로그인Damien's POVThe sentencing hearing lasted forty minutes.Victor stood when the judge read the terms. Four years. Eligibility for review at two years, given the cooperation agreement and the clean guilty pleas. The judge noted the significant assistance provided to investigators and the absence of any attempt to obstruct the process once the decision to cooperate had been made.Victor nodded once when it was done. The same small movement he had made when the verdicts came.His barrister said something to him quietly. Victor listened and nodded again and then turned and looked at the gallery for the first time since the hearing began.He found Damien first. They held the look for a long moment. Then Victor looked at me. His face had the particular quality of a man who had prepared something to say and understood this was not the place to say it. He held my gaze for a second and then looked away.They took him out a side door.The galle
Damien's POVWalsh picked up on the first ring.She had been expecting the call. That told me she was already working it.Elara sat beside me on the couch with her legs pulled up and her eyes on the phone between us on the cushion. The apartment was quiet. The city outside doing its late Friday thing."The appeal," Elara said. "Tell us what you know."Walsh was direct the way she always was when the situation required it. Edmund Farr's legal team had filed a notice of intention to appeal within four hours of the verdict. The grounds listed were procedural. The exclusion of Doyle's testimony. The admissibility of certain financial records obtained during the investigation. The weight given to witness accounts from individuals with personal connection to the accused.That last one was ours."He is arguing that your testimony was compromised by personal bias," Walsh said. "That your relationship with Damien Blackwood created a conflict o
Elara's POVMy testimony was on a Monday.Walsh had prepared me across two sessions the previous week. Not coaching, she was clear about that distinction, just walking me through the process so the room itself would not be the thing I was managing on the day.She had been right to do it. The courtroom looked different when you were called to the stand than it did from the gallery. Smaller in some ways. More exposed in others. The jury to the left, Victor's barrister to the right, the judge above and behind. Everyone waiting for you to begin.The prosecution barrister took me through it chronologically. The night at Eclipse. The arrival of Damien at the house. The events that followed across the weeks that built toward the warehouse. I answered each question directly and did not embellish and did not minimise.The defence barrister stood when the prosecution finished.He was good. I had expected him to be good and he was. He worked the edges
Elara's POVThe first day of Victor's trial was a Tuesday in November.Walsh had told us what to expect. The courthouse, the press outside, the particular organised chaos of a significant criminal proceeding beginning. She had told us what to wear, how to enter, where to sit, and what to do if anyone approached us before we reached the designated area.She had not told us what it would feel like to sit in that room and watch Victor walk in.He was thinner than I remembered. The months had taken something from him that had not been visible in the letters or the legal documents or the second hand accounts. He walked with the careful quality of a man who had learned to take up less space. He sat at the defence table and looked straight ahead and did not turn to find us in the gallery.Mom sat beside me. She had decided two weeks ago that she was coming and had not revisited the decision. Daniel sat on her other side. Damien was on my left with his arm
Damien's POVElara slept until nine.I knew because I had been up since seven and had checked twice, which was not something I would admit to but was true. She slept with the particular completeness of someone who had been running on not quite enough rest for weeks and had finally stopped.I made coffee and sat at the table by the window and looked at the street below. Saturday morning, unhurried, the kind of weather that could not decide between grey and something better.I called Alexander at eight.He picked up on the second ring and listened without interrupting while I laid out the alternative structure. A defined senior role. Profit sharing tied to growth benchmarks. A formal seat in strategic conversations without voting rights on operational decisions. Everything that honoured what he brought without changing the shape of what Elara and I had built.When I finished he was quiet for a moment."You talked to Elara," he said.
ELARA'S POVDamien pulled me onto his lap in the car, his strong hands gripping my hips firmly as he settled me over him."I'll punish you for what you did to me you sly fox," he said with a grin.I licked my lower lips."I never said you shouldn't," was my reply. "Just do it with that dick."He chuckled lightly."You're a wanton slut."Then, he swiftly shifted my panties to the side with one finger and slid a finger deep into my soaking wet pussy.My breath hitched.I moaned softly at the sudden fullness in my pussy and the unexplainable feeling of his thick finger stretching my cunt and making my body heat up fast.My walls clenched around him and I felt myself get even wetter from this."Look at the way your pussy is dripping for me, Elara. You are so fucking wet for me," he teased me with his words.My heart arched lightly."You are so needy for my cock again, Elara, ar







