My daughter framed me for embezzling $850,000 from my own company, something I never did. For 22 months they came to visit me in prison, but I always refused to see them. The day of my release will also be the very day they lose everything.
Part 1
The day I walked out of that courtroom a free man, I thought the air would taste sweet. I thought it would feel like victory. Instead, it tasted like rain and metal, and it felt like standing on a dock in a storm—steady ground under my shoes, but the water still pulling at my ankles.
Vancouver was cold for October, the kind of cold that sneaks through a coat and finds the places you didn’t know could ache. I stood under the courthouse awning while reporters clustered near the steps, their microphones bright and hungry. Sharon Park, my lawyer, guided me with one hand on my elbow, as if I might drift back into the building by mistake.
“Keep your head down,” she murmured. “Let me talk.”
I didn’t need to be told. Twenty-two months behind concrete teaches you how to become small in public. It’s not fear, exactly. It’s calculation. If people can’t read you, they can’t use your face as a story.
The cameras flashed anyway.
Richard Holloway, sixty-three, wrongfully convicted of fraud, conviction overturned, released immediately—those were the words that would hit the evening news. They’d talk about the miscarriage of justice and the forensic evidence and the shock in the Crown’s face. They’d use phrases like vindicated and dramatic reversal.
But none of them would taste what I tasted: betrayal that never quite leaves your mouth. Like biting your tongue and finding blood, over and over, until you forget what normal flavor is.
I glanced across the street at the glass windows of Sharon’s office, rain streaking down them like the city was trying to erase itself. In that reflection, I saw my own suit—my old suit, the one I’d worn the day I was arrested—hanging off me like borrowed fabric. Prison meals and prison sleep had carved weight off my body in slow, silent cuts.
Sharon’s voice cut through my thoughts. “Richard,” she said softly, “you’re free. Don’t let them steal the first minute.”
Free. The word landed carefully, like something that might break if I held it too hard.
Across the steps, a woman shouted my name. I didn’t turn. Because in my mind, I could still see another courthouse, another day, another voice saying Dad, we need to talk.
Let me take you back to that Tuesday morning in March 2022, when the cherry blossoms were just starting to bloom along my street in Kitsilano and I still believed my daughter was my anchor.
For forty years, I built Holloway Marine Supply from nothing. Not from a trust fund, not from an investor, but from a leaky warehouse and a pair of hands that were willing to work until they bled. My late wife, Catherine, and I poured our lives into it. We sold maritime equipment—winches, rope, safety gear, navigation systems—to fishermen, shipping companies, and eventually the Canadian Coast Guard. It wasn’t glamorous. It was honest. It kept people alive on the water.
When Catherine died five years ago, cancer taking her in small increments until there was nothing left to bargain with, I didn’t know how to be a man without her. So I became a man with a schedule. I arrived early, stayed late, and pretended work could fill the space grief had hollowed out.
Rebecca was the only piece of Catherine I had left in human form. Our daughter. Smart, sharp, ambitious. Eight years earlier, she’d joined the company as CFO after earning her MBA at UBC. I was proud in a way that made my chest hurt. I told people my daughter could run circles around me with numbers. It felt like legacy, like Catherine could rest knowing our child was safe in the world.
Rebecca married Derek Chen four years before the nightmare. Derek was a consultant, the sort of man who spoke in confident paragraphs and always had a new “opportunity” he wanted to explain. He’d offered to help upgrade our email system, said he had experience with security. I’d given him administrative access because he was family, and because I didn’t understand that trust can be a door you leave unlocked.
They had a daughter, Emma—my granddaughter—six years old then, all bright eyes and questions, the kind of child who calls you Grandpa like it’s a promise. If you had told me she’d be used as a shield in a crime, I would have laughed at the cruelty of the idea.
That Tuesday, I arrived at the office early to review quarterly reports. We’d just secured a six-million-dollar contract with the Coast Guard, the culmination of two years of negotiations and a hundred tiny meetings where I’d tried not to think about Catherine missing the moment. I was at my desk when Rebecca walked in.
She wasn’t alone.
Derek followed, his hand resting on her shoulder like he was supporting her through grief. Two RCMP officers came behind them, uniforms crisp, faces professionally neutral. Rebecca’s eyes were flat, too controlled, like she’d practiced the expression in a mirror.
“Dad,” she said, “we need to talk.”
The words weren’t new. But her tone was. It sounded like a door closing.
The officers told me I was under investigation for embezzling eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars from my own company. They had bank statements showing transfers to an offshore account in my name. Forged invoices from suppliers that didn’t exist. Emails with my digital signature authorizing fraudulent payments. They spoke as if they were reading weather—dry, factual, already convinced.
I remember my lungs refusing to cooperate. The world narrowed to the edge of my desk and the glossy RCMP badge catching light. I looked at Rebecca, waiting for her to laugh and correct them. To say, this is a mistake, my father can’t even open a PDF without help.
Rebecca’s voice came out steady. “I found the discrepancies three weeks ago,” she said. “I’ve been working with auditors. I hoped there was an explanation. But the evidence is overwhelming.”
There were tears in her eyes. Real tears. That was the part that broke something in me. Because tears are supposed to mean truth. Tears are supposed to mean pain you didn’t choose.
“That’s a lie,” I shouted, and my voice sounded foreign, too loud in my own office. “Rebecca, tell them you handle the accounts. You know I would never—”
“That’s exactly why this is so painful, Dad,” she interrupted, and her voice had that particular sharpness people use when they want the room to believe they’re suffering.
Derek tightened his grip on her shoulder. “Sir,” he said, smooth and sympathetic, “I know this is difficult, but we have a responsibility to Emma. We can’t have her grandfather be a thief.”
They arrested me in front of my staff.
Some of them cried. Some stared at the floor. Nobody knew where to put their eyes when the man who signed their paychecks was handcuffed like a stranger. I tried to tell them it was a mistake. My voice drowned under procedure.
The bail hearing was worse. The Crown argued I was a flight risk with access to offshore funds. My corporate lawyer, Paul Morrison—the man who’d handled our contracts for years—stood beside me like a deer on a highway. Criminal court has teeth corporate court never shows. Paul was out of his depth, and I could feel it like a crack under my feet.
Bail was set at five hundred thousand dollars.
My assets were frozen pending investigation. Company accounts, personal accounts, even the joint account Catherine and I had shared, her name still on it like a ghost. Everything locked. The only way to make bail was for Rebecca, as CFO with forty percent ownership, to authorize a loan against the company.
She refused.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” she said, voice trembling perfectly for the judge. “But I have to think about Emma’s future. If you’re innocent, the trial will prove it. Until then, I can’t risk the company’s financial stability.”
She said it like a prayer. Like virtue.
So I sat in pre-trial detention at North Fraser for four months, watching men with real crimes count days on walls, while my own days were counted by fluorescent lights that never fully shut off. My lawyer was replaced by a public defender, Jennifer Walsh, young and earnest and drowning in caseloads. She meant well. Meaning well doesn’t buy experts.
At trial, the prosecution laid out their case meticulously. The bank records. The invoices for companies that didn’t exist. Emails “sent” from my computer. Rebecca testified and cried and spoke about loving me but loving her daughter more. Derek testified and painted my grief as bitterness, said I’d made comments about deserving money after working my whole life. Lies delivered with the confidence of people who believe the world will reward performance.
Jennifer brought a handwriting expert who said some signatures looked inconsistent but couldn’t swear to forgery. We couldn’t afford a digital forensics expert. We had no investigators to trace the money. I testified anyway, because I couldn’t sit silent while they wrote my life as a crime.
Without concrete proof, I looked like a guilty man making excuses.
The jury deliberated six hours. Guilty on twelve counts.
The judge sentenced me to three years. With credit for time served, I had twenty-six months remaining.
They sent me to William Head Institution on Vancouver Island, medium security, where the ocean’s sound was a reminder of everything I couldn’t reach. I slept in a cell small enough to measure grief by steps. In the first months, I woke up angry and fell asleep numb. Rebecca sent one letter. She said she hoped I would reflect, and she’d bring Emma to visit when I admitted guilt.
I wrote back one sentence: I am innocent, and one day I will prove it.
She never contacted me again.
What she didn’t know was that in prison, sometimes the only thing left is your mind. And my mind, once it stopped screaming, started working.
William Head had its own rhythm, slow and merciless. Count at dawn. Count at noon. Count at night. The same gate buzzing open and shut, the same concrete corridors smelling faintly of bleach and damp wool. Men called each other by last names and crimes. I was “Holloway Marine,” like my identity had been reduced to a headline.
At first, I tried to survive on outrage. I replayed the courtroom, the way Rebecca dabbed her eyes, the way Derek’s hand stayed on her shoulder like a claim. I imagined walking into my office and finding them sitting at my desk, using my signature like a tool. Then the rage would turn inward, into questions that clawed at sleep: How did I miss it? How did I raise a daughter who could do this? How did love become evidence against me?
The hardest nights were the ones where the ocean was loud. The sound rolled through the walls and into my bones, and I could almost smell salt, like the world was taunting me with freedom. I would lie on the thin mattress and picture Emma’s face, the way she’d laugh when I pretended to be a grumpy sea captain. I wondered if she still asked about me, or if Rebecca had already rewritten me into a villain in her bedtime stories.
I learned quickly that innocence doesn’t protect you inside. It only isolates you. Other men didn’t want to hear about being framed; they’d heard too many versions of that story. So I stopped talking. I listened instead. I watched who traded favors and who avoided debt. I learned which guards treated people like humans and which treated them like problems.
And somewhere in that listening, I realized something terrifying: if I didn’t find my own proof, nobody was coming to find it for me.
Part 2
William Head had an education program and, for reasons I still can’t fully explain, I signed up for woodworking.
It wasn’t that I wanted a coffee table. It was that I needed my hands to do something other than shake with rage. In the shop, the smell of sawdust was honest. Wood doesn’t lie. It splits where it’s weak. It warps where it’s wet. It doesn’t pretend to be something else because you’re watching.
That’s where I met Tom Nakamura.
Tom was sixty-eight, wiry, calm, and quiet in a way that drew attention. He’d been a forensic accountant for the RCMP before a late-career scandal landed him here. A mortgage fraud scheme, he’d told me with blunt shame, a bad decision made at the end of a long road. He carried his regret like a bruise he didn’t hide.
We were assigned to the same bench one afternoon, sanding table legs until our arms burned. Tom watched me for a while, the way someone watches a man holding his breath too long.
“You don’t sand like a guy serving time for what he did,” he said finally.
I almost laughed. “How do I sand?”
“Like you’re trying to grind through the wood,” he replied. “Like you think there’s something trapped underneath.”
I stared at the table leg in my hands. “There is,” I said. “My life.”
Tom didn’t ask me to explain. He just waited. That patience—quiet, unreactive—made something loosen in me.
So I told him. The offshore account. The ghost companies. The emails “from my computer.” Rebecca’s tears. Derek’s performance. The jury’s six hours. The sentence that felt like a trapdoor.
When I finished, Tom set his sandpaper down and looked at me like he’d just seen a pattern.
“Everything you’re describing sounds wrong,” he said quietly.
“What do you mean, wrong?” I snapped. “Wrong as in I’m innocent? Because I know that.”
Tom shook his head once. “Wrong as in too clean,” he said. “Real embezzlement is messy. Greed is sloppy. People make mistakes. They leave gaps. They move money in ways that don’t align. This sounds like someone who knows exactly what investigators look for.”
My throat tightened. “You think I was set up.”
Tom held my gaze. “I think someone built a case against you.”
“My daughter is a CFO, not a criminal mastermind,” I said bitterly.
“Maybe not,” Tom replied. “But her husband’s a tech consultant, right? Does he know digital security?”
The question landed like a weight.
Two years earlier, Derek had offered to “modernize” our systems. He’d installed remote access tools. He’d insisted we needed better email security. I’d nodded, grateful, because Catherine had been sick and I’d been distracted and Derek spoke with the confident authority of someone who believes words are enough.
Tom leaned closer. “Listen carefully,” he said. “You need a better lawyer and real forensic work. But you can’t afford that. So you become your own investigator.”
I almost told him it was impossible. I was in prison. My money was gone. My reputation was ash. But Tom’s eyes didn’t flinch.
“I can teach you what to look for,” he said.
For the next eighteen months, Tom taught me as if my life depended on it, because it did.
We started with basics: how money moves, how criminals hide it, why shell companies exist, how invoices can be forged without looking forged to an untrained eye. Tom turned the prison library into a classroom. He pulled old case studies off the shelves, explained patterns like he was mapping constellations.
“Fraud is storytelling,” he told me one night, flipping through a textbook. “You create a narrative that looks plausible at a glance. Most systems are built to move fast, not to question. So you make the paperwork feel inevitable.”
I thought of Rebecca on the stand, walking the jury through spreadsheets like she was reading scripture. “So she was the storyteller.”
“Maybe,” Tom said. “Or maybe she was the narrator someone else wrote for.”
Step one was evidence. Not feelings. Not memories. Evidence.
Tom showed me how to file Freedom of Information requests to obtain the prosecution’s disclosure package. It took months. Government time moves like sludge. But eventually, a thick stack arrived: bank statements, invoices, email printouts, internal IT confirmations, auditor notes. The same mountain that buried me at trial.
This time, we climbed it with tools.
We laid the documents out on a table in the library and started looking for cracks.
The offshore account had been opened using my passport information. The bank documents included an opening date: February 14, 2020.
Tom tapped the date. “Where were you that week?”
I didn’t have to guess. Catherine had still been alive then, fragile, insisting I travel to a maritime trade show in Toronto because the business needed it. I’d been gone five days. I had boarding passes. Hotel receipts. Photos from the convention floor that I’d texted to Catherine with little jokes about the terrible coffee.
“There’s no way I could have opened an account in the Cayman Islands,” I whispered.
Tom nodded. “Good. That’s a fact with teeth.”
Next came the invoices from ghost companies: Pacific Marine Distributors, Coastal Equipment Solutions, names chosen to sound real. Investigation had proven they didn’t exist. But Tom looked deeper.
“These fonts,” he said, pointing. “Slightly different from your legitimate supplier invoices. And these business registration numbers—look them up.”
We did, using the limited computer access prisoners were allowed. The numbers belonged to real companies, but in different provinces. Someone had copied legitimate registration numbers and attached them to fake names, banking on the fact nobody would verify the mismatch.
“They borrowed reality,” Tom said. “Because reality is harder to question.”
Then came the emails, the thing that had sunk me the hardest. Our IT department had testified that the digital signature came from my computer. The metadata in the trial exhibits was minimal, but Tom insisted we request the full digital forensics report.
When it arrived, Tom’s eyes widened. “Look,” he said, jabbing a finger at a line of technical data I barely understood. “Timestamp and IP address. These emails were sent during business hours, but the IP address is residential—West Vancouver.”
My mouth went dry. “That’s where Rebecca and Derek live.”
Tom didn’t smile. “Now cross-reference the dates with your calendar. Where were you during those months?”
I dug into my memory, then into old notes, then into whatever fragments of my pre-prison life remained. February through November 2020 was COVID lockdown. I’d been working from home. The office was mostly closed except for essential warehouse staff.
Rebecca had been the only person going into the office regularly. Payroll. vendor payments. “Essential.”
“She had access to my office computer,” I said.
Tom’s voice was quiet. “And Derek had administrative access to your email system. He could have logged in remotely. He could have used your computer as a launch point.”
The pieces clicked together with a sickening elegance. They didn’t forge my signature by hand. They used the systems to make the lies look like mine. They made the evidence feel clean.
But suspicion isn’t proof. Tom reminded me of that constantly.
“An appeal needs more than doubt,” he said. “It needs new evidence that changes the narrative.”
We started building a timeline. Every transfer. Every email. Every invoice. We matched it against my travel records, my calendar, our office closure notices, Rebecca’s presence logs if we could find them. We documented discrepancies like a slow drumbeat.
Then, when I was starting to believe we might actually have a case, my progress hit the wall that always waits for prisoners: money.
Even if we found cracks, we needed experts. Digital forensics. Private investigation. Subpoenas. Bank tracing. That costs more than hope.
That was when the call came from someone I hadn’t expected to hear from again.
Michael Brennan.
Mike had been my business partner in the earliest days of Holloway Marine, back when we were two guys with a warehouse and a dream. He’d sold me his share twenty-five years ago when he moved to Alberta. Life drifted, as it does. We sent Christmas cards for a while, then nothing.
His voice on the prison phone was rough with emotion.
“Richard,” he said, “I just found out what happened to you. I’m sorry. I should have been paying attention.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said, and for the first time in months, my voice almost broke.
“Maybe not,” he replied. “But I’m going to help you fix it. I’ve done well in oil and gas, and I’ve got contacts. I already reached out to a lawyer in Vancouver. Sharon Park. She specializes in wrongful convictions. She’ll take your case pro bono if you’ve got any evidence.”
I looked at Tom across the library table as Mike spoke. Tom nodded once, like this was the moment he’d been steering me toward.
“Tell her I’ve got evidence,” I said.
When I hung up, my hands were shaking. Not from anger this time. From something lighter, dangerous in its own way.
Hope.
Tom watched me carefully. “Don’t let hope make you sloppy,” he warned.
“I won’t,” I said.
But inside, a new thought kept repeating, steady as the ocean against William Head’s walls: they built a case to bury me, and I’m going to dig my way out.
Three weeks after Mike’s call, Sharon Park walked into the visiting room at William Head like she owned the oxygen.
She was forty-eight, hair pulled back, eyes sharp, posture straight. She carried a legal pad and a thick folder and the kind of calm you only see in people who’ve stood on both sides of a courtroom and learned where the weak points are. A former Crown prosecutor turned defense counsel, Tom had whispered to me, which meant she knew how the system thought.
Sharon sat down, opened her folder, and looked at me as if she were reading my face before my words.
“Mr. Holloway,” she said, “tell me what you know.”
I slid our work across the table: timelines, FOI disclosures, the Cayman account opening date, the IP logs, the formatting inconsistencies. Tom had written notes in the margins in tiny, precise handwriting. I watched Sharon’s eyes move faster than I expected, absorbing pages like she was scanning a map.
When she reached the Cayman account date, she paused. “Toronto,” she said, more statement than question.
“Yes,” I replied. “I can prove it.”
She nodded. “Good.”
When she reached the IP logs, she made a small sound—almost a laugh, but not amused. “West Vancouver,” she murmured. “That’s very inconvenient for your daughter.”
My throat tightened. “She’s my daughter,” I said, as if the word might soften the reality.
Sharon didn’t soften. “She’s also a witness who testified against you,” she replied. “Innocence doesn’t care about blood.”
She leaned back. “This is good,” she said finally. “Not enough for an appeal by itself, but enough to open a proper investigation. And we’re going to do it right.”
“What does ‘right’ look like?” I asked.
“It looks like professionals,” Sharon said. “A private investigator. A digital forensics expert. Subpoenas. Bank tracing. And patience.”
Patience. Prison teaches you patience the way drowning teaches you to respect air.
Sharon slid a document toward me: authorization forms, release waivers, agreements. “Sign these,” she said. “I’ll get your full case file. I’ll bring in people who can testify. I’ll find the money.”
I stared at the pen in my hand. “Rebecca will fight,” I said.
Sharon’s eyes didn’t blink. “Let her,” she replied. “People who lie under oath tend to panic when someone starts asking the right questions.”
When she stood to leave, she looked at me once more. “Richard,” she said, voice lowering, “I’m not promising miracles. But I am promising effort. And effort, backed by evidence, is how wrongful convictions die.”
After she left, I sat in the visiting room staring at the empty chair across from me. Tom’s voice drifted in my head: don’t let hope make you sloppy.
I stood, walked back to my unit, and for the first time since the verdict, I felt something shift. The system had taken my freedom, but it hadn’t taken my ability to fight.
And now, finally, I wasn’t fighting alone.
Part 3
Sharon Park moved like a storm system: quiet at first, then suddenly everywhere.
Within a month, she’d assembled a team that made my public defender days feel like a bad joke. David Song, private investigator, former military police, careful eyes and a voice that never wasted words. Dr. Patricia Mangi, digital forensics expert with a doctorate and the kind of patience required to make computers confess. Sharon herself, building a strategy the way Catherine used to build dinner plans—methodical, timed, impossible to derail.
They came to William Head with updates in pieces, because prison visiting rooms aren’t designed for long conversations and because Sharon believed in controlling information the way prosecutors do: give only what’s needed, keep the rest protected.
David’s first breakthrough was Derek.
He started by looking at Derek Chen’s consulting business, a small corporation with a polished website and a LinkedIn presence designed to look bigger than it was. On paper, Derek was a “technology consultant.” In reality, David found a trail of unpaid invoices, threatened lawsuits, and a bank line of credit stretched thin in early 2020.
“He was close to bankruptcy,” David told Sharon during one visit, sliding printed pages across the table for me to see. “Then suddenly, in March 2020, his debts were paid off. Credit cards cleared. Tax arrears settled. He made a down payment on a 2.3 million dollar house in West Vancouver.”
My hands went cold. “With what money?”
David’s eyes flicked to me. “That’s the question.”
Sharon tapped the papers. “Timing,” she said. “Timing is a confession.”
Dr. Mangi’s work was slower, because digital lies are built to look permanent. She requested logs from our email provider, remote access records, admin credential history, anything that would show who had touched what and when. It took subpoenas and court orders and the kind of persistence that makes people in IT departments sigh and comply.
When she finally produced her preliminary report, Sharon read it twice in silence.
Then she looked at me. “They didn’t just log in as you,” she said. “They built an illusion.”
Dr. Mangi explained in plain language. Derek had used administrator access to create emails that appeared to originate from my account. He manipulated timestamps to make them look like they’d been sent months earlier. He routed logins through remote desktop sessions connected to my office computer, so the metadata would show “sent from Richard Holloway’s machine.” It was technical theater, designed to fool anyone who didn’t know where to look.
“And the IP address?” I asked.
“Residential West Vancouver,” Dr. Mangi confirmed. “Forty-seven separate remote access events from that address, clustered around transaction dates.”
It felt like being punched and soothed at the same time. The evidence that convicted me had been engineered. The proof was now beginning to show how.
But the biggest wall was still the money. Eight hundred and fifty thousand doesn’t vanish into air. It goes somewhere. And wherever it went, it would leave fingerprints.
Sharon filed motions to subpoena bank records. The Crown resisted at first, dragging their feet the way institutions do when admitting error would bruise their authority. Sharon countered with precision: new evidence of metadata manipulation, clear timeline impossibilities, reasonable grounds to believe the conviction rested on falsified records.
The judge granted the subpoenas.
It took months to pierce offshore secrecy. Cayman institutions don’t hand over records because you ask politely. They hand them over when you show them court orders stacked like bricks. Sharon and Dr. Mangi exchanged emails with foreign counsel, signed affidavits, navigated bureaucracy with the cold patience of people who know delay is a weapon.
Then, one rainy afternoon, Sharon arrived at William Head with a folder so thick it barely fit under her arm.
“We got it,” she said.
I felt my pulse jump. “Got what?”
“The transfer chain,” she replied, and slid the folder across the table.
The Cayman account, opened using my passport information, had received company funds in staged transfers. Then, over weeks, the money moved out in three directions.
One account belonged to a numbered company in Delaware. David had traced its beneficial ownership back to Derek Chen through corporate filings and a trail of registered agents. Another portion went to an investment account under Rebecca’s maiden name, a name she hadn’t used publicly in years, chosen because it would look less suspicious in a quick skim. The third portion went somewhere that made my stomach drop.
A college fund.
For Emma.
I stared at the line item until the words blurred. They had taken money, framed me, destroyed me, and then tucked stolen cash into their daughter’s future like it was a gift.
Sharon watched my face. “They thought it was clever,” she said quietly. “It complicates recovery. Judges hesitate when minors are involved.”
“What does the law say?” I asked, voice tight.
“The law says stolen funds are stolen,” Sharon replied. “But we can make choices later. Right now, this proves destination. It proves benefit. It proves motive.”
She leaned forward. “Richard, with this, we can file.”
The appeal paperwork came next. Sharon drafted it like an indictment of the process that had failed me. New evidence: timeline impossibility for offshore account opening. Digital forensic proof of timestamp manipulation and remote access. Financial tracing showing stolen funds flowing to Derek and Rebecca. Evidence of perjury: their trial testimony flatly contradicted the technical and financial record.
The Crown fought it, of course. Nobody likes admitting the system got it wrong. They filed responses arguing the new evidence was “interpretive” and that the conviction should stand.
Sharon’s reply was blunt: “Interpretive evidence does not purchase a 2.3 million dollar house.”
The appeal hearing was set for October 2024.
In the months leading up, I lived in a suspended state. Inside prison, time is both slow and cruelly fast. Days drag. Years disappear. I kept attending woodworking, kept going to the library, kept my body moving so my mind wouldn’t rot. Tom Nakamura watched me with quiet approval.
“You’re going to get out,” he said one day, sanding a board. “But don’t think that’s the end. Exoneration is a different kind of fight.”
“I know,” I said.
Tom nodded once. “Good. Because people who framed you won’t just roll over. They’ll lie harder.”
On the morning of my transport back to Vancouver for the hearing, I put on the suit I’d been arrested in. It hung off me now, fabric loose at the shoulders, pants too wide. A guard joked that it looked like I’d borrowed it. I didn’t laugh. The suit felt like proof of time stolen.
At the courthouse, Sharon met me in the hallway. She handed me a cup of coffee, and the warmth against my fingers felt almost indecent after prison plastic cups.
“We’re ready,” she said.
Inside the courtroom, the three-judge panel listened with the kind of attention that makes you believe law can be noble when it chooses. Sharon presented our case methodically. She didn’t plead. She didn’t perform. She laid facts like bricks.
Toronto travel records versus Cayman account opening date.
Metadata and IP logs showing West Vancouver remote access.
Dr. Mangi’s expert testimony on timestamp manipulation.
David Song’s tracing of Derek’s debt collapse and sudden wealth.
The Cayman transfer records showing money landing in Derek’s Delaware entity, Rebecca’s investment account, and Emma’s college fund.
The Crown prosecutor was not the same one who’d convicted me. This new prosecutor looked increasingly disturbed as the evidence piled up, as if he could feel the ground shifting beneath his own role.
During a recess, Sharon leaned close. “He approached me,” she whispered.
“Who?” I asked, though I knew.
“The Crown,” she said. “He floated the idea of a settlement. Quiet release. No admission. Reduced charge.”
My hands curled into fists. “Absolutely not.”
Sharon’s eyes stayed on mine. “I expected you’d say that.”
“I want exoneration,” I said. “I want the conviction overturned. I want the record cleared.”
Sharon nodded. “Then we stay the course.”
Two weeks later, the panel returned.
The lead judge didn’t mince words. “Mr. Holloway,” he said, “it is the finding of this court that your conviction was a miscarriage of justice.”
My throat tightened.
“The evidence presented demonstrates not only reasonable doubt,” he continued, “but a clear pattern of fraud perpetrated against you. Your conviction is hereby overturned. You are released immediately, with our sincere apologies for the failure of the justice system.”
The words landed like sunlight in a cell.
I walked out of that courthouse into Vancouver rain, free.
And behind me, the story that Rebecca and Derek had written began to collapse under its own lies.
When Sharon showed me the transfer chain, I felt two emotions at once, and they didn’t blend. The first was rage so pure it made my vision sharpen. The second was grief, the kind that sits in your chest like wet rope. Because the paper didn’t just prove theft; it proved planning. It proved my daughter had looked at our company—the thing Catherine and I built with our hands—and decided it was a vault she deserved to crack.
“Did you find anything about when it started?” I asked.
David slid another page forward. “There were test transfers,” he said. “Small ones at first. Ten thousand. Fifteen. Like they were checking if the system would notice.”
“Rebecca would notice,” I said, almost to myself.
Sharon’s voice was quiet. “Unless she was the one approving,” she replied.
That sentence stayed with me like a bruise. Rebecca had been my CFO. She’d sat across from me in meetings and talked about compliance and ethics. She’d helped me write policies, helped me prepare for audits. She’d looked like my partner.
But in this story, she was the inside operator.
In the weeks after the Cayman records arrived, Sharon began laying groundwork beyond the appeal. She filed preservation requests so Rebecca and Derek couldn’t quietly wipe devices. She contacted the RCMP unit that handled financial crime and requested they hold off on tipping anyone until the appeal decision came down. “If they know we’re coming,” she told me, “they’ll burn evidence.”
Dr. Mangi asked for more logs. David started speaking to people who used to work for Derek. Sharon subpoenaed real estate closing documents for the West Vancouver house. Each new piece built a clearer picture: Derek’s business failing, Derek turning to “creative solutions,” Derek leveraging Rebecca’s access, and Rebecca—whether out of fear, greed, or resentment—agreeing to become the face of the lie.
In prison, waiting for the hearing, I replayed one moment over and over: Rebecca on the stand, voice trembling, saying she loved me but loved Emma more. It was such a clean line. Such a convincing line. It had turned the jury’s empathy into a weapon against me.
Tom Nakamura noticed the way I stared into space in the library.
“Stop doing that,” he said.
“Doing what?” I asked.
“Giving her your mind for free,” he replied.
I swallowed hard. “She’s my daughter.”
Tom’s expression softened slightly. “And she used that,” he said. “You can mourn that later. Right now, you need to focus on the mechanics. People don’t get out because the world feels sorry. They get out because paper proves the world was wrong.”
So I focused. I rehearsed answers with Sharon through prison calls. We went over every date. Every receipt. Every remote access log. Sharon warned me not to sound angry on the stand if I was called. “Anger is understandable,” she said, “but it’s not persuasive to judges who live in evidence.”
By the time Sharon delivered her closing, the Crown prosecutor’s face looked like a man watching a bridge crumble beneath his feet. I didn’t feel joy. I felt a grim, steady certainty: the truth had finally gained weight.
And when the panel finally announced miscarriage of justice, I didn’t cheer. I simply exhaled, long and shaking, because I’d been holding my breath for twenty-two months.
Outside in the rain, cameras flashed. People said my name. Sharon spoke. I kept my gaze forward.
Because the next phase wasn’t about my freedom.
It was about accountability.
Part 4
Freedom lasted about thirty minutes before Sharon started talking about warrants.
In her office, rain tapping the window, she laid out the next steps like a general. “We file the complaint,” she said. “We push the RCMP to move fast while the evidence is still warm. And Richard—this part matters—you do not contact Rebecca. Not even to yell. Let the record speak.”
I stared at my hands, still marked faintly from cuffs. “She put me in a cell,” I said. “My daughter.”
Sharon’s voice stayed level. “Then let her meet the consequences in a courtroom.”
The RCMP moved faster than I expected once the appeal decision hit. Miscarriage of justice is a phrase that makes institutions scramble to protect themselves. If they didn’t act, it would look like they were complicit in letting a conspiracy stand.
Within days, search warrants were executed on Rebecca and Derek’s West Vancouver home, their phones, laptops, and Derek’s office servers. Sharon kept me informed in careful bursts: “They seized devices.” “They imaged drives.” “They’re pulling chat histories.” Each update felt unreal, like someone else’s drama.
Then David Song called Sharon with a tone I’d never heard from him: satisfaction.
“They found everything,” he said.
Emails between Rebecca and Derek planning the scheme. Derek researching how to open offshore accounts using someone else’s identity. Rebecca’s notes on which invoices to forge and which suppliers’ formatting to copy. A spreadsheet labeled “Dad scenario” with timelines and contingency plans.
One file made my blood run cold: a document dated six months before Catherine died, outlining how to “transition ownership” if I resisted giving Rebecca equal partnership.
They weren’t improvising after grief. They’d been planning while my wife was still alive, while I was sitting in hospital chairs pretending I could bargain with cancer.
The arrests came like thunder.
Derek was arrested at his office. Rebecca was arrested at Holloway Marine Supply—my company—where she’d been running operations in my absence. Sharon made sure I was present for the bail hearings. Not for revenge. For reality.
Watching Rebecca stand in the prisoner’s box felt like looking at a stranger wearing my daughter’s face. Her hair was pulled back, her suit neat, but her eyes darted like an animal caught in headlights. Derek tried to look calm, but his jaw kept jumping.
The Crown argued both were flight risks with proven ability to hide assets.
Bail was set at seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars each.
Rebecca looked across the courtroom at me. For a moment, the performance fell away, and I saw fear. Not guilt. Fear of losing control.
Derek’s parents mortgaged their house to make his bail. Rebecca sat in pre-trial detention for six weeks before a relative co-signed for a reduced amount. Watching her led away in handcuffs should have felt satisfying. It didn’t. It felt like losing Catherine again. Another family death, but this one made of choices.
Then Sharon sat with me and said the sentence that broke my heart in a different way.
“We need to address Emma’s college fund,” she said.
I swallowed. “What about it?”
“It’s stolen money,” Sharon replied. “Legally, it’s part of restitution. It’s grown. Nearly four hundred thousand now with investment returns.”
I pictured Emma at six, missing two front teeth, asking me why boats float. I pictured her at eight now, taller, confused, living with Derek’s parents while her world collapsed.
“This isn’t her fault,” I said.
“No,” Sharon agreed. “But the court will want recovery.”
I stared at the river outside the window, gray and steady. “Leave the account,” I said finally. “But with conditions.”
Sharon’s eyebrow lifted.
“I want it in trust,” I said. “I’m named trustee. It can only be used for legitimate educational expenses. Not one penny goes to Rebecca or Derek or their parents.”
Sharon studied me. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “Emma’s going to need therapy. Support. A future that isn’t poisoned by what her parents did. The least I can do is make sure she can still become whoever she wants.”
Sharon nodded slowly. “All right,” she said. “We’ll propose it.”
The criminal trial was set for March 2025.
I attended every day, sitting behind Sharon, hands folded, listening to the story of my life told in evidence.
Derek tried to cut a deal. He offered to testify against Rebecca in exchange for a reduced sentence, presenting himself as a misguided husband who got carried away. The Crown considered it, because prosecutors love easy wins. Sharon shut it down.
“They planned together,” she argued. “He’s the technical architect. She’s the inside operator. Neither deserves a pass.”
On the stand, Dr. Mangi explained the digital manipulation in language the jury could understand. David Song mapped the money trail like a highway system, showing how every transfer ended in benefit. An RCMP analyst described the seized files: the “Dad scenario” spreadsheet, the offshore research, the forged invoice templates.
Rebecca testified again, this time without the advantage of my silence.
She tried to cry. The tears came slower. She claimed Derek pressured her, that she feared losing the business, that she was “protecting Emma.” The prosecutor asked, “Protecting Emma by sending her grandfather to prison?”
Rebecca’s mouth opened, then closed. The jury watched her like they were watching a mask slip.
Derek took the stand and tried to blame everyone else. He said I was greedy. He said Rebecca exaggerated. He said the system misunderstood his “technical work.”
The prosecutor played his own emails from the seized laptop: “If he doesn’t sign, we run the script.” Derek’s voice in text, cold and certain.
The jury deliberated less than four hours.
Guilty on all counts: fraud, forgery, perjury, conspiracy.
Derek received eight years.
Rebecca received seven, with credit for time served during her detention and a bail violation when she tried to move funds after her arrest. The judge’s words were blunt: “You did not merely steal money. You stole time, liberty, and trust. You weaponized family.”
Then came the civil suit.
Holloway Marine Supply had survived despite scandal. An interim CEO appointed by the board kept operations moving, and the company’s value had grown—twenty-four million now, steady contracts, good reputation bruised but not dead. Rebecca’s shares had been seized as proceeds of crime, but Sharon argued something deeper: that Rebecca’s ownership increases over five years were funded by embezzled money and facilitated by fraud.
“Every share she purchased with stolen funds should revert,” Sharon said to the judge. “Her increased stake was not earned; it was extracted.”
Derek’s parents tried to intervene, claiming they had rights as Emma’s guardians to protect the child’s interest. The judge was having none of it.
“The child’s interest is protected by the educational trust Mr. Holloway has generously allowed to stand,” the judge said. “The shares in question belong to Mr. Holloway. Case closed.”
I got my company back.
All of it.
One hundred percent ownership.
But the part that mattered most didn’t come in a courtroom.
It came in a message from Emma’s therapist, delivered through Sharon because everything in this story had to go through someone else’s hands for a while.
Emma wanted to see me.
Derek’s parents had been telling her I was the bad guy, that I’d lied to hurt her parents, but she was having nightmares. In therapy she admitted she remembered the day I was arrested.
“I heard Mommy and Daddy practicing what to say the night before,” Emma told her therapist. “Daddy kept saying, ‘Stick to the script.’ Mommy was crying.”
A child doesn’t understand fraud, but a child understands wrong.
Sharon arranged a supervised visit at a neutral location.
When Emma walked in, taller now, hair longer, Catherine’s eyes looking up at me like questions, my chest tightened so hard I couldn’t breathe. She ran to me and hugged me with a force that almost knocked the air out of my lungs.
“I’m sorry, Grandpa,” she sobbed. “I’m sorry they hurt you. I’m sorry I believed them.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” I said, holding her, feeling the truth in her small body shaking. “You have nothing to be sorry for. None of this is your fault.”
She pulled back, tears streaking her cheeks. “Do you hate Mommy and Daddy?”
The question landed like a stone.
I took a deep breath. “I’m very angry about what they did,” I said carefully. “They hurt me. They made choices that hurt you too. But you’re allowed to love them. They’re your parents. You’re allowed to have complicated feelings.”
Emma sniffed. “Can I still see you even though they’re in jail?”
My throat tightened. “Emma, I want to see you as much as you want to see me.”
She nodded hard, like she was afraid the answer might disappear if she didn’t grab it.
And in that moment, I realized the true cost of Rebecca’s scheme wasn’t the money.
It was the child we both loved standing in front of me, trying to learn how to trust the world again.
After that first meeting, the visits became a lifeline.
At first they were supervised—therapist present, notes taken, adults hovering like the air might crack. Emma would sit on the edge of a chair and ask small questions that were really big questions wearing disguises. “Where did you sleep?” “Did you have a window?” “Did people call you mean names?” She wanted to know the truth without being crushed by it.
I answered carefully. “I slept in a small room,” I told her. “I didn’t have much privacy. But I read books. I learned things. I thought about you a lot.” I didn’t tell her about the nights I stared at the ceiling imagining my funeral happening without me. That wasn’t for her to carry.
Derek’s parents fought the visits at first. They filed in family court claiming I was “unstable” after prison and that contact would confuse Emma. Sharon brought the appeal decision, the exoneration, the forensic evidence, and Emma’s therapist’s report into the hearing like a shield.
The family court judge listened to Emma in chambers. When Emma came out, her face looked calmer, as if someone had finally asked her what she wanted instead of telling her what to believe.
The judge ruled in my favor: weekly contact, gradually increasing, with oversight as needed. “The child has a right to a relationship with her grandfather,” the judge said. “Especially when the prior separation was caused by the parents’ criminal acts.”
So Saturdays became ours.
Sometimes we went to Science World, Emma’s hands sticky with cotton candy while she asked why magnets work. Sometimes we walked through Stanley Park and I told her stories about her grandmother—Catherine’s laugh, Catherine’s stubborn courage, Catherine teaching me how to fold a map because I always did it wrong. Sometimes we just sat in my living room, building Lego boats on the carpet, the simplest kind of rebuilding.
Every visit stitched something back together, not the old family, because that was gone, but a new one made from truth instead of performance.
One afternoon, as Emma colored at my kitchen table, she looked up and said, “Grandpa, are you going to disappear again?”
I swallowed. “No,” I said. “Not if I can help it. And if something ever changes, I’ll tell you. We don’t do secrets like that anymore.”
Emma nodded solemnly, like she understood the rule and appreciated it.
That night, alone, I sat by the window and watched boats heading out into English Bay, their lights moving like slow fireflies. For the first time since my arrest, I felt something close to peace, not because the wound was healed, but because the person I loved most was back in my life and the lie had finally been named as a lie.
Part 5
People think exoneration fixes everything.
It doesn’t.
It gives you your name back on paper. It gives you your freedom back in law. But it doesn’t give you back the mornings you woke up in a cell and forgot what your own house smelled like. It doesn’t give you back the birthdays you missed, the holiday dinners that happened without you, the quiet confidence you used to have when you looked in the mirror and saw a man who belonged to his own life.
After the trials ended and the civil orders were signed, I went home to the river house in Kitsilano and stood in my kitchen for a long time, staring at the counter where Catherine used to knead dough for bread. The house looked the same, but it felt like a museum of a life that had been stolen and then returned with fingerprints all over it.
The first thing I did was hire a new CFO.
Not because I wanted to replace Rebecca like she’d been a position instead of my child, but because I needed someone with a spine made of process. Sharon recommended Janet Crawford, a meticulous woman who’d spent twenty years at a major accounting firm in Vancouver. Janet arrived on her first day with a notebook and a look that said she loved systems more than feelings.
“Mr. Holloway,” she said, “I read the case file. If you’ll allow me, we’re going to build controls so tight no one can move a dime without leaving a trail big enough to trip over.”
“Please,” I said. “Make it impossible.”
Janet did.
Dual approvals for transfers. Segregated duties so no single person could authorize and execute payments. Mandatory vendor verification. Routine external audits. IT access logs reviewed monthly by a third party. The kind of procedures that feel annoying until you remember what happens without them.
Some employees resisted at first. “We’ve always trusted each other,” one manager said.
Janet’s expression didn’t change. “Trust is not a control,” she replied. “It’s a hope.”
Over time, the staff adjusted. And something else happened too: people relaxed. Not because the rules were strict, but because the rules were clear. No one had to wonder who held power in secret anymore.
I also created something new: the Catherine Holloway Scholarship for Maritime Trades.
Catherine loved the water, but she loved people more. She used to say that the boats mattered only because of who they carried. The scholarship funded students pursuing maritime careers—mechanics, navigation technicians, safety training—kids who couldn’t afford the gear and tuition needed to get started.
On opening day of the scholarship program, Emma came with me. She wore a yellow raincoat and held my hand without embarrassment, like children do when they still believe adults can be anchors.
“Grandma would like this,” she said.
My throat tightened. “She would,” I replied.
Then came my will.
For years, my estate plans were simple: business equity split, trust structures, reasonable protections. After prison, “reasonable” felt like a joke. I rewrote everything.
Everything goes to Emma.
Not directly, not immediately, but in trust until she turns thirty. Managed by independent professional trustees. Not her parents. Not Derek’s parents. Not anyone who could claim entitlement through proximity.
Sharon reviewed the documents and nodded. “This is smart,” she said. “And generous.”
“Not generous,” I corrected. “Protective.”
Emma’s educational trust remained intact under my trusteeship. I approved withdrawals only for legitimate school expenses, therapy, and enrichment programs. When Emma asked if she could take art classes, I said yes. When she asked about summer science camp, I said yes. When Derek’s parents asked if the trust could cover “family travel expenses,” I said no.
Boundaries are love when love has been weaponized.
Rebecca wrote to me from prison.
The first letter arrived three months into her sentence. The handwriting was familiar, and it made my stomach twist.
Dad,
I’m sorry. I was scared. Derek told me we’d lose everything. I thought I was protecting Emma. I didn’t think it would go this far. I miss you. I miss Mom. Please write back.
I read it twice and set it down.
I didn’t write back.
Maybe someday I will. I don’t know. People ask if forgiveness is necessary for healing. I’m not sure. I know that silence can be a boundary too.
Derek wrote as well, but his letters weren’t apologies. They were arguments. He blamed everyone but himself: the system, the RCMP, Sharon, me, Rebecca, bad luck, unfair judges. I stopped reading after the first paragraph and recycled them like junk mail.
Some mornings, I woke up with anger like a familiar guest. Other mornings, I woke up exhausted by anger. Eventually, I learned a truth I hadn’t expected: rage is not infinite. It burns out if you don’t keep feeding it.
What did not burn out was the ache of what I’d lost.
Twenty-two months is long enough for your friends to reorganize their lives without you. Some visited when I was released, bringing casseroles and awkward hugs, but I could feel the distance. People don’t know what to say to a man who was convicted, then cleared. They don’t know where to place their sympathy. It makes them nervous.
My reputation, at least, returned faster than my comfort. The appeal decision made headlines. Industry partners who’d backed away sent emails saying they’d “always believed” in me. Some were sincere. Some were opportunistic. I didn’t hold grudges for that. Fear makes people careful.
The company’s board—yes, I had one now, rebuilt after the scandal—held a formal meeting where they reinstated me as CEO and issued a public statement acknowledging the wrongful conviction. They apologized for not questioning the narrative sooner.
I accepted the apology, then asked them to fund a permanent compliance office. “If our pain does any good,” I told them, “it should be that we never allow one person to hold the keys alone again.”
On quiet mornings, I walked down to the marina near my house and watched boats head out into English Bay. The water looked the same as it always had—gray and honest, cold and alive. Catherine used to say the ocean doesn’t care who you are. It only cares if you respect it.
I respected it more than ever.
Emma grew quickly, as children do when adults are busy collapsing. She was ten when she asked me the question that still echoes in my head.
We were sitting on a bench in Stanley Park watching seagulls fight over fries. Emma’s hair was longer, her face more thoughtful, as if she’d developed an internal narrator since the trial.
“Grandpa,” she said, “was it worth it?”
I blinked. “Worth what?”
“All the time in prison,” she said. “All the fighting. Was it worth it just to get revenge?”
Revenge. Even hearing the word from her felt like a bruise. I took a slow breath, choosing my answer carefully because children build their morals from the sentences you give them.
“It wasn’t about revenge,” I said. “It was about the truth. It was about making sure people who do terrible things face consequences. And it was about showing you something important.”
Emma leaned in. “What?”
“That even when the world is unfair,” I said, “even when people you love betray you, you don’t have to accept injustice. You fight for what’s right, even if it takes a long time.”
Emma thought about that, then nodded slowly. “Grandma would be proud,” she said.
My throat tightened. “I think she would,” I replied. “And I think she’d be proud of you too.”
As Emma entered her teenage years, the questions changed. She asked about loyalty, about trust, about whether people can change. She asked why her parents made the choices they did. I never lied, but I never poisoned her either.
“Your mom and dad made selfish choices,” I told her once. “They hurt people. They hurt you. But that doesn’t mean you’re destined to become them. You get to choose who you are.”
She absorbed that like water into soil.
At sixteen, Emma joined a sailing program through the scholarship foundation. Watching her learn knots and wind angles felt like watching Catherine’s spirit find a new body. Emma was serious on the water, focused, calm. She loved the way the sail caught wind and turned it into motion.
“This is like math,” she told me, grinning.
“It’s like trust,” I said. “You can’t see it, but you feel it.”
Emma rolled her eyes, but she smiled.
At eighteen, she applied to UBC, the same university her mother once attended. The irony didn’t sting the way I thought it might. Emma wasn’t Rebecca. UBC wasn’t a trap. It was a place. The meaning belonged to whoever walked through it.
When her acceptance letter arrived, Emma burst into my living room holding it like a trophy. “Grandpa!” she yelled, and I laughed because her joy was loud and unguarded.
We celebrated with cake and Catherine’s favorite tea. Emma asked if she could visit her mother in prison before leaving for school.
My stomach tightened. “Do you want to?” I asked.
Emma hesitated. “I think I need to,” she said. “Not for her. For me.”
I nodded slowly. “Then we’ll do it safely,” I said. “With support. With boundaries.”
I didn’t go into the visiting room when Emma met Rebecca. That was their relationship to navigate. But I waited outside, hands clasped, heart heavy. When Emma emerged, her eyes were red but her posture was straight.
“How was it?” I asked softly.
Emma exhaled. “Hard,” she said. “She cried. She said she’s sorry. I told her I’m not ready to forgive, but I’m not going to pretend she’s a monster either. I told her she has to live with what she did.”
I stared at her, stunned by her maturity.
Emma shrugged. “My therapist says forgiveness isn’t a deadline,” she added.
I nodded. “Your therapist is right.”
That night, Emma sat at my kitchen table and said, “Grandpa, I’m not going to let them take my future.”
I reached across and squeezed her hand. “They already tried,” I said. “And you’re still here. That’s the victory.”
Years have passed since my release. I’m sixty-five now, two years older than I should be if you count the time they stole. Some mornings my joints ache in ways they didn’t before prison. Some nights I still wake up to silence and feel the old panic for a second, as if the walls might be concrete again.
But then I hear gulls outside, or I smell coffee, or I remember Emma’s laugh, and the panic fades.
Holloway Marine Supply is stronger than ever. The Coast Guard contract expanded. The scholarship foundation funds dozens of students each year. The compliance system Janet built has become industry best practice, and other companies ask for our templates. It’s strange to be admired for the procedures born from betrayal, but if the pain has to exist, I’m glad it’s been turned into something protective.
Rebecca remains in prison. Derek remains in prison. Their appeals failed. Their names, once respectable, are now cautionary in financial crime seminars. Sometimes that fact feels like justice. Other times it feels like tragedy wearing justice’s clothes.
I don’t write to Rebecca. Not yet. Maybe someday. Maybe not. Closure doesn’t always look like reconciliation. Sometimes closure looks like living well without reopening the wound.
On the anniversary of my release, I go to the marina alone. I stand at the edge of the dock and watch boats move across English Bay. I take a breath of cold air and remind myself of the truth that kept me alive in a cell: what was taken from me will not define who I become.
The day I walked out of that courtroom a free man was the day my daughter lost everything she’d stolen from me—my freedom, my name, my company, my peace.
But it was also the day I gained something I didn’t expect: the certainty that even betrayal doesn’t get the final word.
I’m Richard Holloway. I served twenty-two months for a crime I didn’t commit. I came out thinner, older, and scarred.
And I’m still standing.
THE END!
Disclaimer: Our stories are inspired by real-life events but are carefully rewritten for entertainment. Any resemblance to actual people or situations is purely coincidental.
