Page 342 of Wicked Brutal

Arthur walks back to the table, checks something in a binder — buying Ally a breath, I think, more than checking anything — then turns. “I want to ask you about your mother.”

And there it is. Ally’s whole body changes. Three weeks is not long enough for this. It isn’t close.

“What was your father’s relationship with Jane like?”

Ally swallows hard. “I didn’t understand it for a long time.”

“What didn’t you understand?”

“Why she stayed.” Her voice drops, goes quiet and raw. “Why she didn’t stop him more. Why, when he got angry, she’d tell me to be quiet instead of telling him to stop.” She looks down at her hands. “I was angry with her for a long time. Years. I want to be honest about that. I thought she was weak. I thought she chose him over us, over and over.”

Arthur doesn’t rescue her from it. He lets her own the ugliest part of it, because it’s the truest, and the truest thing is what breaks Roman’s case wide open.

“What changed?”

“I got older. And I started noticing things.” Her breath shakes on the inhale. “Bruises. She always had a reason. She walked into a cabinet. She fell. She bruised easily, she’d say, like it was a personality trait. Some of them didn’t add up, and part of me knew that, but she was my mom, and she smiled and made it a joke, and I…” Her voice fractures. She looks at Roman again. “I let myself believe her. Because the other thing was too big to look at.”

“Until three weeks ago,” Arthur says softly.

“Until three weeks ago.”

The whole room seems to understand where we’re going now. Even Roman’s attorneys have gone still.

Arthur takes a slow drink of water. Sets the glass down. Returns to the center of the room. “I want to talk about that week. Before we get to what happened inside your home — did something significant happen at Edgewood that Thursday?”

“Yes. Victor came to school. He brought my engagement ring.”

Arthur’s team puts the photograph up on the monitor, and I have to breathe through my nose to keep still. That fucking picture. Victor sliding a diamond the size of a knuckle onto Ally’s hand in the middle of the Edgewood atrium, kissing her cheek, stamping his name across her in front of the entire school.

“Is that you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know he was coming? Did you choose that ring?”

“No. To both.” Her eyes are fixed on the screen like it physically costs her. “I didn’t know he’d be there. I didn’t pick it. He picked it. He picked everything.”

“What did your father expect of you when Victor gave it to you?”

“To be happy. To look happy.” Her throat works. “So that’s what I did. I smiled. I hugged him. I let him kiss me. I said thank you.”

The next photo comes up — Ally with her arms around Victor’s neck, the perfect little fiancée, and only I know what it cost her, because she told me that night what she was thinking while she did it.

“If I’d embarrassed him in front of people, if I’d made him look foolish, I’d have gone home to my father. And I knew exactly what that meant.”

She doesn’t have to spell it out. The bruises she already testified to spell it out.

The photograph changes. Now I’m in it. So are Kaiden, X, Danny, and Iz — five idiots in blazers standing in the atrium while half of Edgewood films us.

“Did Victor approach anyone else that morning?”

“Yes. The boys. Ryan, Kaiden, Xander, Danny, and Iz.” A ghost of something crosses her face. “He called Ryan over first. Ryan wouldn’t go.”

Dad’s mouth twitches. Mom elbows me like I did it on purpose. I absolutely did it on purpose, but this is not the moment to look proud of it.

“So Victor went to him?”

“He crossed the whole atrium and started in on all five of them. One at a time. He knew things about their families — things that had happened, painful things — and he brought them up on purpose, in public, to intimidate them.”