Chapter 1 — The Defendant’s Table

The courtroom smelled of stale institutional coffee, damp wool, and the particular silence of a place where people without power come to have their lives taken apart.

I sat at the defendant’s table with one hand resting over my eight-months-pregnant belly.

Beneath my ribs, the baby shifted — a small flutter of life with no idea of the disaster unfolding just outside my skin.

I had been awake since three that morning.

A dull ache throbbed in my lower back, and the dry recycled heat made every breath a small effort.

My attorney, a public defender named Emmet, looked like he had not slept in a decade.

Two weeks earlier he had told me, with genuine and exhausted regret, that the prenuptial agreement I had signed was ironclad.

Chapter 2 — Fourteen Dollars

I had fourteen dollars in my checking account, no family to call, no emergency contact, and a baby due in five weeks.

I had survived eighteen years in the state foster system.

I knew exactly how to sit in a room where strangers in suits had already decided my fate.

You keep your face blank.

You breathe shallow.