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“Well, before I could get there, Tobias walked off, and Claire got up to follow him. She was limping a little bit, like she had tweaked an ankle or something? So I kept walking towards her because I thought she might need help, and that’s when I saw him drug her drink.” Lauren nodded.
I had to applaud the vernacular she’d coached Zio to use—it was a little juvenile, with ‘um’s and ‘yeah’s, making him seem harmless and genuine. It seemed less scripted, too, and the occasional question marks he’d throw in made him sound uncertain. It made people want to comfort him, especially when paired with his baby face. It didn’t make him sound very eloquent, but it subtly manipulated the audience into liking him anyway.
“What were your first thoughts?”
“Uh, fear, I guess, and panic. Anger. I could tell she hadn’t seen it, and I was worried she was going to drink it. I just kind of… moved, you know? I wasn’t really thinking, I just wanted to get her out of there. I told her I got some booze on her dress and that it might sink in and stain it, so she would go to the bathroom to put some water on it, and I was afraid she’d decline, but she didn’t. She practically ran off.
“Then I turned to Tobias and told him we should take things outside. I’m not very proud of myself for this, I know it was a mistake, but I was just thinking, ‘he can’t be here when she comes back,’ you know? And I was mad. I mean, how could someone do something like that? It’s disgusting and—and evil. I wanted to chew him out for it, so I took him outside to give him an earful.”
“Can you summarize what was said?” Lauren asked.
“Yeah, of course. So, uh, he started it off by saying something like, ‘I don’t know what you think you saw,’ and I told him to cut the shit—pardon my language—because I knew what I had seen. He… ugh, sorry, this is gross to repeat. He said he was just ‘taking what she owed him,’ and a ‘weak beta’ like me wouldn’t get it.”
“Can you explain to the court what the term ‘beta’ means colloquially?” Fabrizio wrinkled his nose like it grossed him out—as it should—but nodded.
“So there’s this whole group of people who say they’ve ‘taken the red pill,’ like in the Matrix, and they’re able to see past all the new-age social beliefs to how it’s supposed to be. Except, basically, they’re just racist, misogynistic douchebags with caveman brains. They say a lot of stuff about a man’s ‘natural place’ as the provider and protector and a woman’s ‘place’ as the homemaker and child bearer. And, like, if that works for you, that’s fine, but they’re really just using it to justify their actions.”
My nose wrinkled, along with the faces of multiple jurors. We’d seen plenty of those, and I couldn’t fucking stand them. Brainwashed fuckers. Lauren just nodded, looking grim. “And what actions are those, Mr. Marino?” she prompted.
“I guess it’s really more beliefs? They basically expect women to wait on them hand and foot, and they don’t have to do anything to earn it because that’s just their natural place. They say they provide, but they usually don’t and just expect other people to support them because they’re ‘high status’ or whatever. They make the women in their lives do everything, and if they refuse, they call them ‘low-value women.’ Like they’re up for auction or something, it’s gross.”
“And this mentality is where the term ‘beta’ comes from?” Lauren asked.
“Exactly. These guys call themselves ‘alphas,’ like that old wolf pack theory that we disproved forever ago, and women are ‘omegas,’ meant for breeding.” I had the biggest breeding kink of anyone I’d ever met, and I agreed wholeheartedly with Fabri’s disgust. “Any man they deem ‘feminine,’ which basically just means not wanting to brute force their way through life like some kind of human wrecking ball, gets called a ‘beta.’ So he was basically accusing me of having a brain and basic human empathy.”
“Thank you. And after he said that, what happened then?”
“I said thank you,” Fabrizio said with a smug little grin. There were chuckles scattered through the courtroom. “That was when he got up in my face, really close to me. I was heated, so I didn’t back down, but I was honestly pretty nervous. I thought he was going to hit me.”
“Let the record show that my client is referring to this moment,” Lauren said, pressing a button to pull up a still picture from the fight. Sure enough, Cole was the one leaning into my brother’s space while Fabrizio just stood there. It definitely made Cole look like the aggressor. “Go on.”
“He started yelling at me about how I was a disgrace of a man, and he was gonna hit me until I either got fixed or died. I bluffed, told him I’d already called the police, and he got even more mad. He really looked like he was about to throw a punch. I saw some headlights coming, and I just thought ‘oh, if that car runs into him, he’d have to stop fighting.’ I- I didn’t think it through. Obviously, it was a split-second thing, but it looked like the car was going slow, you know? I thought he’d get some gnarly bruising, maybe a broken leg or something, but that was it! I didn’t want him to die, I just wanted to end the fight before it could start. I heard the engine rev when I was already pushing him, and the momentum was—I couldn’t stop. I realized what was going to happen right before it did.” Lauren nodded in understanding.
“I’m never gonna get the sound out of my brain,” Fabri said, looking distraught. I wanted to go up there, grab him, take him away from the room. I wanted to do something, anything. But there was still no word from Mark.
“If you could go back, what would you do differently, if anything?” Fabrizio barked out a little laugh, shaking his head.
“The funny thing is, I’d do most of it again, in a heartbeat,” he said. “I’m never going to regret stepping in when I did, spilling those drinks, giving Claire the chance to leave. But I should have just told the bartender what I saw or called the police. I wouldn’t have taken him outside, I wouldn’t have tried to talk to him… It’s not like I was trying to make him see the error of his ways. I just wanted to see his face when he realized the jig was up. If I could do it again, I wouldn’t bother.”
Lauren took a deep breath. My heart rattled in my chest. It couldn’t be over yet, I hadn’t found Baron, I couldn’t get Fabrizio free?—
“No further questions, Your Honor.”
The trial was over.
Chapter Thirty-Two
RICHARD
Ihad prepared myself for a long, long wait. After all, the jury had to agree on a verdict, and even then, Fabrizio still had to be sentenced. Honestly, part of me was hoping that they would take a long time—long enough for me to find Baron, get a confession, and get this whole thing done with. But they didn’t take that long at all.
Five hours were all it took. My brother was found guilty of the reduced charge of involuntary manslaughter.
I didn’t hear much after that. The room became this muffled buzz, and I just stared at Fabrizio’s back, wanting to be sick.
I’d failed. I had failed him. Fabri was going to go away, and there wouldn’t be anything I could do to help him. How long? How long would he be in there, with the worst of the world? How much of that time could we really keep him safe for, when all of us were out here, and he was trapped in there?
I was, in all honesty, numb. I was numb through the rest of the judge’s words, numb through people filing out of the courtroom, numb through the bailiff leading Fabrizio away. It wasn’t until dad put his hand on my shoulder that I found some semblance of thought again.
