Chapter 4 — The Sealed Envelope

Judge Alvarez entered the courtroom quietly, and the room came to order around him without his having to ask.

He had thick gray brows set in a straight line and the weathered, unhurried expression of a man who had spent decades watching people lie to him and had grown very good at telling when they did.

He sifted through the documents before him, methodical, unbothered by the tension in the room, until he found what he was looking for: a sealed envelope, marked with my own handwriting, that my attorney had submitted directly to the court.

He slit it open with a letter opener.