Page 118 of The Lie Maker

But that all changed when Frohm learned Donohue had fired the company’s top lawyer. Donohue had a new one, and he was going to tell everything he knew to prosecutors. All of Frohm’s illegal business practices, the tax fraud, the blackmail.

The executions he had ordered.

“Bullshit,” Frohm had said. “It’s his word against mine.”

“There are recordings,” the lawyers told him.

So, in slightly less technical legal terms, Frohm was fucked. They had him cold on so many counts, including the murders, that he was encouraged to take a deal that wouldn’t see him getting out of prison until he was an old man.

He had no choice.

Gwen and her mother visited Frohm in prison regularly. Even as Gwen grew into her teens and beyond, she never stopped visiting, never forgot her dad. Every Sunday she went, even when her mother took an occasional pass. Throughout those years, Gwen never forgot the name of the man responsible, more than any other, for her father’s fate.

Michael Donohue.

Oh, sure, there were others she blamed, in particular the lawyers who failed him and especially the judge who sentenced him.

One Sunday, two weeks after Gwen had celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday, her father made a proposal to her.

“I want you to take over,” he said.

“What?”

“The company. I want you to take it over. To run it. Everything.”

Even with Galen behind bars, the Frohm empire had carried on. There were some rough years, to be sure. Massive fines were levied by the courts, a handful of midlevel executives who cooked the books or engaged in other illegal activities were convicted and served minor sentences, and the negative publicity turned many customers away for a year or two. But there were enough untainted people left who moved up the corporate ladder to keep the various entities operational.

Even so, there needed to be someone strong at the helm. Someone with the smarts to build on the repairs that had already taken place. Gwen, a graduate of the Harvard Business School (with, as it turned out, a strong side interest in theater), fit the bill.

She accepted her father’s offer.

And every Sunday after that, she would visit her father, tell him how her week had gone, seek his advice on various issues. One Sunday she came bearing sad news. Her mother, Galen’s wife, had succumbed to a six-month battle with cancer.

“But I’m here for you,” she said. “I will always be here for you. We’re a team. And I know it feels like a long time off, but one day, you’ll be released, and when you are, you’re coming back to the company. It’s going to be a very special day. You’ll move in with me and you’re going to stay with me for as long as you want.”

There were days, even before the news of his wife’s passing, when Frohm’s spirits were especially low, when the bitterness overwhelmed him.

“I wonder where he is,” he would say. “Livin’ the life down in Florida, I bet. Sitting by the pool, not a care in the world. That son of a bitch. He was like a son to me. I treated him like family. And then he turns around and does this. Stabs me in the fucking back.”

As far as Gwen was concerned, her father could do no wrong, even when it was abundantly clear to the rest of the world that he had done much wrong. Maybe it was true that he’d had Michael Donohue kill people, but those individuals had betrayed her father. They’d become a threat to him. The corporate world was cutthroat. They knew what they’d signed on for. This was business, and there were consequences for those who crossed him.

Which made what Michael Donohue had done so much worse. There was nothing lower than a rat.

The good news they’d waited so long for finally came early in 2020. Galen Frohm was to be released in October. The years of waiting had now turned into months, and the months were turning into days.

In September, a month before his release date, Galen Frohm became ill.

It started with a fever and a cough. Frohm found himself without energy. He could not summon the strength to get out of his cell bed. Contagion was sweeping through the prison. Frohm’s symptoms worsened. A sore throat, a headache, a rash.

Then came the shortness of breath. Frohm was going to die if he didn’t get proper help.

The prison infirmary was overwhelmed with inmates who had contracted the coronavirus, and Frohm, given his age, was among the most serious. Gwen, alarmed, insisted her father be moved to an actual hospital, and authorities acceded to her demands. Frohm was moved to a hospital in Boston. Despite his frail condition, a handcuff secured him to the railing of his intensive care unit bed.

Such a humiliation. And Gwen was not allowed to see him.

The virus was everywhere. It was too risky to permit visitations. Gwen tried more than once to sneak in, even, at one point, donning a surgical gown in a bid to get past security. But every attempt was thwarted.

Dr.Marie Sloan did her best to keep Gwen updated on her father’s condition. The reports were not encouraging. He was not responding to treatment. The intubation was not working. They were running out of options.

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