It had slipped from my swollen finger after I braced myself against the defense table, one hand wrapped under my belly, the other catching the edge of a stack of divorce papers Marcus Vale had paid somebody very expensive to destroy my life with.
His mistress, Savannah Cross, stood in six-inch nude heels beside him.
She was twenty-six.
I was thirty-four.
She wore white.
I wore the navy maternity dress I had ironed at 5:12 that morning because I still believed, in some corner of my exhausted heart, that walking into court with dignity mattered.
Savannah looked down at my ring like it was a dead insect.
Then she smiled.
“Oops,” she said.
Marcus finally touched her arm, but not to stop her.
To steady her.
Like she was the one who had almost fallen.
My baby shifted inside me.
A slow, hard roll beneath my ribs.
The kind of movement that reminded me I was not allowed to collapse.
Not today.
Not here.
Not in front of him.
Not in front of her.
Not in front of the man sitting above us in the black robe.
Judge Robert Whitmore had not spoken yet.
He had not raised his voice.
He had not slammed his gavel.
He had not revealed that the pregnant woman his son-in-law had just humiliated in open court was his daughter.
He only leaned forward.
Just slightly.
