“You opportunistic little thief—” She was on her feet, her composure gone entirely, her face twisted into something the tailored suit and the careful hair had been hiding all along.

“That money was mine! I earned it, I put in the years, I—”

The gavel cracked down. The judge ordered her restrained, and the bailiffs moved in, and Demi was pulled back into her chair still spitting the words, and it was over — not the trial, but the outcome of it.

Because everyone in that room had just heard what she was, and what she grieved. She had not said she loved him. She had not said she was innocent. In the one unguarded moment of the whole proceeding, the only thing she had mourned was the fortune.

It got worse for her from there. Gareth, watching the room turn and doing the math on the thirty years he was facing, decided he would rather be a witness than a co-defendant.

He took the stand and told the prosecutor everything: that Demi had come to him with the idea, that Demi had sourced the forged prescriptions and administered the drug, that Demi had chosen the house in San Diego and hired the men in the alley.