They flipped. Within a day both had lawyers negotiating cooperation, and both had confirmed the same story: Gareth had paid them ten thousand dollars to put Brandon in the hospital and frighten him into signing away the estate, and had told them, in as many words, that if Brandon still refused, they were to take the sister.

Chapter 10 — The Trial

The proceedings ran nearly five months, and Demi’s defense team — she had hired the most expensive one money could still reach — fought every inch of it.

Their central strategy was the recording. If they could get it thrown out, or convince a jury it couldn’t be trusted, the rest of the case grew harder to prove.

So they attacked it from two directions at once. They argued that Roderick had been delirious and medicated in his final days, a confused dying man who had turned on a devoted wife out of paranoia and been manipulated by a scheming orderly who saw a fortune within reach.

And they argued that the recording itself was a fabrication — that in an age when a laptop could put words in anyone’s mouth, no jury should convict on the strength of a voice on a file.

Both arguments failed, and they failed on the evidence.