Chapter 16 Just Mercy Summary Novels & Stories

He gestured to the warehouse, indicating the people that slept within. “My wife and daughter were both severely altered by what was done to them. Verina has never blamed me,” he swallowed thickly, shaking his head sorrowfully. "Mercy though... Mercy blames me, and justly. What sort of life does she have locked up with her parents, unable to seek her own way, to experience the world, to have friends, a mate… But I cannot free her,” a muscle twitched in the corner of his jaw as his eyes lifted to the second story windows and, following his gaze, Aislen saw that Mercy looked down at them, her head tilted and her expression chilling in its predatory nature. “Because I fear what she will do.”

Chapter 16 No Mercy NIA’S POV "You disgust me!" "I just hate to see your face so much!" "How did you even end up here!" The ladies kept saying as they kicked me all at once with no mercy. I lay there on the cold floor, crying my eyes out while using my weak hands to protect my head. But that didn't stop the pain from reaching my core. I'm their frustration bin. I do not need to do anything wrong for them to come at me. It feels like somebody has opened the gates of hell since the beginning of today. I have been hammering left and right.

“Just a chance.” The food came, but neither of us touched it at first. We talked. We laughed a little. It was strange. Like we were strangers again but also like old friends. He told me about the court days. The pressure. The chaos. “They kept asking if you’d show up,” he said. “I told them no. I knew you wouldn’t want to.” “I didn’t.” “You were right,” he said. “You know they begged me to have mercy on them . Jessica cried like she lost her mother, her friends cried and blamed her for putting them in his misery but that's it. They'd choose but they followed her onto it.”

“I wouldn’t mind the company” Hardin smiled then. “Great” He glanced down at the book in his hand then opened it. It took about two minutes to go from admiring Hardin to recognizing the book with him. Too late he was reading it, reading her failure of a prologue. “Wow this is nice and different” Hardin finally said looking up. She raised a brow at him doubtfully. “Nothing like your usual but it’s great, giving some tragic ending vibes though” “Is it that obvious?”

As my elbow slammed against the floor, my face contorted in pain. However, Zachary didn't even look at me. He was only concerned about Gigi's condition. Despite all the disappointment I felt for him, I still felt saddened by this. He didn't even know the full story, but he still did his best to get Gigi acquitted of all charges. He was an excellent lawyer who rarely failed to win any of his cases. This was my first time witnessing his prowess in public, but alas, I was the person he was up against. He rebutted everything my lawyer said.

Her sobs grew louder, her hands clutching at the hem of my dress as she pleaded, "Please, Lila. Temper justice with mercy. I’m begging you." I stared down at her, my heart a battlefield of conflicting emotions. But then, as her cries filled the night air, something snapped inside me. I leaned closer, my voice icy as I said, "Mercy? Mercy is for the innocent. Mara knew exactly what she was doing. She made her bed, and now she’ll lie in it." Straightening, I turned away, heading back to my car. But as I reached for the door handle, her voice rang out, sharp and filled with venom.

The pulse beat back, or I imagined it did. And please. I closed my eyes. Save our pack from what I allowed to happen. They don’t deserve what’s coming because I wasn’t paying attention. Helen. Thomas. The people who were kind to you when I stripped you of everything — they’re being punished for it. They need someone. I exhaled. They need someone better than what I gave them. The cell was cold and dark and the ceiling had forty-seven stones and my pack was afraid one floor above me and there was nothing I could do from here.

The third studied me with calculating interest. "You're that rich bitch," she said. Not a question. Statement of fact. "Killed your husband, fucked your lover, got caught breaking into your uncle's house with guns. Quite a résumé." "I'm innocent." The words felt hollow even to me. "Sure you are. So am I. So's everyone in here." She smiled hard, knowing. "I'm Jade. That's Mercy with the Bible, and the kid's Sarah. Sarah doesn't talk much. Trauma."

Reeve had given back what he had built on theft. It had taken forty years and the destruction of a marriage and the near-death of my father and the exposure of crimes spanning decades. But her request had finally been honoured. "Yes," I said. "We did it." Hazel put her hand in mine. We stood in the archive room and watched the last of Margaret's documentation being catalogued and I thought about a woman in a valley forty years ago who had offered mercy first and had been answered with violence, and who had still, somehow, trusted that the family would eventually find its way to doing what was right.

He had loved me even when I was unlovable. And now, as Joe knelt before me in chains, I finally understood the depth of that gift. Death would have been mercy for men like these. Living was the truer sentence, the slow gnaw of chains, the constant scrape of stone, and the rot of their own filth clinging to their skin. To breathe every hour in the same shadows where they had left me, knowing no dawn would ever come without my consent, this was justice. They were already carrying their penance on their hollowed faces.