Semua Bab Ashes Of His Regret : Bab 131 - Bab 140

Damien's POVFifteen years.The number goes through the gallery like weather quiet, immediate, felt in the body before it is processed by the mind. I hear the shift around me. The barely audible intake of breath from someone three seats to my right. The stillness that follows.I sit with the number.Fifteen years.With no parole for ten.I look at Esmeralda's back, the set of her shoulders, the position of her head, the absolute stillness of someone holding something enormous with both hands and refusing to let it shake her in public.She doesn't move.I don't move.We are very good, the two of us, at holding things still in rooms that are watching.*****I look at Julian.I have been looking at him intermittently throughout the day, not with the fixation of someone still in the fight, but with the particular attention of someone who wants to understand a thing completely before it closes.He is sitting with his hands folded on the table.He has been sitting that way since Esmeralda'

Julian's POVThe judge asks if I wish to make a statement.Richard told me I didn't have to. Told me that in cases like this, statements from defendants before sentencing often do more harm than good, they invite scrutiny, create new material for the record, give the prosecution a final opportunity to respond.He told me to consider carefully.I considered it and stood up.*****The room is very quiet when I stand.The particular quiet of a space that has been loud all day, testimony, argument, the weight of accumulated words suddenly holding its breath.I don't look at the gallery.I don't look at the plaintiff's table.I look at the judge.She is watching me with the expression she has maintained throughout the entire proceeding, attentive, measured, giving nothing away.I speak.*****"I am not going to argue against the prosecution's recommendation," I say. "I'm not going to ask for leniency I haven't earned or suggest that the sentence proposed is disproportionate. It isn't. What

Esmeralda's POVI wake up and there is nothing to prepare for, that is the first thought that came to my mind, not a relieved thought or a triumphant one. Just a simple fact.The particular awareness of a body that has been oriented toward something for so long that the absence of it is its own sensation.There was no testimony to rehearse, no motion to fight, no article to respond to.No Julian.I lie still and let the quiet of that settle.Damien is asleep beside me, actually asleep, the deep even breathing of someone whose body finally believed the alert could be stood down. He slept the way he hasn't since before any of this started. I noticed it in the night, woke briefly at three and heard him breathing and thought: “good.” And went back to sleep myself.Now it is seven in the morning and the room is grey and still.I look at the ceiling.*****The first thing I feel is not what I expected.I expected relief. Or something like triumph, the clean, earned satisfaction of a thing c

Damien's POVThere is a version of this that I planned.Not the specific evening, I didn't plan a specific evening. But the concept of it. The moment when the trial was behind us and the press had moved on to other things and she had gone a full day without checking the news alerts and I could look at her across a room and know that the thing between us was not being shared with anything else.I planned to do something deliberate about it then.Say something. Make some gesture toward the territory we had been circling since before any of this started.What actually happens is: I make pasta.She comes home from Morrison at seven-fifteen on a Tuesday evening, three weeks after the sentencing, and she comes in and drops her bag by the door and takes off her jacket and comes into the kitchen and leans against the counter and says nothing, just watches me cook. The way she has been doing this more frequently lately coming into a room and simply existing in it without needing the room to pr

Esmeralda’s POVI could barely make it to the bathroom before, the nausea hits me, very sharp and sudden, like my body skipped the warning and went straight to urgency. One second I’m standing by my desk scanning an email, the next I’m pushing past Theo with a hand clamped over my mouth.“Ma’am—?”I don’t answer. I can’t.I shove the bathroom door open just in time, dropping to my knees as everything in my stomach comes up. It’s violent, messy, completely ungraceful nothing like me at all.Behind me, the door opens a crack.“Ma’am? Should I call—”“No.” My voice comes out hoarse, breathless. I grip the edge of the sink as I push myself up slightly. “I’m fine. Just… give me a minute.”There’s hesitation, then the soft click of the door closing again.I stay there longer than I need to, staring into the sink as I rinse my mouth, waiting for the dizziness to settle. My reflection looks… off. Not sick, not exactly. Just… different.That’s when the thought slips in.Which made me almost sh