Off Limit: Claimed by My Ex-Fiancé's Stepdad novel · Chapter 27 of 32
Chapter 27: The Plea
I put the phone face down next to my pasta.
Ward didn't reach for it. He waited.
"She's going to say it in court," I said. "In front of a judge. With that face."
"Yes."
"Then I want to be in the room."
I called the detective from the kitchen table, at eleven on a Friday night.
"I saw it," he said before I could speak.
"When she says I planted it in court," I said, "I want the judge to see the work light. Big. In color."
"I'll tell the prosecutor," he said. "I think she was going to anyway. But I'll tell her you asked."
On Tuesday, June 16, I sat in the second row of a courtroom on Centre Street in my blacks.
The clock on the wall was four minutes slow.
Ward sat on my left.
Joanie sat on my right, in a blazer she'd bought for a funeral and hoped to wear again soon.
The flyman sat at the end of the row with his cap in his hands.
Behind us were the reporters. Every seat.
Bettina came in through a side door with her two lawyers.
She wore navy, and pearls, and no bracelet.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–16 of Off Limit: Claimed by My Ex-Fiancé's Stepdad are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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