“Everyone is looking at my legs.”
“They’ll stop eventually.”
“Will you?”
I smiled faintly.
“No.”
He deserved that.
The trial did not begin for almost a year.
There were motions.
Financial reviews.
Medical experts.
Forensic toxicology.
Vehicle reconstruction.
Digital records.
The prosecution built the case carefully.
The sedative Garrett had given me was not usually lethal at the doses discovered.
That mattered.
He had used it to impair me.
To create medical records.
To support future claims of incompetence.
The river was the escalation.
The forged restructuring documents tied the murder plan directly to financial motive.
Penelope eventually cooperated.
That hurt more than I expected.
She admitted the affair had begun eighteen months into my marriage.
She claimed Garrett told her I was unstable.
She claimed he said our marriage existed mostly for business.
She admitted she knew about the plan to leave Tobias and me in the SUV.
She claimed she did not know Garrett had sabotaged my seat belt.
I did not believe her completely.
But her testimony mattered.
She also admitted Victor had encouraged the relationship.
He wanted Penelope tied to Garrett because she was next in the family succession structure.
Her pregnancy accelerated everything.
Garrett wanted control before the child was born.
Victor wanted the company consolidated.
It was colder than any love affair.
Even Penelope had been part of the strategy.
That did not make her innocent.
It made the whole thing uglier.
Victor’s trial focused heavily on our parents’ crash.
The old mechanic’s records survived.
Payment trails survived.
Samuel’s files survived.
A former Vale employee testified.
The prosecution argued Victor had ordered sabotage intended to frighten or disable our father.
The defense argued there was no proof he intended death.
It did not matter as much as he hoped.
The cover-up mattered.
