Page 69 of Pretty Cruel Love

“What?” His face goes ghost-pale.

“He raped me.” I enunciate every syllable, letting the words hang in the air like a loaded weapon.

“When exactly was this, Sadie?”

“My senior year of high school,” I say. “He got away with it. And he even tried to rape me again a couple of years ago.”

“Jesus Christ.” He slams his folder shut. “Why are you just now telling me this?”

“I’ve been trying to tell you for months.” I glare at him. “I think it helps our defense.”

“No, Sadie.” He growls. “It doesn’t. It gives you a fucking motive—and we can’t have a motive if we’re going with a temporary insanity defense.”

“I’m begging you to drop the insanity defense.” I keep my voice even. “I’ve written you letters—ones you’ve clearly refused to read. Your interns claim you’ll return my calls, but I only ever see you when you come to the jail and talk over me like I’m a child.”

He grits his teeth.

“Now that I’ve said everything I’ve been meaning to say—” I lean back in my chair. “I’d like us to go the purely innocent route. I’m not insane.”

“Purely innocent?” he fumes. “Not insane?”

I say nothing. His questions are always rhetorical.

“I might’ve taken you up on that long ago, but I’d like to not ruin my career over a simple, open-and-shut‘she fucking did it because she’s crazy’case,” he says. “Now that you’re serving me some half-baked‘Me Too’pity act—crying rape just to justify murder?—”

Something in me snaps. But I keep my face still. If I let him see what that line does to me, he’ll win. Again.

“—with just one of your three victims, mind you, I’m going to have to pass on what you want.”

“You’re supposed to do what’s in your client’s best interest.” My chest rises and falls. “You have other things to present at the next hearing—and the rape should be one of them.”

“Iamdoing what’s best for my client.” He scoffs. “She’s just too fucking insane to see that.”

Two Weeks Later

Final Evidentiary Hearing

“Are you a psychopath, Sadie?”

“What was going through your mind when you killed those men?”

“Why are you wasting taxpayers’ money on a trial?”

“Why did you do it?”

The crowd shouts at me as I’m led from the jail into the courthouse. At this point, I’m immune to the noise. I know there’s a rear entrance the police could use to spare me the spectacle, but they don’t.

They want me to suffer.

Inside the courtroom, the loudest sound is the opening and shutting of laptops. I take in the room as a guard bends down and clamps a cold chain around my ankle, bolting it to the floor.

Like I might fly away.

Or turn into someone they’d actually believe.

Behind me, on the prosecution’s side, the benches are packed with the so-called victims’ families and friends.

On my side: a few members of the media. And my mother.

---