Nothing Left To Do

I barely slept after what happened in the hallway. Jessica's warning echoed in my head all night, that smile she gave me when she said I saw everything. She wasn't just jealous—she was threatened. And people like Jessica didn't get threatened quietly. They struck back when you least expected it.

But I didn't have time to figure her out, because the next morning I was in the interrogation room at the exact time they gave me, my heart already knocking against my ribs before I even sat down. The walls were light green and the table was scratched and bolted to the floor, one wall all mirror, and the air was cold and smelled like old coffee and cleaner, sharp in my nose. I sat down and noticed the small cameras perched in the corners, their red lights blinking steady.

I knew people were watching from the other side of that mirror, could almost feel their eyes on the back of my neck.

ADA Miles Henderson sat across from me. Late forties, lean face, blank expression. Expensive plain suit. He put a digital recorder on the table between us, the little red light coming on, and opened a slim folder and looked up at me.

"Thank you for coming in today, Miss Costa. I know this must be hard, given what you just went through. We just want to get a clear picture of what happened at the Elysium club on the night of the 14th."

I folded my hands on the table to stop them from shaking, my palms already damp. "I understand."

"Let's start from the beginning. You were working the V.I.P. section that night. Room Acheron. Tell me, in your own words, what happened when you went in."

I took a breath, the air cold in my throat. "I went in with a tray of champagne glasses. The room was quiet. I saw Mr. Spinelli on the sofa, his back to me. I said the drinks were there. He didn't answer. I set the tray down and walked toward him. That's when I saw… his condition."

"His condition. You mean you saw he was dead."

"Yes."

"And what did you do then?"

"I was shocked. I stumbled back. My coworker, Roslin, came in at that moment."

He wrote something down, the pen scratching against the paper. "So you were the first and only person in the room with the body before your coworker came in. Is that right?"

"As far as I know, yes."

"And the tray of drinks. You carried it from the bar?"

"Yes."

"Did you at any point, between the bar and the room, set the tray down? Maybe to fix your uniform, or to talk to someone?"

"No. I carried it straight there."

He leaned back and put his fingers together, his eyes steady on me. "So from the time the drinks were poured to the time they were put on the table in Mr. Spinelli's private room, you were the only one who handled them."

"I… I was just doing my job. Bringing an order."

"Of course." He gave a small thin smile. "Let's talk about your time with Mr. Spinelli before that night. Had you ever served him before?"

"A few times."

"Did he ever talk to you? Make any special requests? Maybe he was hard to deal with?"

"No. He was always quiet. He never gave me any trouble."

"So there was no bad blood between you? No reason for you to be angry with him?"

"No. None at all. I barely knew him."

He looked at me steady, and the silence stretched out because he was letting it. "It's just interesting, Miss Costa. A man like Marco Spinelli, a deputy mayor with a lot of power over city contracts and union talks, has many enemies. Powerful enemies. And yet, the last person to see him alive, the person who brought the very thing that killed him, is a waitress with no known tie to him, who just… happened to find the body." He paused. "It's quite a coincidence, don't you think?"

"I don't know what to think. I just know what I saw."

He leaned forward and dropped his voice, and I could smell the coffee on his breath, bitter and dark. "Let's go through it again. You pick up the tray. You walk to the room. You see the body. You are, of course, shocked. Your memory of those few seconds, while you were under stress, could be wrong. Is it possible you saw something else? Maybe Mr. Spinelli was still alive, and you argued? Maybe he made a move on you, you fought back, and in the struggle…"

"No!" I stopped and lowered my voice because I could hear it cracking. "That's not what happened. He was already dead when I went in. I didn't touch him. I didn't go near him after I saw… I just stood there."

He tilted his head and looked at me. "You just stood there." He wrote something, the pen moving slow. "How long would you say you stood there before Roslin came in?"

"I… I don't know. A few seconds? It felt like a long time."

"Let's go back to the tray. The champagne glasses. Can you describe them? Were they all full? Was one maybe less full than the others?"

I closed my eyes and tried to see it clear, the image coming back in pieces—the gold rims catching the light, the weight of the tray in my hands. "They were all full. I remember being careful not to spill any. They were the tall, thin glasses with the gold rims."

He looked up from his folder. "The gold rims. You're sure."

"Yes."

He reached in and slid a photo across the table, the glossy paper cool under my fingers when I touched it. Crime scene photo. The tray. The glasses in the picture were short and wide.

"These were found on the table. Are these the glasses you carried?"

I stared at the photo, my chest getting tight. "No. Those ain't them. The ones I carried were taller. With gold rims."

"The supply list from the Elysium's bar for that night shows only short glasses were in use in the V.I.P. section. There were no tall glasses with gold rims anywhere in the building." He set his pen down, the soft click loud in the quiet room. "How do you explain that, Miss Costa?"

"I can't. I know what I saw. I know what I carried."

"What you believe you saw," he said, not mean, just certain, and the certainty was worse because it meant he wasn't trying to twist me—he really thought I was wrong. "The mind under trauma is a fragile thing. It makes up stories to protect itself. It's my job to peel those layers back and find the truth underneath, no matter how hard it may be."

He let the silence sit, and the recorder picked up my breathing, the sound of it loud in my own ears.

"The official toxicology report came back this morning. Marco Spinelli died from a fast-acting cyanide mix. It was given by mouth. And the remains of that same mix were found on the rim of one of those short glasses." He tapped the photo with his finger, the sound dull and final. "The glasses you say you did not carry, but were found on the table right in front of the man you were the last to see alive."

I sat there and didn't say anything, because what was there to say? Somebody swapped those glasses, planned all of it careful and put me right in the middle without me knowing, and now I was sitting here with a dead man's glass in a photograph and my fingerprints on it.

Henderson watched my face and didn't react, just sat there with his hands flat on the folder. He didn't look satisfied. He looked like somebody confirming something he already believed was true.

"The facts form a clear picture, Miss Costa. A powerful man is dead. The public wants justice. And the facts, as they stand, point straight at you." He closed the folder with a clean snap and stood up, his chair scraping the floor. "We're done for today. You will be told what comes next."

He picked up the recorder and walked out without another word, the door closing behind him with a soft thud.

I sat there in the empty room and didn't move, my hands still folded on the table, the cold from the metal seeping into my skin.

There was no way I was walking out of this without a lawyer. This was bigger than I had prepared for. But a lawyer cost money I didn't have, money I never had, and I sat with that for a moment and had no answer for it.

What stayed with me wasn't what Henderson said. It was how he looked when he said it—not angry, not even aggressive, just certain, like he had already closed the case in his head. He wasn't trying to trap me. He genuinely believed I did it. He built the case, decided it was true, and closed the door on anything else. In his mind it was already settled.

The weeks after that were all legal preparation, long days in David Chen's office with papers spread across the table and the smell of his coffee filling the room. My lawyer David Chen — somebody Chloe found — went through the prosecution's case piece by piece, his finger tracing lines on the documents. Missing security footage. No confirmed poison source. A timeline with gaps in it. He laid it all out clear and I started to think it might actually work, because the truth had to be enough, didn't it? I walked into the courthouse on the day of the trial telling myself I was going to walk out free.

The courtroom was packed and quiet at the same time, the air thick with bodies and tension, the wood of the benches polished and cold. I sat next to David Chen, the fabric of his suit brushing my arm when he leaned over to whisper something. Across the aisle was Henderson and his team, their files stacked neat, and behind them the Spinelli family sat in a row and stared at me the whole time, their eyes heavy on my skin.

"All rise for the Honorable Judge Evelyn Wright."

Judge Wright came in and sat down, the robe swishing against the bench, and the room settled into a hush.

Henderson stood up first and walked slow in front of the jury, his shoes clicking on the floor, and his voice filled the room.

"Your Honor, the state has shown a clear, unbroken set of facts that lead to one answer: the defendant, Alessia Costa, willfully and with clear intent, gave a deadly dose of a cyanide mix to Deputy Mayor Marco Spinelli. We have shown a reason — a small insult, a bitterness born in the service industry. We have shown the chance — she was the last to see him alive, the only one who handled the murder weapon, which was the very glass she gave him. The lab results are clear. Her fingerprints are on the short glass that tested positive for cyanide remains. Not a partial. A clean, full print."

He sat down, and Chen was already on his feet, his voice steady.

"Your Honor, the other side speaks of an unbroken set of facts, but what he has shown is a set of guesses, not facts. The reason is a fantasy, a story built from the thinnest of air. A small insult? There is not a single witness, not a single piece of writing, not even a rumor that says my client had any bad contact with the victim. As for the chance, the prosecution's whole case rests on a timeline that falls apart under the smallest look. They claim Miss Costa had the time, the clear mind, and the chemical knowledge to poison a specific glass on a tray she was carrying, all while moving through a busy club floor, without a single soul noticing. They ask you to believe she did this, and then, in a moment of either stupidity or drama, she immediately told her coworker about the crime scene. Does that sound like the actions of a cold killer, or the desperate framing of an innocent pawn?"

I held onto that, my fingers gripping the edge of the table, and I looked over at Roslin sitting in the witness waiting area. Her hands were in her lap and she wouldn't look at me, her shoulders tight under her blouse. Something dropped in my stomach.

"The state calls Roslin Diaz to the stand."

Roslin walked up and was sworn in, her voice a whisper at first, and I could hear her swallow before she spoke. Henderson walked her through the basics — where she worked, what her shift was that night, how she knew me — and then he got to it.

"And when you went into the V.I.P. lounge, Room Acheron, what did you see?"

"I saw Alessia… Miss Costa, standing over Mr. Spinelli."

"And what was her manner?"

Chen stood up. "Objection. Asking for an opinion."

"Overruled. The witness may answer."

Roslin looked at her hands, twisting them together in her lap. "She was… calm. Too calm. She wasn't shocked. It was like she was… checking her work."

The gallery reacted, a low murmur that buzzed in my ears, and I felt the blood leave my face, my skin going cold.

Henderson kept going, his voice even. "And the tray of drinks. When you first saw it, where was it?"

"It was on the table. But one glass was off to the side. It was closer to her. It was the one… the one he was drinking from, I think."

Henderson looked at the jury, letting the image settle. "No more questions."

Chen stood up for cross and walked toward Roslin, his shoes soft on the floor.

"Miss Diaz, in your first statement to police, given just hours after what happened, you said, and I quote, 'Alessia was frozen in shock, her face was white as a sheet.' You said nothing about her being calm or checking her work. Can you explain this difference?"

Roslin's eyes moved toward the prosecution table then came back down to her hands, her fingers pulling at each other. "I… I was in shock myself then. I've had time to process. I remember it more clearly now."

"You remember it more clearly now. Or has somebody helped you make your memory clearer?"

"Objection!" Henderson stood up, his chair scraping.

"Sustained. Counsel, ask it another way."

Chen didn't pause, didn't miss a beat. "Miss Diaz, is it possible that your memory of what happened has been shaped by the heavy media attention and the pressure from the Spinelli family's very public demand for a guilty verdict?"

"I… I don't know what you mean," she said, her voice breaking on the last word, and she looked down and wouldn't lift her head again.

She stepped down, and the image of a calm Alessia standing over a dead man was already sitting in every head in that jury box, I could feel it.

Both sides gave their closing arguments, Henderson's voice sharp and certain, Chen's measured and precise. Henderson called me calculated and deliberate. Chen pointed to every hole in the case one by one — the changed testimony, the missing footage, the timeline that didn't hold. I sat and listened and waited, my palms pressed flat against my thighs.

Judge Wright picked up her notes, the papers rustling.

"The court has heard all evidence shown by both the prosecution and the defense. While the defense has rightly pointed out the nature of the case, the prosecution has met its duty in showing a clear story of guilt. The words of Miss Diaz, while questioned, stand as a believable eyewitness account. The lab results, while not without their questions, are strong."

Chloe grabbed my hand from the row behind me and held it tight, her fingers cold and trembling.

"The jury has found the defendant, Alessia Costa, guilty of murder in the second degree."

The gavel came down hard.

CRACK.

The sound went through me like a shot, and then the Spinelli family reacted behind me, a sob, a sharp exhale, chairs scraping. Reporters moved for the door, their feet quick on the floor. Chloe made a sound somewhere behind me, a small cry that got cut off. I heard none of it clear, because my ears were ringing and my legs stopped holding me up, and Chen caught my arm before I slid out of the chair. Tears came down my face and I didn't try to stop them, just let them fall, hot on my cheeks.

The bailiffs walked toward me from both sides, their hands ready, their faces blank.

I looked across the room at Henderson. He was already packing his briefcase, closing files, sliding papers into leather. He looked up and met my eyes for one second—just a flicker—then looked back down and kept packing. No celebration. No reaction. Just a man finishing his work.

I saw the bailiffs moving toward me, their faces stern and impersonal. Beyond them, through the doors they would take me, I didn't see a hallway. I saw a future of steel bars and concrete, a cold, gray home for a soul that had just been legally, and utterly, erased. The injustice was a taste of acid in my mouth. I was innocent, and yet, I was already gone.