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Two days later…
Coming home and finding her in tears hadn’t been what I was expecting, and I almost lost my shit when I heard her sobbing and found her curled up in a ball on my bed.
Dropping to my knees next to her, I skimmed my hands over her, waiting to see what area she reacted to me touching. “Eva, what’s wrong? Are you sick? Where does it hurt?”
With one hand still covering her face, the other one shot out and grabbed me around the neck, pulling me off balance and into her stomach face first with an “Ooomph.”
“The l-l-lawyer c-called,” she cried, in between shudders that shook her whole body. “They’re going to get an appeal date.”
I was happy for her that my friend Rahim could get her the appeal, but I was scared that she’d be disappointed or pissed at me for getting her hopes up if they didn’t overturn her mom’s sentence.
Still, I didn’t want to shit on her happiness. I couldn’t do it, even if it was common sense and not malice that was fueling my worry.
“That’s great news, baby.”
“Rahim said there were no guarantees, and I get that. I’m just so grateful to both of you for getting us this far.”
Pushing her damp hair off her cheek where it was stuck fast, I grinned at how cute she looked, even with swollen eyes and a red nose. “Did he say if there was anything that’d help her appeal?”
“No,” she mumbled, then blew out a breath. “Yeah, there is one thing.”
When she didn’t expand on it, I pressed, “And what’s that?”
“The evidence we have on Tyson goes a long way to helping her case, and Laura’s looking to see if she can find any traces of him blackmailing Mom or anyone else in similar circumstances. That along with him being charged and the case against him being tight would help.”
Taking her face in my hands, I kept eye contact with her as I told her about my opinion on it all. “Baby, men like Tyson Randall who think they’re invincible, let their egos dictate what they do. That means they truly believe they won’t go wrong because they think they’re smarter than anyone who’s come before them, or they believe they’ve learned where the others went wrong. Know what that means?”
When she shook her head, I grinned. “They fuck up. There’s no such thing as the perfect crime, and with him being as egotistical as he is, he’ll have forgotten to hide his tracks somewhere, even if it’s just forgetting to empty the trashcan on a computer or email account.”
“There’s no way it’ll be something as easy as that,” she scoffed.
Turned out it was.
Epilogue
EPILOGUE 1
“Ms. Ray, it goes without saying that confessing to crimes you didn’t commit and not reporting that you were being blackmailed was an incredibly stupid move,” the judge said as he looked around the courtroom. “That said, I do understand your reticence at going to the police. Sometimes, when even the best-intentioned people are backed into a corner, we act in ways others see as stupid, but until they’re in the same shoes, they won’t understand.”
“I can’t tell if he’s being sympathetic or if he’s lecturing her on being stupid,” Eva whispered into my ear, just as her siblings turned to look at the back of the room and began whispering amongst themselves.
Following where they were looking once again, my hand spasmed in Eva’s, getting her attention off what the judge was now saying and making her look in the same direction I was.
Right at fucking Tyson Randall, his hair greased back, a ridiculously thin mustache way too far away from his top lip and wearing a poorly fitting suit which looked like the material was close to screaming in crisis.
With his top lip lifted in a sneer, he followed behind two police officers and a man I presumed was his lawyer toward where the judge was looking over his half-moon spectacles, completely unimpressed at the interruption.
Connie glanced nervously back at us and shot me a tight smile when I winked at her. I can’t say I’d been expecting it to go down like this, but I wasn’t altogether unsurprised at his appearance.
After all, Harry and I had made sure he knew it was in his best interests to take ownership of Connie’s bullshit. The shit Laura could do still never failed to amaze me, and an instant pop-up message on his computer as soon as he logged onto it had apparently done the job.
“There’d better be a good reason for the interruption, Officers.” His eyes flicked toward the lawyer, and it didn’t take a genius to see he wasn’t that fond of him. “Mr. Greenwood,” he greeted, looking like he’d tasted something vile.
“This is my client, Mr. Tyson Randall,” the lawyer introduced, his forehead shining with sweat under the lights already.
“Jeez, I hope he brought extra deodorant,” Laura said quietly as she leaned forward to see around Euan.
“Well, now, you’re the reason this lady’s in such a mess, Mr. Randall. What’s the purpose of this interruption? What do you hope to achieve?” the judge barked, getting our focus back on him.
