Chapter 10
The email changed the criminal case.
Attempted murder entered the conversation.
Richard’s lawyers exploded.
Vanessa’s lawyer begged for a meeting.
The DA stopped smiling politely and started moving like a man who had found his spine.
Khloe did not want to read the email.
I respected that.
She had lived the violence.
She did not need to study the planning.
But she asked one question.
“Did Richard answer?”
I hesitated.
She saw it.
“What did he say?”
I sat beside her.
“He wrote, ‘Do it where cameras make her look dramatic.’”
Khloe closed her eyes.
For a moment, I thought she would break.
Then she opened them.
Something had changed.
Fear was still there.
Pain too.
But beneath both was anger.
Clean.
Bright.
Alive.
“He knew about the courthouse cameras?”
“He thought the angle would hide the shove.”
“He picked the place.”
“Yes.”
She turned her face toward Elliot’s incubator.
“He tried to turn my baby’s birth into evidence against me.”
I said nothing.
She did not need my voice.
She needed room for hers.
“I want to testify,” she said.
“Not yet.”
“Harry.”
“When your doctor clears you.”
“I’m not glass.”
“No,” I said softly. “You’re recovering from nearly being killed.”
She looked at me.
“Do not make my safety another cage.”
That stopped me.
She was right.
Protection can become control when fear wears love’s clothes.
I took a breath.
“Okay. We ask your doctor. We plan it your way.”
She nodded.
“Good.”
Vanessa requested a plea conference two days later.
I attended with Olivia and the DA.
Vanessa sat across the table in jail orange, no makeup, eyes red.
She looked smaller.
Not sorry.
Smaller.
“Richard planned it,” she said.
The DA leaned back.
“Tell us something we don’t know.”
Vanessa’s mouth trembled.
“He promised me Khloe would survive.”
I stood so fast my chair hit the wall.
Olivia grabbed my arm.
Vanessa flinched.
Good.
The DA’s voice went cold.
May you like
“Start at the beginning.”
And she did.
