Chapter 1

My new neighbor sued me. In court, she sobbed as she accused my son of raping her daughter.

“Your son is a monster!” Brenda shrieked at my expressionless face. “He just moved in and he beat my daughter Tiffany! He raped her!”

“Ms. Mitchell.” Tiffany’s lawyer, Gavin, glared at me. “Let’s be clear. On the night of July fifteenth, did your son, or did he not, brutally assault my client?”

I sat at the defendant's table. The wild accusation hung in the air. I said nothing.

Outside, protestors chanted. “Justice for Tiffany.” Camera flashes pulsed through the windows like lightning.

“I do not,” I said, my voice cold.

Gavin turned to the jury. His face was a mask of agony. “Ladies and gentlemen, she refuses to take any responsibility for her son’s violent rampage.”

I glanced at the gallery.

My new neighbors whispered. Their eyes dripped with disgust.

Mrs. Patterson was shaking her head. The Johnsons turned their faces away completely.

Just last week, these people were all smiles at the neighborhood barbecue. They couldn't wait to welcome a "tech mogul" to the block.

When they heard I had a son—a bodybuilding champion, no less—they practically tripped over themselves. "He must be such a fine young man!" they cooed. "You're so lucky!"

Now, they looked at me like I was garbage.

The hypocrisy was thick enough to choke on.

The memory of that afternoon hit me. A week ago.

Brenda was standing on my front porch.

"Harper! You need to get out here and deal with this!"

She was holding Tiffany in her arms. The girl was covered in bruises, looking like she’d just come from the emergency room.

"Your bodybuilder son did this!" Brenda’s voice could shatter glass.

Her scream shattered a rare moment of peace. I had just closed a major deal.

"My son never left the house."

"Don’t play dumb with me!" Tiffany lifted her head weakly, tears in her eyes. "Last night… in the backyard… Cooper… he… he was terrifying."

“What exactly happened?”

“He threw me on the ground and started tearing at my clothes… trying to pull my pants down… trying to force himself on me,” Tiffany stammered, her whole body shaking. “I fought as hard as I could, so he started hitting me. My face, my body…”

Brenda cut in. “Five million. Settle this privately. Or we go to court and show the whole world what kind of monster you raised.”

I watched their little show. I felt nothing.

“I refuse.”

“What?” Brenda clearly hadn't expected that.

“I said, I refuse. If you want money, I’ll see you in court.”

I shut the door in their faces.

Thinking back, I knew I’d made the right choice.

“Your Honor,” Gavin said, opening a file, “I would like to present the court with photos of Miss Tiffany’s injuries.”

A picture of Tiffany appeared on the large screen.

She was wearing a neck brace. Her right arm was in a cast. There were clear scrapes on her face.

The jury gasped.

“What do these injuries tell us?” Gavin pointed at the screen. “They tell us how terrifying the attacker’s strength was, how brutal his methods were.”

He brought up another photo. It was blurry, taken in the dark on a cell phone.

In the picture, a man’s back was turned as he seemed to lunge at a woman on the ground.

“This was taken by a neighbor who heard the screams. It’s blurry, but we can clearly see an assault in progress.”

Angry murmurs filled the gallery.

“That’s just sick…”

“Rich kids are all the same…”

“What kind of parenting is that…”

My phone buzzed on the table. A stock alert.

The company was down another three percent.

I glanced at it, then turned the phone face down.

The gesture did not go unnoticed. It was cold. Arrogant.

A man in the gallery hissed, “Look at her. The girl is half-dead, and she’s checking her stocks!”

“What kind of mother raises a kid like that?”

“Does she think money makes her better than us?”

Gavin shot me a smug smirk. He turned back to the jury. “Her attitude says it all. She thinks her money can wash away her son’s sins.”

The judge banged his gavel. “Order.”

But it did nothing to stop the storm on social media. Someone in the courtroom was live-streaming, and the comments flew by.

“This woman is so cold-blooded.”

“I won’t forget that name. Cooper.”

“Rich kids are trash.”

“Harper Mitchell, get out of our town.”

I held my posture. Straight-backed. Like I was in a boardroom, not a courtroom.

The numbers were clear. The public outrage was growing exponentially.

The hashtag #JusticeForTiffany had fifty thousand retweets in three hours.

Everything was going according to their script.

“Now,” Gavin said, walking toward the jury box, “I would like to ask Miss Tiffany to describe for us, in her own words, that horrific night.”

Tiffany slowly stood up, walking to the witness stand with a tremor in her step.

Every move seemed painful, difficult, as if the slightest motion would tear her wounds open.

Good acting.

She sat down, took a deep breath, and her eyes welled up with tears again.

“I’ll never forget those eyes,” she choked out. “They were filled with… with a beastly rage. Cooper looked at me like…”

She paused, as if searching for the right words.

“Like… like an animal staring at its prey.”

The jury gasped.

A middle-aged man in the gallery couldn’t take it anymore. He shot up from his seat, pointing at me.

“Scum like him belong in a cage!”