The defense attorney sprang up. "Objection — overly dramatic—"
"Overruled," the judge cut in, voice flat and final. The gavel's sound felt like a small mercy.
Sebastian swallowed hard, but he kept going. I could see the tremor in his hands, the way his shoulders hunched like he was bracing for her voice to cut through the air even now.
"It wasn't just jealousy," he said, eyes darting once to where Mira sat. "It was violence. Once, I tried to break up with her, and she—she clawed at my face until I bled. I left the country after that. I wasn't running from her. I was running from them."
A ripple moved through the courtroom, a low murmur that felt like the ground shifting under us all.
"The Senator called me two days later. He used that voice politicians use: soft at the edges, threatening under the skin. 'Disappear quietly,' he said. 'We'll take care of it. For your own good.'" I swallowed. "A week later my visa application was approved overnight. A bank transfer arrived with a note about a stipend for studies abroad. I didn't open the envelope right away. I sat on it for hours, hands numb."
His hands shook as he kept talking; "I took the deal. I left. I thought distance would make it stop. Instead, I learned to live looking over my shoulder. Every time my phone buzzed, every knock on a door made my heart spike. I had nights where I'd wake up thinking she was there, spiteful and smiling."
He looked down, "Running from her wasn't enough," he said quietly. "I was running from a system that protected her, that could buy my silence and call it benevolence. I had to build a life in exile—a new name in paperwork, new routines, new ways to pretend I was safe. But nothing really takes the memory away."
My stomach turned. Mira tilted her head, smiling like this was all some kind of performance staged for her amusement. I felt it like a punch to the chest. Hearing it from his mouth, laid out raw like that; it was everything I already knew and still didn't want to believe. The way she broke us wasn't just with her hands or her rage. It was with the power behind her. With the shadow of her father smoothing over the blood she spilled.
I sat there listening to him, and for the first time, I didn't feel like the only one haunted.
Brandon Yates walked up next. Bigger than Sebastian—taller, broader—but when he put his hand on the Bible his fingers trembled like they belonged to someone half his size. I watched him from where I sat; his jaw was set, but there was this thin line of fatigue under his eyes.
He started slow, voice low and even, "I met Mira in college," he said. "She liked to control everything. Who I spoke to, what I wore, even the passwords on my phone. At first I thought it was passion. Care. But it got worse. She started hitting me."
He took a breath and then the words came faster, desperate to be out before the memory could rearrange itself into silence. "I woke up once to her standing over me with a knife. She said if I left her, she'd make sure no one recognized my face again." He winced as though the knife still had weight in his chest. "When I tried to report it, the police station got a call while I was still filling out my statement. A senator's aide arrived. Suddenly I was the one being accused—of lies, of provocation. They dropped the charges, but I knew what that meant. I knew whose power I'd crossed." His hands clenched and then relaxed as if to stop them from shaking the stand.
The defense leaned forward, sniffing for an opening—trying to build the old narrative: bitter ex, revenge-seeker. I could see it. The way they angled their questions before asking anything. But Brandon didn't flinch. His answer came steady, stripped of theatrics. " I stayed quiet because I thought no one would believe me. Now I see what she's done to Ryder and I'm done being silent."
Hearing him say my name in that big room felt strange, like an echo that made what happened to me real in a public, unavoidable way. The air in the courtroom shifted. People who had watched me with polite curiosity now looked like witnesses to a pattern. If Brandon and Sebastian could stand and say it, then the thing I'd been muting in myself wasn't an isolated failing. It was part of a chain.
Brandon's voice broke for a second when he mentioned the knife, but he held it together enough to meet the Senator's eyes—once, hard—before looking back at the jury. As he stepped down, I felt the room settle into a new shape. Their testimonies weren't just personal confessions anymore; they were pieces of evidence, overlapping and undeniable. The defense could try to frame them as scorned lovers, try to smear motives and plant doubt, but each account built on the last, like a map finally tracing the terrain I'd stumbled through alone.
I sat very still, listening, feeling less like the only man who'd been broken and more like someone whose story was finally being seen in full, terrible, messy, and true.
And then came Ann.
When she took the stand, the room seemed to shrink around us. Her hands trembled as she was sworn in, but when she sat down, her eyes locked on Mira with a fury that made my stomach twist.
The prosecutor asked softly, "Ann, can you tell us what happened that night?"
Her voice cracked at first, but steadied as she went on, "I'd worked with Ryder. We weren't involved. We weren't anything more than colleagues who respected each other. But that was enough to set Mira off. She thought I was a threat."
Ann swallowed, and the silence in the courtroom was suffocating, "One evening, I was leaving the gym. I saw Ryder's car and Mira was waiting. She had a knife pressed against my throat. She whispered things I couldn't repeat here—things about belonging, about property, about what happens to people who touch what's hers. Then she shouted at Ryder,'Don't move. She touched what's mine.'"
I felt my chest tighten just hearing it again.
"And then she shoved me. Into the street. A car was coming—fast. I heard the brakes, the scream of tires, the sound of my own body hitting the pavement. I should've died. By some miracle, I didn't."
Gasps rippled through the gallery, "Mira stood there watching," Ann said, her voice shaking but rising. "Calm. Cold. Like she'd knocked over a vase and was waiting for someone else to sweep up the pieces."
She pulled a folded paper from her bag, her hand trembling. "Afterward, her father came. He handled everything. Paid the medical bills. Paid me to stay quiet. He pushed an NDA acrossthe table and told me if I ever spoke, I'd regret it. I signed because I was terrified. But I kept everything. The agreement. The wire transfers. The texts where she bragged about what she did."
Ann's eyes locked on mine then, just for a moment. "You weren't the only one, Ryder. But I'm done being silent. She won't do this again." I gripped the edge of the table so hard my knuckles burned. Mira didn't even flinch. She only smirked, like she was still the one in control. But for the first time, I knew she wasn't.
The defense attorney rose, smoothing his tie like he was about to deliver a performance rather than a question. "Ms. Carrow," he began, voice dripping with condescension. "You signed an NDA, correct? You accepted money. A rather generous sum, I might add. Doesn't that suggest, perhaps, that you were... complicit? That this story of yours is less about truth and more about regret?"
Ann leaned forward, gripping the edge of the witness stand, "You think Iwantedthat money? You think I wanted the nightmares, the scar on my hip, the sound of my bones breaking every time I cross a street? I took the payout because I was terrified. Because her father told me if I didn't, I'd never work again. That my family would pay for it. That's not complicity. That's survival."
The defense tried again. "But you didn't go to the police."
