The Truth Afterward

The email came at 2:14 a.m., a time when no good email ever arrives.

Subject: URGENT - “The Devil You Know” Edits

From: erika.pope@veritaspress.com

To: felixlloyd.writer@gmail.com

Felix Lloyd opened it, already wincing.

Felix,

We need to talk. You know I don’t get squeamish, but Chapter 14? That’s a lawsuit waiting to happen. You crossed a line.

Call me first thing.

— Erika

He read it twice, then again. His stomach turned in that cold, hollow way it did when rent was due and the bank account hovered just above zero.

He knew exactly what she meant.

Chapter 14.

It was the chapter he wrote at 3 a.m. two weeks ago, drunk on bourbon and some vengeful clarity. The one where the “fictional” senator, a bloated, cigar-sucking tyrant named Jordan Bookey, resembled a little too closely the real Senator Chase Hoyt — a man who had torpedoed Felix's journalistic career seven years ago after Felix exposed his backroom land deals.

He’d changed the name. That was enough, right?

Apparently not.

Felix Lloyd used to be a journalist. Pulitzer-finalist, cover-story, talk-show-circuit level. Then he pissed off the wrong people, lost the job, and drifted into the literary shadows. Now he was a ghostwriter. Memoirs, thrillers, self-help snake oil — whatever paid.

“The Devil You Know” was different. It was his.

His editor, Erika Pope, had believed in the book since his first half-drunk pitch at a publishing mixer last year. She wasn’t soft. Erika was the kind of editor who killed your darlings with a machete and sent you the manuscript in red, soaked like a crime scene. But she fought for her writers. She’d fought for him.

And now she was telling him he went too far.

He stared at the blinking cursor in the reply window, then closed the laptop. Instead, he called her.

“Jesus, Felix,” she said. No hello.

“You read it.”

“I read it. And my legal team read it. And now we’re all going to die in court.”

Felix rubbed his eyes. “It’s fiction.”

“It’s not fiction when you include the exact zoning code violations and the damn mistress’s license plate.”

“I changed the name—”

“Barely.”

Silence.

Erika's voice softened. “Look. It’s brilliant. That chapter sings. But brilliance doesn’t mean invincible. We need to rewrite it.”

Felix leaned back in his chair. The apartment was silent, save for the humming fridge and the soft, ghostly noise of sirens drifting in from downtown.

“I can’t,” he said.

“You can. You wrote it.”

“I mean I can’t. That chapter is the only real thing in the whole damn book. The rest is smoke and mirrors. That chapter is the blood.”

Erika sighed. “Then we’re bleeding out.”

Felix didn’t sleep.

By sunrise, he was back at the laptop, rereading Chapter 14. He had to admit it — Erika was right. It was a scalpel between the ribs. But it was also a confession. A wound he’d peeled open on purpose.

The book was supposed to be a political thriller. Nothing revolutionary. Smart guy uncovers corruption, gets chased, saves the day. But underneath, buried like shrapnel, was all of Felix’s rage — at the system, at the career stolen from him, at the truth no one wanted when it got inconvenient.

Chapter 14 was the moment the hero, Jordan Bookey, realizes the real villain isn’t a cabal or conspiracy — it’s a man with too much power and too many friends. Just like real life. Just like Hoyt.

Felix had changed the name. But the details, the rhythm, the stink of truth — it was all there.

He started rewriting.

First the mistress. Then the dates. Then the zoning codes, one by one, like pulling teeth from a wolf’s skull.

The bite vanished.

He made Bookey a composite. Shifted the setting. Padded the lines with safer metaphors. The sharpness dulled to something beige.

By 10 a.m., it read like damp paper. Like a eulogy for someone still breathing.

He stared at a freshly deleted paragraph, watching the white space pulse like an open mouth, waiting to be fed.

It looked clean. Sanitized.

It made him sick.

He closed the laptop and let the silence swallow him.

Erika called again that afternoon.

“I talked to Legal again,” she said. “Here’s what we can do. We keep the bones. Lose the identifying details. We say it’s inspired by multiple real cases. Blend it.”

“No.”

“Felix—”

“You hired me because I had something to say. Let me say it.”

“You’re not a whistleblower anymore. You’re a novelist.”

Felix didn’t reply.

Erika exhaled. “There’s one more option. Let it run under someone else’s name.”

That stung worse than anything.

“Ghostwrite it?”

“No. Publish as a ‘collaboration’ — somebody with nothing to lose. Use them as a shield. You keep your voice. We protect the house.”

Felix closed his eyes. “You mean I disappear.”

“Only on paper. It’s how we protect truth now, Felix. We hide it in fiction, and we hide the author in shadows.”

That night, he went for a walk. The streets buzzed with people glued to their phones, half-alive. He passed a bookstore and stared at the window display- ten new thrillers, each with bold titles and bigger names. He knew at least four of the writers. He’d ghosted for two.

He didn’t want to be a ghost anymore.

A week later, Erika got another email at 2:14 a.m.

Subject: “The Devil You Know” – Final Decision

From: felixlloyd.writer@gmail.com

To: erika.pope@veritaspress.com

Erika,

Thank you for everything.

I’m pulling the book.

It’s not about Hoyt anymore. It’s about me. And I need to own it, or it’s just noise.

I’ll rework it. I’ll strip the thriller pretense. I’ll write the real story. No names changed. No punches pulled.

Memoir, exposé, suicide note — call it what you want.

But it’ll be mine.

— Felix

He self-published nine months later.

The Red Line was raw. Messy. Unapologetic. A half-memoir, half-report, full confession of the events that derailed his life. No changed names. No clever metaphors.

It didn’t get a movie deal. But it got read.

Senator Hoyt sued. The case got tossed.

And Felix Lloyd stopped being a ghost.

He became a writer again.

A year after The Red Line dropped, Felix was sitting alone in the back of a tiny bar in D.C., nursing a drink he couldn’t afford and watching a kid in a wrinkled suit stare at him from across the room.

The kid finally worked up the nerve.

“You’re Felix Lloyd, right?” he said, voice tight, excited.

Felix nodded, guarded. “Yeah.”

The kid sat without asking. Dropped a copy of The Red Line on the table. “This book changed the way I think about journalism. About power. About everything.”

Felix blinked. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-three. Just got my first job at The Dispatch. Entry-level, but still.” He looked down at the book. “You said what nobody else would. You named names. Took the hit. Most people just tweet.”

Felix smiled, half-grim. “Yeah, well. It nearly broke me.”

“But it didn’t.” The kid leaned in. “That’s what matters.”

Back home, his inbox was stuffed. Journalists, whistleblowers, other fallen writers — some angry, some grateful, some just lost. His phone buzzed with invitations to panels, lectures, indie interviews. Erika emailed once every few weeks, short notes. No pressure, just check-ins.

In one of them-

Read the court’s dismissal. You’re still standing.

When you’re ready for your next book — your book — call me.

— E

Felix thought about that a lot.

He had no real savings. No contract. No safety net. But he also had no master now.

He took small gigs again. Not ghostwriting — real writing. Essays, investigative blogs, speeches for people who couldn’t afford PR firms but had something worth saying. He didn’t make much. But what he made was his.

And in the background, always, was the next book. Formless, heavy, circling like a hawk. Not about revenge. Not about Hoyt or corruption or what he’d lost.

About what came after the truth.

What happens when you stop hiding, and the world still turns.

Two years to the day after The Red Line came out, Felix emailed Erika.

Subject: New Project

Erika,

It’s not a thriller.

It’s not clean.

It’s not going to make anyone rich.

But it’s honest.

If you’re still in, I’m ready.

— Felix

Ten minutes later-

RE: New Project

Always in.

Send the pages.

— E

He opened a blank document. Typed four words at the top-

The Truth Afterward By Felix Lloyd

And this time, he wrote it in daylight.