Chapter 9 - The Trial of Public Opinion
The legal system moves slowly, but when the evidence is written in chromatographic mass-spectrometry and 4K digital video, it moves with the terrifying momentum of an avalanche.
Three months after the wedding, the Westchester County courthouse was packed to maximum capacity for the formal sentencing hearing.
Evan Mercer had pled guilty to Attempted Assault in the First Degree and Insurance Fraud, taking a plea agreement that sentenced him to eighteen years in a maximum-security state penitentiary without the possibility of parole for fourteen. His boyish charm had completely evaporated; during his allocution, he kept his head down, sobbing into his orange collar as he admitted to compounding the chemical weapon in the venue’s pantry.
Sybil Ward had pled guilty to Grand Larceny and Forgery. In exchange for avoiding a trial that would have exposed thirty years of financial misconduct, she agreed to a six-year sentence and the total forfeiture of her personal assets to make restitution to the trust.
And then there was Fallon.
She had refused to take a plea. Her legal team had attempted an insanity defense, claiming she was suffering from "severe narcissistic decompensation and internet-induced reality dissociation."
The jury had taken less than ninety minutes to reject it.
I sat in the front row of the gallery, wearing a sharp, tailored navy suit. My hair was cut short, styled away from the left side of my face.
The scar was there. It would always be there.
A pale, textured expanse of silver-and-rose tissue that swept down from the crest of my cheekbone, curving along my jawline like a permanent lightning strike. Dr. Vance and a team of reconstructive surgeons had performed three skin grafts, using tissue harvested from my hip to restore the underlying muscle structure. It didn't look like skin from a magazine.
It looked like armor.
When the judge, a formidable woman named Evelyn Chase, asked if the victim wished to make an impact statement, I stood up.
The courtroom fell into an absolute, breathless hush. The sketch artists leaned forward; the reporters in the back row stopped typing.
I walked to the podium, adjusted the microphone with my right hand, and looked directly across the well of the courtroom at Fallon.
She sat at the defense table, wearing a drab gray cardigan over a white prison blouse. She wouldn't look at me. Her eyes were fixed on the scarred wood of the table.
"I spent my entire life calculating risk," I said, my voice steady, resonant, filling every corner of the high-ceilinged room. "I believed that if you accounted for every variable, if you managed every liability, you could prevent disaster. But I made a fundamental actuarial error. I assumed that cruelty requires a motive."
Fallon’s shoulders tightened.
"Cruelty doesn't need a motive," I continued. "It only needs an audience. My sister didn't hate me because of what I had done; she hated me because I was real, and she was an illusion. She believed that by destroying my face, she could steal my substance. She believed that by turning my pain into content, she could make herself immortal."
I took a deep breath, feeling the cool air fill my lungs, feeling the strength of my own pulse, steady and unbothered.
"Fallon wanted the world to watch her," I concluded, turning my gaze toward Judge Chase. "I ask this court to give her exactly what she wanted. Let her spend the next twenty years in a place where no one is filming, where no one is clapping, and where the only audience she will ever have is the silence of her own reflection."
Judge Chase nodded once, her expression carved from stone.
Ten minutes later, the gavel fell.
May you like
"Fallon Ward-Mercer, for the count of Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon with Intent to Disfigure, this court sentences you to twenty-two years in the custody of the Department of Corrections. You will serve every single day of that time."
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