“Because you possessed it,” Tripp said quietly.“Because you needed to hide it.”
Evelyn’s eyes flashed.“You’re twisting?—”
“Am I?”He moved one step closer, lowering his voice so the jury had to lean in.“Mrs.Reddick, Bianca refused your demand.She told you she would keep her baby.You told Derrick she was unsuitable.You told him to focus on his future, not hers.So you drove to her home, you confronted her, and when she resisted the version of your life for Derrick, you tried to impose?—”
Evelyn’s lips trembled.For a flicker, Nicole saw the girl Evelyn might once have been, frightened, furious, feral where no one could see.Then the façade snapped back.
“She was going to ruin him,” Evelyn whispered.
Tripp didn’t move.“Did you kill Bianca Laurent?”
The courtroom held its breath.Nicole’s lungs burned.In her mind, she saw the parlor again, the check, the word options, the way it had felt to be weighed and found unsuitable.She thought of Bianca, young, brilliant, stubborn enough to want both a law degree and a life.She thought of Bianca’s baby.
Evelyn’s eyes hardened into diamonds.“That bitch was going to ruin my son.”The dam broke; the words poured out scalding.“She wanted to trap him, tie him down with her bastard, and drag him through the mud.I had to do something.”She lifted her chin and unleashed the venom.“And I didn’t want any brown babies in this family.”
The world spun.A reporter’s pen hit the floor with a clatter like gunfire.Two jurors recoiled.Someone in the gallery sobbed.Derrick made a sound like trying to breathe through glass.
“I loved her,” he choked, bowing over his hands.“I loved her.”
Nicole stood before she knew she’d moved.Her voice came out level only because rage and sorrow propped it up on either side.“Your honor, the State moves to dismiss all charges against Derrick Reddick and asks that Mrs.Evelyn Reddick be taken into custody for the murder of Bianca Laurent.”
Judge Price’s gavel cracked like lightning.“So ordered.”He turned to the bailiffs.“Take the witness into custody.”
Evelyn tried to rise with dignity and found none.The cuffs clicked, cold punctuation.
“I did it for you,” she cried as they led her away.“For your future!”
Derrick couldn’t look at her.No one could.
Judge Price gazed at the jurors.“I want to thank you for your service.You are now dismissed.”
He rose and exited the chamber.
Court dissolved into human noise, jurors shepherded away, the gallery emptying in a messy current of shock, cameras lowered, whispers rising like steam.The official words,adjourned, dismissed,bounced off wood and marble and meant, for once, something like mercy.
Nicole sat because her knees decided they were done pretending.She was prosecutor enough to be grateful, woman enough to hurt.Justice was never clean.It cut on both sides.
The truth slid cold through her veins: twenty years ago, she could have been in Bianca’s place, different faces, same history, same trap.
She waited until the room had thinned, then gathered her files with careful hands and walked out on legs that felt like somebody else’s.The hallway was cool.The fluorescent lights hummed.She pushed through the first door on the left, the ladies’ room, and locked herself into a stall before the tremble reached her fingers.
For a long minute, all she could do was breathe.In.Hold.Out.Count the tiles.Count her heartbeats.Tell herself she was fine, even as her body told the truth.
When she finally stepped to the sink, her reflection stared back: composed, yes, but cracked at the edges.She pressed cold water into her wrists, then to her eyes.The past unspooled behind her like a film.
Seventeen.A sundress.A Mustang waiting, full of summer and forever.A parlor that smelled like lemon oil and judgment.Tripp’s mother, another elegant predator, explaining in a tone meant to pass for kindness that her son would never marry Nicole.
Nicole had stood her ground that day, shaking so hard, she thought her bones might rattle, and said no.It hadn’t mattered.The outcome had been the same: a future closed like a door in her face.A boy she’d loved going silent.Two families, deciding their fate.
And now Bianca.
Nicole pressed her palms to the counter until her ring bit skin.“I’m sorry,” she whispered, not sure to whom, Bianca, the unborn child, the seventeen-year-old version of herself who hadn’t known how to survive the avalanche.“I’m so, so sorry.”
The door opened.The woman who slipped in had streaks of gray braided into her hair and the kind of eyes that had cried more than once.Bianca’s mother.She met Nicole’s gaze in the mirror.Something like gratitude quivered there.Something like ruin.
“You fought for her,” the woman said softly.“Thank you.”
Nicole’s throat worked.“He did too.”She paused.“We should have all fought sooner, before it became a murder.”
