#LawyerLust
@TheSylvaStandard:Sources say photos of the DA and Defense have been delivered to Judge Harlan. Is the Mercer trial about to implode?
#SylvaSecrets
#MercerTrial
@NC_JusticeWatcher:If the photos are real, Reid Calloway is finished. You can’t prosecute a murder while you’re sharing a bed with the woman defending him.
#ConflictOfInterest
#ResignReid
Eleanor shoved the phone back into her bag, her palm sweating against the leather. It wasn't just gossip anymore. It was a digital dossier. The world had already decided their verdict.
She looked at the door. Reid was out there. For one reckless second, she wanted to go find him. To let him take her hand and tell her they would survive this.
Then she thought of the timestamp on the porch photograph. She thought of#ResignReid.
She opened the door, and the silence died.
The hallway was a gauntlet of clicking camera shutters and muffled voices behind the courthouse glass. It sounded less like noise than a verdict.
By the time she reached the courtroom, Reid was already at the prosecution table. Six feet away.
She didn’t look at him.
She could feel him looking at her anyway—a desperate search for the woman he’d held on the porch, the woman from Sunday morning, before any of this had a name.
She gave him nothing.
She took her seat with cold, terrifying precision and sat so still she looked carved from marble.
From the gallery, Lila Grant caught her eye and gave a slow, satisfied tilt of her head.
Welcome back to the mud, Eleanor.
Eleanor stared through her as if she were glass.
The gavel cracked.
Judge Harlan took the bench, his face set like stone, and Eleanor understood with sudden, terrible clarity that the trial of David Mercer was no longer the only thing being decided in that courtroom.
I’m sorry, Reid,she thought, her heart breaking one final time before she locked it in the dark.But I won’t let you drown with me.
She stepped back into the war.
48
The Hallway
Through the glass doors at the end of the hall, Eleanor could already see the crowd gathering on the courthouse steps. Cameras. Microphones. Waiting.
The doors burst open before she could move.
“Ms. Harper!”
“Did the relationship begin before the indictment?”
