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“Ahh, well, she’s…” I look around, scowling internally when I can’t see Fumi anywhere. I turn back to the mayor, smiling. “She’s making the rounds, I’m sure.”
Mayor Vides smiles back. “Well, you know you have my vocal support. I’ve already made it abundantly clear that I’m no fan of Preston’s.”
She means Preston Hall, as in, Governor Preston Hall, whom I’ll be challenging in the election.
“Neither am I, if we’re being frank,” I say curtly.
Mayor Vides tsks. “I don’t know how anyone is still a fan of his with those dreadful allegations swirling around. But here we are.”
Yeah. She’s referring to the various allegations of abuse of power, nepotism, and financial impropriety that have started to surface against Governor Hall. So far, each and every accusation has been shut down almost instantly, with, I have to admit, overwhelming evidence proving them false.
But anyone who’s ever met Preston Hall knows that if you smell smoke, there’s fire somewhere. I mean the man is a walking caricature of an out-of-touch, patriarchal shithead who spends his time trying to play grab-ass with unwilling secretaries and handing out sweet contracts to his buddies.
No one’s ever been able to make anything stick, though, and Preston has used this to paint himself as an unfairly maligned “man of the people”.
I’m going to change that, though. Because I, unlike anyone else thus far, have irrefutable proof of his bullshit. Or at least I will have, soon.
And what I’m going to have will destroy him.
“I’m so pleased that you’ve decided to run, Gabriel.” Mayor Vides smiles as she pats my arm. “Your father would be proud of you.”
“He would, you know,” Tempest grins after I say goodbye to Mayor Vides and turn back to her, Dante, and my brother.
At the risk of sounding arrogant, I know he would. Our dad was a down-in-the-trenches kind of lawyer, fighting the good fight and championing the marginalized. I know he’d be out of his mind excited to see me running for Governor.
But my father also knew exactly what kind of a person I was. Which is why he pushed me to follow him into law. To follow a path, with rules, guidelines, and markers. Play by the rules, and you stay in the light. Step off that path, and you risk showing them the monster underneath.
“Shit.” My thoughts are interrupted by Alistair’s hissed curse. I glance up to see him glaring daggers at his phone.
“What’s up?”
He grimaces. “Tell you later.”
“Why?”
He sighs. “Because it’s shitty news.”
“Alistair, just tell?—”
“Dwayne Halbertson is going to walk.”
My blood pressure spikes. “What?!”
Truth be told, Crown and Black mostly handles civil cases, not criminal ones. But in this situation, I was more than happy to make an exception.
Dwayne Halbertson was a groundskeeper at the Hamptons estate of Sam Cruz, one of Crown and Black’s wealthiest retainer clients. A year ago, Sam’s brother, sister-in-law, and fifteen-year-old niece Kelsey were visiting from Colorado. Somehow, Dwayne got Kelsey alone, where he raped and then beat her to death.
“How in the fuck?—”
“The evidence office mislabeled the goddamn sundress,” Alistair growls murderously, his face as livid as mine as he glares at his phone. “And the defense just figured that out.”
Mother. Fucker.
“They’re claiming broken chain of command, and technically speaking, they’re right.”
The double-edged sword of a fair and just system is that the truly corrupt can exploit that fairness to escape punishment. In criminal court, evidence needs to have a clear chain of handling.
The short version is, if someone writes the dates wrong, or doesn’t sign evidence in or out correctly, that’s considered a broken chain of command. That means technically, the evidence could have been tampered with, which makes it inadmissible in court.
