Players and Pawns I:

Dr. Eric Sacks slammed the phone down and buried his head in his hands, wondering how everything could have fallen apart so quickly. He'd had everything and now it was all crumbling to dust. His son was going to go to prison over a few youthful indiscretions and there was nothing he could do to stop it. This time.

Given the very public scandal over his earlier bribes to make his son's mistakes go away, with Internal Investigations breathing down their necks, none of his friends would be willing to hear him out, even if he could afford to do anything. There was too much evidence already made too public, although how it happened he would never know.

He didn't understand it. His son was supposed to be a success. If anyone ended up in prison, it should have been his wild, rebellious niece. She was the one always listening to angry music. She was the one who looked the part, with her over the top make up, unnaturally dyed hair, tattoos and piercings.

Ok, technically that wasn't completely accurate. Well the makeup and hair were, but she wore temporary tattoos and magnetic piercings as she had some kind of agreement with her parents not to do anything permanent until after she turned eighteen. But that wasn't the point. She looked like she belonged in prison, not his son. And yet his son was being incarcerated and his niece had been recruited by the EDF straight out of high school. How was that fair?

Not that he would ever understand his sister's family. He had earned his vapid, trophy wife by virtue of his wealth and success. Unattached to him, his sister Amelia had none of those things. He'd employed her as a manager out of a sense of family loyalty. But unlike him, she was neither brilliant nor ambitious.

All they shared were their less than impressive family looks. Ash brown hair, if that even counted as a color, and milky blue eyes, the shade of cataracts, weren't enough. They're faces were too long and their noses too large, their mouths too wide and their eyes set too closely together. No they shouldn't have been able to get anywhere based on appearance.

Fortunately for him, he had his intelligence and wiles. All Ami had was a naïve sense of kindness that always attracted bullies like flies to rotting meat, whom she would inevitably forgive not matter how cruel they were. It drove him insane.

He could never quite figure out how she'd landed Darryl. The man had been the attractive playboy scion of an old money family. They had come to Sacks Incorporated when Darryl's father was losing the battle with some kind of cancer or another, wanting custom built medical equipment to make the doomed man comfortable in his final days.

Eric hadn't been especially interested, but the money was good, very good. So he accepted and handed the project off to Ty, that traitor, while his Ami dealt with the family. Somehow during the commission, Darryl had abandoned his skirt chasing ways to fall for Ami of all people. It made no sense and he'd hidden a sense of vindicated glee when their daughter developed into such an insane mess.

But now she was the success and his own child the failure and he couldn't fix it. Not with the money he would shortly no longer have. Somehow his private files had been leaked to the media and now he was facing a mountain of lawsuits that threatened to destroy him. Just because he'd doctored some data to move his products through unfair government regulation more quickly. It was infuriating and unjust. His intercom buzzed.

"Yes."

"A Ms. Carpenter here to see you."

He sucked in a sharp breath. Winters's legal consultant. He'd blown her off last time she'd come around, flush with cash from Komodo Industries and feeling untouchable. Why would he accept a bunch of contracts binding him to Winters, like some kind of lackey? Now he was vulnerable and she was back. Damn.

"Send her in." To her credit, she never broke that veneer of professionalism to gloat.

"Dr. Sacks. It's good to see you again."

"And you? I presume you've come to renew your offer." She gave him a clearly false apologetic smile.

"I'm afraid that opportunity has passed Dr. Sacks. Mr. Winters still wants you for the same project, but not as an independent contractor any more, even if such a thing were possible." Eric couldn't help but cringe at the reference to his imploding company.

"So what are his terms then?"

"He is willing to employ you as a project manager."

"Employ? Me?"

"Let's be honest Dr. Sacks. There is no way your company can survive this, even if we don't count the additional scandal with your son. So either you can go down with the ship or our legal team can pin the specific blame on some of your other employees. If you play ignorant, we can provide you with amnesty, assuming we have incentive to."

She pushed the contract towards him and with a sinking stomach he flipped through it. Winters would essentially own him. But if he didn't, he would be joining Will in prison. Well, it was better than relying on excessive quantities of Ambien to deal with the crises as his wife had. Who knew? Perhaps in time he could find a way out of this enforced servitude. Clutching the pen tightly, he signed.