Travis leaned in close to her ear, his voice a lethal, terrifying whisper that made her knees completely buckle.
“I have enough money to hire the best prosecutors in the state to consult on this case,” Travis whispered. “I am going to ensure you die in a concrete box, Margaret. You will never, ever touch her again.”
Two months later.
The universe, I had learned, keeps a meticulous, unyielding ledger. The scales of justice, though sometimes agonizingly slow, eventually balance with a terrifying, absolute weight.
The scene cuts between two vastly different realities.
In the sterile, claustrophobic, cinder-block visiting room of the county jail, the fluorescent lights buzzed aggressively overhead. Chloe sat at a metal table, wearing an oversized, faded orange jumpsuit that swallowed her formerly glamorous frame. Her hair was greasy, her face pale and drawn.
She was screaming, slamming her fists onto the metal table, spit flying from her lips as she berated her exhausted public defender.
“You have to get me a deal!” Chloe shrieked, her voice echoing in the bleak room. “My parents are lying! They threw me under the bus! Mom told the DA that I swung the wrench first! They’re trying to pin the whole thing on me!”
The public defender sighed, adjusting his glasses, entirely unmoved by her sociopathic panic. “Ms. Hastings, the video evidence is irrefutable. Your parents are turning on you to save themselves, yes. But you are caught on tape preparing to strike a helpless victim. The District Attorney is not offering plea deals for reduced sentences. They are offering a race to see who confesses first to secure a standard twenty-year term instead of thirty. Your family has frozen your assets. You have no money for private counsel. You need to prepare for trial.”
