The Dark Side of Success

by V B Huf

  The Dark Side Of Success

  The Untold Story

  VB Huf

  Aarambh Publication

  Copyright © 2020 VB Huf (Aarambh Publication)

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  ISBN-13: 9781234567890

  ISBN-10: 1477123456

  Cover design by: Art Painter

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2018675309

  Printed in the United States of America

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Prologue

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  EPILOGUE

  IT’S NOT THE END;

  Prologue

  JANUARY 5, 2018.

  Ella Garbi was selected to handle the prosecution of Chad Daniels. She had been working on the case for three months now. Everyone in America knew about this case – the case of Daniels leading his fellow firefighters into a burning building on October 27, 2015. Daniels was the chief of the local fire department, a volunteer member not afraid of working the front line. He was a good man, loved by everybody. But some people resented his good deeds and his hardworking spirit. One of them was Jonathan Johnson, the District Attorney of the city where Ella works, and he is also her boss. There's Ella, the prosecutor, and Scott Kingsley, the defense attorney, standing in the court of law, one looking for a means to take Daniels down, the other looking for a way to prove his innocence. But there was one thing that they both knew, and it was that Mr. Daniels was not guilty of criminal negligence as charged.

  ''…the family of this man has been interrogated, and they explained that he never came home after that night of the fire. How then can you say he ran away after leading his colleagues into the fire? How would you say he did it on purpose to kill them? Or that the procedures he followed, well documented by the fire department, made him negligent? This man right here has explained what happened that night. That is enough evidence to show that my client was set up. Did you see…?''

  ''Objection, your honor! He is leading the witness. May I be heard?'' Ella stood up, defiantly and cut Kingsley mid-sentence. She turned to face the judge.

  ''Sustained,'' the judge gestured towards her. His line of questioning broken, Kingsley said he was done with the witness.

  Garbi rose for a re-direct examination.

  ''Before the night of the incident, what statement did Mr. Daniels make?'' She turned to face the witness, one of the firefighting members of Daniels’ crew that didn't respond to that night of the emergency.

  Daniels told us that he was going to bring the sstation to an end. He wrote a letter to some people. The fire outbreak was planned, and he sent our men there on purpose to have them killed. He also told Raj, one of our crewmen, that…''

  ''Objection, your Honor! Hearsay! May I be heard?'' Kingsley stood up and turned to face the judge.

  ''Objection overruled!'' The judge disagreed with the objection and gave Ella a carry-on gesture.

  CHAPTER ONE

  August 22, 2019.

  She was one of the few top-notch female lawyers in the city, and she was Daniella Rose Garbi, popularly known as Ella. Still on the sunny side of thirty-five, she had a track record comparable to other lawyers much older. She was the definition of success. Graduating at the top of her law class, she dove into her job as a prosecutor. Getting conviction after conviction pulled her to the top of the department, with the Daniels case propelling her into the Chief Prosecutor role. Although she succeeded in every aspect of her career, her personal life was a big failure. She was too independent, too driven, and men sometimes found it hard to relate to her. She had a fiancé once – Thompson. But she broke up with him when he could no longer handle the time demands and pressures of her job. Maybe it was his fault; maybe it was her fault. But if you asked Ella, she'd say he wasn't a supportive man, and if you asked Thompson, he'd say she placed her career above love.

  “Charles, please see me in my office,'' Ella told one of her co-workers. Gossips had it that Charles and Ella had something aside from just being work partners, and it was true. Charles was a good-looking man, honest, hardworking, yet modest. He was her junior both in age and professional stature. Charles was three years younger than she was, and he worked under her as a clerk. Despite the risks of mixing work and pleasure, Ella could not close her eyes to such a handsome man. She liked him, and he knew it.

  ''Good day, ma’am,'' he greeted her, but she waved her left hand at him jovially in response.

  ''I told you, whenever we're alone together like this, drop the formalities. Just call me Ella, hmm?'' she smiled at him, and he smiled back.

  ''All right,'' he paused, ''Ella.'' There was a silence between them, but they knew what they both wanted. Ella didn't want to take the first step, and Charles didn't want to be too forward, either.

  ''Can you come a little closer?'' Ella asked him, and he nodded before walking to meet her. Her gaze dropped to his lips, and, as she was about to press her lips against his, the office phone rang.

  ''A sec, please,'' raising a finger at him to indicate, “please, excuse me” before picking up the call.

  A voice croaked from the other end of the phone, ''Are you alone?''

  ''Err,'' she looked at Charles before answering, ''No, I'm not. I'll call you when I am.'' and she ended the call. For the first time in her life, the feelings in her heart trumped business rules and demands. Six years ago, with Thompson, her fiancé, she still chose business. She dropped the phone and pulled Charles to her. He was ready for her, too, cupping her butt in his hand and lifting her to him as they kissed away the business relationship.

  …

  Ella walked inside Mr. Johnson's office. He was looking through his shelf when she entered. She knew Johnson didn’t just call her over unless there was something important going on. The last time she was here was when he promoted her. She wondered what it was this time. Johnson did not turn around to look at her. He continued with what he was doing until she spoke.

  ''What is the matter?'' she asked.

  ''Today in the news, a reporter talked about the fire from three or four years ago, whatever it was.'' turning around to face her, and she frowned.

  ''Valerie Adams, her name.'' He picked up an apple from the plate on his table and offered it to Ella. She shook her head in rejection, and Johnson bit into the apple's flesh.

  ''You remember the name? This is the same reporter accused of killing her husband,'' he said before biting another chunk of apple. Ella wondered where he was going with the discussion.

  ''Here,'' he tossed three files on the table in front of her. She exhaled before picking them up.

  ''Almost three years ago, she killed her husband. A defense attorney made the case by defending her and saying it was self-defense. Ha! I don't know how they were able to pull that off, but they got their mistrial when the jury couldn’t make a decision, and we’ve sat on refiling since then. '' He walked back to sit on his chair.

  ''I'm bringing back this case. Let's shake America again, shall we?'' smiling at her, but Ella wasn't a fan of that smile. No one was.

  ''I can't,'' she pushed the files t
owards his direction. He frowned and wondered what was wrong with her. She wasn't smiling either.

  ''You can't?'' he asked her again to be sure he didn't mishear her the first time.

  ''Yes. I don't want to put my hands in things like this again. Let Anderson handle the case if you’re set on refiling it.'' She swallowed a lump that formed in her throat, and Mr. Johnson laughed.

  ''I see you don’t know the meaning of success,'' his face taking on a stern look. ''If you weren’t interested in getting your hands dirty once in a while, then Garbi, you should not have taken the rewards of it. Now, you sit there and ask to pass it off to Anderson. When you sat in my office and talked about the promotion to Chief, Thomas sat on the same chair and pleaded for the promotion too, but I gave it to you.'' He gestured towards her before raising his left eyebrow, and he pushed the files back to her.

  ''Look into it, Garbi,'' he said sternly before crossing his left leg over the right one.

  ”Jonathan, this is about covering up your sins. You are more afraid of your sins than about mine. My success might have had a touch of your help in it, but the reason why you are not behind bars today has my hand in it too. So, we owe each other, and if I tell you I'm not doing something, I'm not doing it. So, give it to Thomas.'' She stood up. Johnson didn't say anything. He watched her as she walked to the door.

  ''Garbi, you are going to regret it. I promise you,'' he told her, as she pulled the door open. And that rang a bell in her head, a bell from years ago when the same man told her, ''You are not going to regret it. I promise you.'' and he kept his promise.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kingsley walked inside his house and dropped his coat on the couch. He picked up the remote to switch on the TV. He was a huge fan of the news at five. Although many people complained that most of what they say on the news is fake, he still loved watching it, anyway. He stretched his legs across the table and leaned back on the chair. It was his favorite reporter broadcasting the news –Valerie Adams. He had a crush on her. And if there was anything that attracted him to her the most, it was her habit of speaking the truth and her daring spirit. Kingsley loved a daring woman, with the strength of purpose to lay it out there regardless of the outcome. He admired that Valerie didn’t care about the people that hate to hear the truth. The news she was broadcasting now took him back to that year when her career took off, exposing a bribery and kickback scheme in the city. That was when this thing Scott had for her started. Most of the lovers of lies and netizens turned against Valerie that year, but she wasn't shaken; she still stayed strong and hadn't stopped delivering the truth. What she was saying right now was a truth that had been killed and buried by the bureaucracy previously.

  ''A family was destroyed by the lies told in court; lies that appear to have been known to, and ignored by, the prosecution team. I looked into the report from that fire and…'' the TV station went blank. It wasn't the first time it happened like that. Damn cable.

  ''They do not want the truth about this to get out.'' Kingsley shook his head as he stood up from the couch and picked his coat. He had been Chad Daniels’ defense attorney that year. That case was what brought the crash to his career. Previously a star working for DA Johnson in the prosecutor’s office, but unable to deal with the man, he moved over to a private firm, working primarily on criminal defense cases. After the Daniels case, because of the national attention, he was fired from the firm after losing that case. Since then, he had been unable to find a permanent job, landing some freelance work, but otherwise still on the first rung of the ladder of success.

  As he was about to leave, his phone beeped in his pocket. He brought it out to check what it said, ''Check your e-mail.'' It was a message from an unknown number. He clicked open a JPG file that was in the email, zoomed in, and his eyes widened. He threw his coat around his body and dashed out of the house.

  …

  “Ben, just give me a chance to handle this case,'' Kingsley begged his former boss, frowning at him. After he was fired, he never stepped inside the firm again, but the message he got in his e-mail today prompted him to come back to see his ex-boss.

  '' Scott, you failed. I can't bring you back,'' Ben told him, and he pressed his left palm against the right one as if pleading with him.

  ''Please, I promise you, I will give it my best this time,'' he begged him.

  ''By the way, how did you know about this? It's a case that hasn't been revealed to the public yet.'' Ben raised his eyebrows at him. But Kingsley knew better than to tell him an unknown number sent the crime files to his email.

  ''I've had my eyes and ears open, sir. That's how knew about this.'' he lied, and Ben believed it.

  ''Well, I do not agree to allow you to take the case. But, just to let you know, Johnson is behind digging this one up.'' Kingsley's face broke into a considerable scowl when he heard this. ''So, if you're talking about winning this case, I bet I don't have to remind you about the Daniels case.''

  ''By the way, how have you been getting on with life, Scott?'' he changed the topic.

  ''Please, Ben, give me a chance to prove myself,'' Kingsley told him again, this time with more seriousness in his tone.

  ''There is nothing to prove, Scott. This firm has yet to recover from the damages you brought and the credibility we lost when you blew the Daniels case. I can't let you drag us in the mud again. You have been fired, and that's it. If I gave you a chance to sit here and hold a conversation with me, it is because of the good times we had; and it's gone now. If that's all, please leave.'' Ben turned around, and the friendly look on his face was no longer there. Looking at that stony face, Kingsley stood up and walked out of his office, disappointed but not giving up. This wasn't only about revenge, but about the woman he loved – Valerie Adams.

  He knew there was a lot to the case where she was charged with killing her husband. Although she was set free that year because of the hung jury, Scott knew it was never going to end there. Not with a hung jury failing to come to a decision. He knew someone somewhere would still take up the case and start it new as a way to bring her down, but he didn't know it was going to be Johnson. Everyone knew Johnson, behind the law and order façade, to be a law bender and a manipulator. He made the law go where ever he wanted it to go. Kingsley was a victim of his manipulative skills, too – during the Daniels case. He was sure what he knew and presented was the truth, but the way Johnson bent the case to his favor, still baffled him, even now. He wanted to have something to do with the Valerie Adams' case, no matter who dug the case up and would prosecute it. He was going to bring the case to justice. He was ready to be Valerie's defense attorney. He wasn't going to let her go to jail for something she didn't do.

  CHAPTER THREE

  September 15, 2019.

  ''I didn't poison my husband,'' Valerie told Kingsley, and he watched her as she spoke. There was sadness in her voice; he believed her.

  ''So, tell me, how did it happen?'' Scott asked her slowly, but she looked up to face him and heaved a loud sigh. She knew more than she could tell, and she hated that this was how they chose to bring her down.

  ''I don't know,'' she lied before looking away. But she knew, she knew that night, October 13, 2017, even though she and her husband fought, she didn't kill him. It was true that she and her husband were never on good terms. But she wouldn't go so far as kill him.

  ''If you don't talk to me, I won't be able to help you,'' Kingsley told her softly, but she insisted on not speaking to him about it.

  ''If he wants me to go to jail, then let it be done. That’s why I didn’t waste my time trying to raise the exorbitant bail he asked for. After all, that's what he does – makes people go to jail for his sins. He manipulates the law. I'm not going to have a chance on this. I am guilty because that is what he wants. Guards!'' she called the prison guards, and they walked in to take her out of the room where she was meeting with Kingsley. Scott tried to stop her from walking out, but the guards stopped him and told him he had no right to.


  Scott was convinced that she knew more than she was telling him. She had more information than she was saying. But he didn't know what else to do to make her speak. He looked over her case several times, and it kept bringing back the same questions to him– something was wrong, somewhere. But where? The person that knew the answers refused to talk. He slammed his hand down hard on the table. This was his last chance to bring his career back, and he didn't want to make a mistake. But it was totally sad that Valerie was not co-operating with him. He wanted to help her. He knew what she meant when she said, “if he wants me to go to jail,”; he knew who the “he” was.

  ''Johnson,'' he exhaled lightly.

  …

  Wednesday morning and Johnson was sitting in his office as usual when Kingsley entered. His face broke into a huge smile when he saw him.

  ''What brings such a great lawyer to my office? '' he pulled a small laugh, and Kingsley felt the sarcasm in his voice.

  ''Can I sit?'' he gestured towards the chair.

  ''Oh, I'm so sorry, Scott. Please sit down,'' Johnson stood up to usher him to a seat. Kingsley bowed gently.

  Ms. Lilian!!!'' he shouted, and his secretary walked inside. ''Two cups of coffee, please,'' he told her, and she rushed back outside to get it.

  ''So, what brings you to my office?'' Johnson asked him again as they sipped their coffee. Kingsley swallowed the coffee, sharp, bitter and acidic, and cleared his throat before opening his mouth to speak.

  ''I'm here to ask you about why you decided to bring up a case that has been killed and buried to prosecute again?'' he placed his cup of coffee on the table slowly.

  ''Well, I'm sure you know, I am a person of honesty and justice. So,'' he took another sip of coffee, ''That woman thinks she's holier than anybody, to think that she murdered her husband in cold blood. The world can still put her on a pedestal and let her report the news they listen to…'' he paused for dramatic effect and turned to face Kingsley. ''As a man of the law too, don't you find that abominating?'' he asked him.