Then she smiled.
“Oops,” she said.
Marcus finally touched her arm, but not to stop her.
To steady her.
Like she was the one who had almost fallen.
My baby shifted inside me.
A slow, hard roll beneath my ribs.
The kind of movement that reminded me I was not allowed to collapse.
Not today.
Not here.
Not in front of him.
Not in front of her.
Not in front of the man sitting above us in the black robe.
Judge Robert Whitmore had not spoken yet.
He had not raised his voice.
He had not slammed his gavel.
He had not revealed that the pregnant woman his son-in-law had just humiliated in open court was his daughter.
He only leaned forward.
Just slightly.
And when he did, the entire courtroom seemed to hold its breath.
Marcus Vale, founder of Vale Capital, owner of three Gulfstream jets, husband of eight years, father of the unborn child he had just called a “strategic inconvenience,” turned toward the bench with the same arrogant little half-smile he used on magazine covers.
