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The prosecution basically slapped a “guilty” sticker on his forehead and called it a day. Motive? Greed. Means? Plausible. Emotional profile? Definitely “snapped under pressure” material.

It was tidy. Convenient. Practically gift-wrapped.

I never bought it.

And maybe the worst part? Even if Peter was innocent, it didn’t matter much at that point. At least not in any tangible way.

Peter Mayfair died in prison less than a year into his sentence. Official cause? Suicide. Unofficially? It was sketchy as hell—broken nose, bruised ribs, and a blind spot on the cameras. It felt less like justice and more like a cover-up.

Like someone wanted to make sure the story stayed wrapped up with a pretty little bow and zero loose ends flapping in the breeze.

I made it my mission to untie that bow.

Death doesn’t cancel out the right to the truth.

I spent months digging through the case—long nights, bottomless coffee, zero social life. I gave up everything. Friends, family, weekends, sleep, the vague concept of self-care. I lost myself in the details until there wasn’t much of me left—just a walking, talking collection of case files and obsession.

In the end, I was right. Or maybe I was just stubborn enough to make it count.

Either way, I got the PhD. Landed a job as a professor of forensic psychology.

Digging into the Mayfair family was probably a little too close to home.

Scratch that—it was absolutely too close.

One of my close friends just so happened to be the Mayfairs’ golden granddaughter—first born to their crumbling dynasty, heir to all the trauma. But it taught me something invaluable about the system.

Namely, that justice? It’s rarely about the truth. It’s about whoever can tell the best story and make people believe it. Preferably in under sixty minutes and with dramatic courtroom pauses.

Which… yeah, kind of made me an asshole at the end of the day. Because the defense attorney who lost the case? He was on my thesis committee.

Worse than that? Theo Grayson was someone I had a bit of⁠—

[PAUSE]

—history with.

And he hadn’t just lost the case—he’d quit practicing law entirely afterward. Walked away from the courtroom and straight into academia with a fresh pile of regret and a shiny new faculty ID. He was still trying to prove himself as a professor, still wearing the weight of that trial like it was stitched into his suit jackets.

And there I was, dissecting the case that wrecked his career like it was my personal vendetta.

I told myself to leave it alone. That I wasn’t the kind of person who kicked a man while he was already down—“down” being stuck teaching at a mid-sized university instead of arguing high-profile cases in front of a jury, where he clearly belonged.

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But the case wouldn’t let me go.

I’d spent too long orbiting the Mayfairs not to notice the rot. It was everywhere—deep and festering.

[static crackles briefly]

That’s the thing about cases like Henry Mayfair’s. People see what they’re meant to see. The version they’re handed.

It’s like those miniature crime scene dioramas—tiny, frozen tableaus arranged just so. A broken lamp here, a smear of blood there. Every detail is carefully placed for someone else to come along, squint at it, and decide what it means.

I was obsessed with those things in grad school. They were these painstakingly crafted, dollhouse-sized murder scenes used decades ago to train detectives.