Emily took one look at my pale face, the IV lines in my arms, and the tears welling in my eyes. She dropped her purse, sprinted across the room, and gathered me into a fierce, desperate, weeping hug.
“I’m so sorry, Clara,” Emily sobbed into my hair. “I never stopped trying to call. I never stopped.”
I hugged her back with all the strength I had left. The isolation was broken. The psychological prison Julian had built was nothing more than a fragile house of cards, and it had completely collapsed the moment the truth was exposed.
Six months later, the criminal trial of Julian Vance was a massive, highly publicized media frenzy. The spectacular downfall of a prominent CEO caught poisoning his wife at his own promotion gala was front-page news for weeks.
But I didn’t have to testify.
Faced with the overwhelming, irrefutable medical evidence, the testimony of the DEA agents who raided his home, and the damning, horrifying accounts of the two hundred elite guests who had watched his performative, sociopathic facade shatter in real-time on the ballroom floor, Julian’s public defender advised him he had absolutely no chance in front of a jury.
Julian took a plea deal.
