Chapter 5: Wide Awake
The three of them were arrested that night.
The charges were long and they were serious — what they’d done had names like aggravated assault, and conspiracy, and attempted fraud, and the drugging alone was enough to end all three of their careers before the larger charges were even argued.
Vanessa, it turned out, lost her license the fastest; the bar does not look kindly on an attorney who weaponizes a conservatorship to help her partner drug and rob his wife.
Julian went to trial certain, to the very end, that his charm would save him the way it always had.
It did not.
The recording played in that courtroom, in his own voice, and I watched the jury’s faces change exactly the way mine had in that bathroom mirror.
I kept my father’s trust.
I kept his firm.
I kept, most importantly, the self they had spent months trying to convince a court I’d lost.
