Miranda was already leaning against the mahogany double doors of courtroom 4B. She looked immaculate, her briefcase a Pandora’s box of financial ruin.
“Are we taking prisoners today, Clara?” she asked, a predatory glimmer in her eye.
“No quarter,” I replied.
When Ethan finally slinked through the metal detectors, the physical deterioration was staggering. The tailored confidence that had once drawn me to him had entirely evaporated. His suit hung loosely from his frame; his skin carried the gray pallor of a man subsisting on adrenaline and regret. Rebecca trailed three paces behind him, looking shrunken and terrified. Margaret and Lily flanked them, their previous digital bravado replaced by white-knuckled tension.
Ethan’s eyes darted toward me. I looked straight through him, fixing my gaze on the judge’s vacant leather chair.
The honorable Judge Harrison, a silver-haired jurist who looked as though he had long ago lost faith in humanity, took his seat and peered over his reading glasses.
Ethan’s defense counsel, a perpetually sweating man who clearly realized he was steering the Titanic after it had already snapped in half, cleared his throat. “Your Honor, my client formally contests the validity of the Nevada marriage certificate. He was operating under severe emotional duress, manipulated by his subordinate, and heavily intoxicated during the signing.”
Judge Harrison’s left eyebrow ascended toward his hairline. “Duress? You are arguing a grown man was kidnapped and forced into a chapel against his will?”
Miranda stood up. The movement was smooth, lethal.
“Your Honor. I present Exhibit A through F.” She dropped a three-inch-thick binder onto the oak table. It landed with a concussive thud that made Ethan flinch. “Seventy-three pages of synchronized communication, banking transfers, and hotel receipts. Mr. Jensen premeditated this ‘duress’ for eleven months.”
She didn’t stop. She surgically dismantled him.
“Furthermore, Your Honor,” Miranda continued, projecting her voice to the gallery, “we have irrefutable proof that Mr. Jensen financed this secondary marriage by systematically siphoning funds from my client’s primary accounts. He is not a confused victim of intoxication. He is a predator who committed bigamy and financial fraud.”
She opened the binder and read the highlighted text aloud. “Can’t wait to see her stupid face when she realizes I took her for everything.”
The silence in the courtroom was absolute.
The judge slowly rotated his gaze from the transcript to Ethan. “Did you author this sentence, Mr. Jensen?”
Ethan swallowed audibly. “It’s… it’s entirely out of context, sir.”
“Please,” the judge leaned forward, his voice dripping with icy contempt, “enlighten this court as to what specific context makes stealing from your legal spouse to fund a bigamous wedding acceptable.”
