Chapter 9 - THE LAST PRANKCharles laughed softly.
“You sound like your father.”
The sentence hit harder than the threat.
“You knew him.”
“Michael was a decent accountant. Poor strategist.”
“You threatened him.”
“I advised him.”
“To stay silent.”
“To think about his family.”
My hand tightened around the phone.
Rebecca had told me never to bait someone making threats.
Keep them talking.
Do not reveal evidence.
Do not make promises.
“Why call me?”
“To give you an opportunity.”
“Money?”
“Closure.”
I almost smiled.
“What does closure cost?”
“Your public statement.”
“What statement?”
“That Ryan’s prank emotionally affected you and caused you to misinterpret unrelated documents.”
There it was.
He needed me unreliable.
“How much?”
“Two million dollars.”
I heard Mom inhale from across the room.
The call was on speaker.
Marcus was already contacting investigators.
“Two million for one statement?”
“And a confidentiality agreement.”
“You must be terrified.”
Charles stopped laughing.
“You’re confusing inconvenience with fear.”
“Ryan made the same mistake.”
“What mistake?”
“Thinking I’d be ashamed.”
Silence.
That was the center of the whole thing.
Ryan’s system worked because humiliation creates secrecy.
People hide what embarrasses them.
Victims disappear.
Charles had spent decades depending on that reflex.
I had almost done exactly what he expected.
Leave the hospital.
Go home.
Cry alone.
Delete my accounts.
Instead, the world learned what happened.
And once the shame was no longer mine, he had nothing to hold.
Charles lowered his voice.
“Your mother is getting older.”
Marcus immediately raised one finger.
There.
The threat.
I kept my voice level.
“What does my mother have to do with this?”
“Nothing. I’m simply saying families are fragile things.”
“You should know.”
He hung up.
Investigators moved quickly afterward.
The recorded call became part of the intimidation case.
Phone records tied the number to a prepaid device purchased by an employee of a Bennett security contractor.
The same contractor’s vehicle had appeared near my apartment.
The same contractor employed the man suspected of throwing the rock at Mom’s house.
Then Evan’s archive provided the final link.
A folder titled C.B. Requests.
Inside were instructions sent from Charles to Ryan over the years.
Names.
Background information.
Desired outcomes.
Humiliate.
Discredit.
Pressure.
Remove.
Not all of Ryan’s videos were entertainment.
Some were assignments.
The prank group had unknowingly—or sometimes knowingly—served as an intimidation machine.
Ryan gave investigators the encryption keys.
That was the moment his father’s defense began collapsing.
Three days later, warrants were issued.
Charles Bennett was arrested on multiple financial and obstruction-related allegations.
Several associates were taken into custody.
Bennett Capital announced an independent restructuring and placed executives on leave.
Haven House recovered funds through frozen accounts and settlements.
And Daniel Grant’s case was reopened for posthumous review.
But there was still one thing I needed to do.
I agreed to meet Ryan.
Not alone.
Not privately.
Rebecca arranged a conference room at her office with attorneys present.
Ryan entered wearing a simple white shirt.
He looked smaller somehow.
Not physically.
Just ordinary.
The myth around him was gone.
For months I had thought of Ryan as charismatic, powerful, impossible to ignore.
Now he looked like a man who had built an identity from other people’s fear and had suddenly lost his supply.
He sat across from me.
“Thank you for coming.”
“I’m not here for you.”
He nodded.
“I figured.”
I placed one photograph on the table.
Us at Christmas.
His arm around me.
My head against his chest.
“Was any of this real?”
He stared at it for a long time.
“Yes.”
“That’s not enough.”
“I know.”
“I need the truth.”
He closed his eyes.
“When I met you, I was supposed to get close enough to learn what records you had.”
“Did your father order it?”
“Yes.”
“When did you start actually caring?”
“About two months in.”
“And you stayed.”
“Yes.”
“You could have warned me.”
“Yes.”
“You could have stopped.”
“Yes.”
“You could have told your father no.”
“Yes.”
Each answer became smaller.
I leaned back.
“Then why didn’t you?”
Ryan’s eyes filled with tears.
“Because loving you would have required becoming someone I didn’t know how to be.”
That was perhaps the first fully truthful thing he had ever said to me.
He reached into his pocket slowly.
Rebecca’s colleague tensed.
Ryan placed something on the table.
A small velvet jewelry box.
My stomach turned.
“I bought it three months ago.”
I did not touch it.
“An engagement ring?”
He nodded.
“I was going to ask after the prank.”
I laughed once, stunned.
“You were going to humiliate me in front of millions of people and then propose?”
“I thought after things calmed down—”
“That I’d forgive you?”
“I don’t know what I thought.”
“That’s the problem.”
I pushed the box back.
“You believed apologies reset consequences.”
He stared at it.
“My father always said people could be bought once they were broken.”
“And did you believe him?”
“For too long.”
I stood.
Ryan looked up.
“Emma.”
I stopped.
“I’m sorry.”
“I believe you.”
His face changed, hope appearing where it shouldn’t.
So I finished.
“Being sorry and being forgiven are different things.”
The hope vanished.
I left.
Outside, Natalie waited beside her car with two coffees.
“How’d it go?”
“He apologized.”
“And?”
“And I’m still leaving.”
She handed me a cup.
“Good.”
Months passed.
The criminal cases moved slowly, as criminal cases do.
Some charges were resolved through pleas.
Others continued.
Civil lawsuits multiplied.
Ryan entered a cooperation agreement and faced consequences of his own for fraud-related conduct, unlawful recordings, and his involvement in several incidents.
Evan testified.
Chloe testified.
Mason eventually did too.
Charles fought everything.
Every charge.
Every witness.
Every document.
But evidence does not become weaker because a rich man dislikes it.
Then, nine months after the morning at St. Catherine’s, I attended a hearing with Lily.
A judge issued findings supporting the vacating of Daniel Grant’s old conviction after prosecutors agreed that material evidence undermined the original case.
Lily squeezed my hand.
When the judge spoke her father’s name, she cried.
Outside the courthouse, reporters gathered.
One shouted, “Emma! Do you consider this revenge?”
I stopped.
The word almost made me laugh.
“No.”
I looked toward Lily.
“This is correction.”
That night, I opened the 96REVENGES account for the last time.
Every video had been removed.
The page displayed:
ACCOUNT UNAVAILABLE.
For almost a year, Ryan had believed Number Ninety-Six would be his masterpiece.
Instead, it became the one prank that opened every locked door behind it.
But there was still one final chapter left.
Because saving myself from Ryan was not the same thing as rebuilding the person I had been before him.
May you like
And I was beginning to understand I didn’t want that old version of me back.
I wanted somebody new.
