but apparently you didn’t get his wit for evading the government.”

“Here’s what’s going to happen. When you leave here, I’m going to text you the information for an offshore bank account. By January 15th—exactly one month, Armando—there needs to be $500K in that account, or by the time the National Championship game is being played, the New York Press will be running cover stories on the ‘Cartel’s Prodigal Son.’”

“Once you’ve done that like a good little boy, then we’ll discuss the monthly deposits you’re going to set up until you’ve paid me a full ten-million, the amount I feel I’m owed after all the hardship endured by your father.”

With her demand made, Leslie quickly dismissed me, but not before embracing me for a brief hug. The sudden softness of the move caught me off guard and I instinctively returned the quick embrace. As soon as the hug started, she pushed me away with a quick shooing motion, before turning on her heel and pouring another drink as I quietly left the room.

She hadn’t taken my phone number down, not because she had missed a step in her plan, simply because it was information she already had as I would soon find out.

Ten minutes after arriving back at the team hotel, my phone began buzzing frantically. It was Leslie.

Home address, Jessica’s maiden name, where Jessica’s parents lived, where her brothers were stationed, what rank they held in the military. She had it all. Leslie hadn’t just spent the last six years plotting revenge, she had planned it down to the minuscule detail.

After all of the personal information, meant to remind me just how vulnerable I really was, came the final nail. A picture of me sulking out her hotel room, with the time stamp: 1:13 A.M. Immediately followed by a picture of our quick embrace, angled to hide the rigidness of it, framing it to look like a soft embrace between close acquaintances.

‘Of course, she had the room under surveillance,’ I thought to myself with dismay.

The team breakfast the next morning, the flight back to Norman, even returning home to Jessica and the kids was a blur. I went through the motions, but even with a gun to my head, I couldn’t pull one specific detail out of the 24-hours that followed the Leslie confrontation. I sat in my office the night after the showdown with Leslie at St. Regis, staring at pages of legal documents Donna Zane had piled together to prep for the NCAA Investigation in the morning, without a clue of what any of them meant.

At some point, Jessica had appeared beside me with a plate of cheesecake and a soft kiss.

“I know you’re stressed about tomorrow,” she whispered through the kiss, “But just know, we’ll always be by your side.”

‘If only you knew,’ I thought with another fresh pang of guilt.

I forced a halfhearted smile and mumbled a thank you for the cheesecake at first, then doubled down for everything. The smile slipped at the edges on the second thank you. Jessica clocked it, I could tell by the slight shift in her own soft smile, but she knew not to press. Not tonight.

She knew the stress I was under, or at least believed she did.

She placed another kiss on my forehead.

“I’m putting the kids to bed. You should come say goodnight real quick, they’ve missed you. AJ wouldn’t stop telling everyone at the park his Dad was a “two timer” SEC Champion,” Jessica said with a soft laugh, the smile returning to her face.

I forced another smile, the irony of my own son calling me a “two timer” out of accident and having it be truer than anyone would hopefully ever know heavy on my mind.

“Yeah, I’ll come say goodnight,” I heard myself say, “Then I’ve got to try and make sense of these documents Leslie sent over.”

Jessica’s brow furrowed instantly, catching the name even before I’d finished the sentence.

“Leslie is Donna’s paralegal.” Another lie that came too quickly, I thought to myself with dismay.

I really am my father’s son.

Jessica’s face softened immediately at the assumed connection.

“Just make sure you get some sleep. You look ragged, Flyboy, and you’ve got to be on your game to deal with that Specter asshole. The way they’ve been hounding everything, you’d think you were living a double life or something.”

Another forced smile stretched across my face, the joke once again striking too close to home.

Eight A.M. came quickly and without apology. Michael Specter arrived ten minutes early and by the time I’d left my office and made the brisk walk down to the conference rooms, chugging my second C4 of the morning already, Specter, Donna, and Roger Denny were already set up and waiting.

I took my seat across from Specter, with Denny and Donna flanking me on either side, and a recording device placed between Specter and myself.

He explained how the interview process would work, how the tape stayed running throughout the entire process unless otherwise noted. Once everyone nodded in agreement, Specter reached across the table and thumbed the recorder to life.

The small green light on the recorder blinked once, then held steady as the recording began.

“Armando,” Specter began, a hint of smugness under the surface, “Tell me about Temecula, California.”

Donna’s pen stopped moving immediately beside me. On the other side, Denny gulped.

No one had expected Specter to lead with Temecula.
Last edited by redsox907 on 28 May 2026, 22:10, edited 1 time in total.
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djp73
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No Father's Son

Post by djp73 » 28 May 2026, 05:35

MEET ME IN TEMECULA
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Captain Canada
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No Father's Son

Post by Captain Canada » 28 May 2026, 10:50

I mean if Armando's smart, he would just the accusation and go to the press himself. Make Leslie's threats null and void.

But is that a risk he's willing to take?
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No Father's Son

Post by redsox907 » 28 May 2026, 23:46

djp73 wrote:
28 May 2026, 05:35
MEET ME IN TEMECULA
I don't get the reference, but fuck it we ride
Captain Canada wrote:
28 May 2026, 10:50
I mean if Armando's smart, he would just the accusation and go to the press himself. Make Leslie's threats null and void.

But is that a risk he's willing to take?
:hmm: its a big risk. What are the odds they take him at his word, versus drawing their own conclusions. Coaches and players have been blacklisted for less. Especially non yt ones
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redsox907
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No Father's Son

Post by redsox907 » 28 May 2026, 23:46

we gonna do it
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redsox907
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No Father's Son

Post by redsox907 » 28 May 2026, 23:46

the bump special

:bump:
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