Jason placed both hands on the defense table.
“This is my company,” he said, his voice low and strained. “I built it.”
The judge’s eyes moved to him. “Mr. Mitchell.”
He ignored the warning.
“I built everything. She never cared about the business. She spent years hiding in that house, taking pills, crying into pillows, refusing to attend events. Now she walks in here with some old scars and expects everyone to hand her my life?”
The courtroom seemed to contract around me.
There it was.
The version of me he had created for public use. The fragile wife. The silent woman. The problem hidden behind mansion gates and tasteful charity dinners.
I breathed once. Slowly.
Then I reached for the black binder beneath my chair.
Jason’s gaze dropped to it.
He knew that binder too.
Not because he had ever seen it before, but because men like Jason recognized danger when it appeared in an ordinary form.
