Chapter 8

The courtroom was cold in the way only government buildings can be — a dry, recycled cold that seeped through the wool of Clara's suit jacket and settled into her bones. She sat on the left side of the aisle, three rows behind the prosecution's table, with Julian on one side and Alistair on the other. Across the room, on the defense side, the Ashford family sat in a tight, silent row, their faces carefully blank, their expensive clothes doing their best to project an image of untouchable confidence.

Vivienne was at the defense table, her platinum bob immaculate, her face composed into an expression of quiet, injured dignity. She was wearing a pale gray suit that made her look almost innocent, almost credible. She had not looked at Clara once since the proceedings began.

The trial had taken four months to reach this point. Four months of depositions and motions and pretrial hearings, of legal skirmishes played out in front of judges who seemed to have better things to do. The Ashford family had thrown everything at the case — procedural objections, character witnesses, a full-court press of media spin that had painted Vivienne as a woman wronged, a victim of Clara's supposed jealous rage. There had been days when Clara had gone home and wept from the sheer exhaustion of being dragged through the mud by people who had never met her, who had never seen the footage, who had decided her guilt from the headlines alone.

But today was the closing argument. Today the jury would hear everything. Today the red light would have its final say.

The prosecutor, a thin man named Kevin Hartley with the patient eyes of someone who had spent his career in other people's tragedies, stood to address the court. He was quiet, methodical, building his case brick by brick, and Clara watched the jury lean forward to hear him.

"...the footage does not lie," Hartley said, his voice carrying through the silent room. "You have seen with your own eyes what happened in that suite. You have seen the defendant enter a private room uninvited, followed a pregnant woman after a gala, and attacked her with a heel designed for nothing more than walking. You have seen the impact. You have seen the fall. You have seen the blood."

He paused, letting the images settle into the jurors' minds.

"The defense will tell you that the defendant was provoked. They will tell you that the victim was the aggressor, that this was a misunderstanding, a tragedy, a moment of passion. But you have seen the footage. You have seen the defendant stand over a pregnant woman who is bleeding on the floor and cry crocodile tears for the cameras. You have seen her switch from violence to victimhood in the span of a single second."

Hartley stepped closer to the jury box. "The defendant was not provoked. She was not afraid. She was not defending herself. She had one purpose in that suite, and that was to hurt Clara Whitmore so badly that she would lose everything — her husband, her unborn child, maybe her own life."

Vivienne's attorney, a silver-haired woman named Constance Reed who looked like she had been born wearing a tailored suit, rose to object. The judge overruled. Hartley continued.