The True Heiress's Revenge: Exposing My Toxic Family on Live TV novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Sentencing

Quinton stood with the folder in his hands for three more seconds.

Nobody in the lobby made a sound.

"I'll go," he said.

"Yes."

He turned, and the guards walked him to the revolving door.

At the glass he stopped, and for a moment she thought he would look back.

He did not.

He walked into the street and was lost in the noon crowd.

Four months later, the courtroom was full again.

The sentencing hearing for the woman from the backwoods had been set for ten, and by nine the line ran around the block.

Demi sat in the second row, in a plain gray dress, with Drake at her left.

Bruce sat behind them, alone, with his hands folded.

Her mother and father sat on the other side of the aisle.

They had not come to her.

They had come to see it end.

At the defense table, the old woman waited in an orange jumpsuit, with her hair combed flat and no kettle.

She looked smaller than she had in the meadow.

She had not looked toward the gallery once.

Drake leaned in.

"Celia's sentence came down on Tuesday," he said very low. "Nine years."

"I know."

"Were you in the room?"

"I watched it from the office."

"You did not want to be there."

"I wanted to see what she would do with her face," Demi said. "She hummed through the whole thing."

Drake took her hand and held it in his lap.

The bailiff called the court to order.

The judge was a gray-haired woman who had presided over the whole hearing in a level voice.

"This court has heard from the state's witnesses," she said. "We have the testimony of the defendant's husband, already sentenced. We have the financial records recovered from the defendant's own kitchen. We have the victim's account."

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