Chapter 16 — Free

Six months later, the afternoon sun came through the wide bay windows of my father’s auto shop on the edge of Chicago, and the air smelled of motor oil and pine and spring rain, and my life was unrecognizable in every way that mattered.

The case never reached a jury.

Faced with the video, the audio, the medical records, and the financial audit the investigation had triggered, Trent’s own lawyers told him to take the plea, and he is serving eight years for felony domestic battery and aggravated assault, with no parole for the first five.

Gerald was forced out of his firm, buried under fines, and handed a suspended sentence for concealing the abuse and trying to buy the officers of a court he’d assumed he already owned.