Chained to My Bodyguard Until the Trial novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Verdict

This time Ray did not stand at the back.

He sat in the front row of the gallery, behind the prosecution table.

Nico sat on his left, and Joan Whitaker stood at the table in front of him.

Joan stood with her hands flat on the table.

Across the aisle, Alden Kroll sat in his navy three-piece suit with his lawyer on one side.

The gold pen lay on the legal pad, and he did not click it.

He had not clicked it for two days.

The room was packed to the doors.

Reporters sat shoulder to shoulder along the wall.

A line of guards from Cushing Shield stood at the back in their dark suits, who had come on their own time.

The judge came in, and everyone rose.

"Has the jury reached a verdict?"

"We have, Your Honor," said the foreman, a small gray-haired man with a folded paper.

He did not look at the defendant.

"On count one, conspiracy to commit money laundering, how do you find?"

"Guilty."

The word fell into the room.

"On count two, wire fraud."

"Guilty."

"Count three. Obstruction of justice."

"Guilty."

Nico's hand found Ray's, on the wooden bench between them, and gripped hard.

Count by count, down the long page.

Guilty, guilty, guilty.

On every single count.

By the fifth, Kroll's lawyer had stopped writing.

By the eighth, Kroll had gone the color of the paper in the foreman's hand.

"On count eleven, conspiracy to tamper with a federal witness."

"Guilty."

Someone at the back made a small sobbing sound.

It was one of the guards.

Kroll rose to his feet.

He was a tall man, and he stood very straight.

He looked across the aisle at Nico for the first time since the conference room.

"You," he said, hoarsely, in front of everyone. "You little."

"Mr. Kroll," the judge said sharply.

"Eighty million dollars, and you."

"Sit down."

The pen, in his fist, snapped.

It snapped in the middle, and black ink ran down his palm and across the cuff of his shirt.

He stared at it.

Nobody laughed.

The bailiff stepped forward, a big man with a gray mustache, and said quietly, "Mr. Kroll."

Kroll let himself be turned.

The bailiff took his wrists, one then the other, and brought them behind his back.

Real steel closed on them, ratcheting, one click and then another.

Alden Kroll, who had never in his life been told to wait, stood still while a stranger tightened the cuffs.

His lawyer said, "Your Honor, we'd like to."

"Sit down, counsel."

They led him past the front row.

He looked neither left nor right.

At the rail, he stopped, and his head turned, just slightly, toward the man in the cream sweater.

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