He Let Me Grieve a Lie, Now He Begs Forgiveness novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: Answered

The screen held four thousand messages.

Chiara scrolled through them in the gray light with Elio's arm under her head.

Half were apologies, written fast and badly, from strangers who had called her a killer for three years.

The other half were worse.

You still ruined their lives. She's lying now to save herself. Where were the bodies, anyway?

"Don't," Elio said, and reached for the phone.

She held it out of reach.

"No," she said. "I want to see which ones I'm answering."

By nine she was on the courthouse steps in a gray coat, with Taylor at her left shoulder.

Elio stood a few paces back, because she had told him this walk was hers.

Her father's arraignment was at ten.

Gemma's was at eleven.

Three years ago she had come up these same steps with a hundred cameras in her face, and a man with a bullhorn had shouted that she should have died in the fire.

She remembered exactly where he had stood.

He was standing there now.

He held a phone in both hands and kept his eyes on the ground.

He was the man who had run the biggest page, with half a million followers, called Justice for the Pellegrinos.

She walked down the steps until she was in front of him.

"You ran the page," she said.

"Ms. Pellegrino."

"You wrote that I should be locked up for life. You wrote it forty times."

"I know." His voice was hoarse. "I didn't know. They sent me photos, a doctor's report, a letter. I thought they were real."

"Who sent them?"

"A woman called Gemma. She said she was a friend of the family."

Chiara almost laughed.

"Take the page down," she said. "Not tomorrow, not after a statement. Now, while I stand here."

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