The room went dead silent as clear, high-definition footage filled the screen — the interior of the master vanity, two days earlier.

Dulce, alone, tampering with the tin of tea leaves she brought me each night.

And then her own voice, recorded, unmistakable, filling the study through the speakers: “Just a few more weeks, old man.

Then this whole house is mine.”

I had chosen that clip with care, out of the hours the cameras had gathered, because it did the one thing no amount of my testimony ever could: it let Dulce convict herself, in her own voice, in front of the very witnesses she had assembled to certify my incompetence.

That was the elegance of it, the part the old litigator in me took a cold satisfaction in.