Chapter 9 - The Reckoning
The trial was the biggest media event of the decade.
It lasted six months. The prosecution called over a hundred witnesses—security guards, police officers, the coroner Victoria had bribed, the men who’d helped Ryan attack the gala, even Victoria’s own father, who’d turned state’s evidence against his daughter to save himself from prison. They presented thousands of pages of evidence—emails between Victoria and Ryan planning the attacks, bank records showing the money she’d paid him, the guns, the knives, the fake death certificate, the photos of me with the cross drawn over my face.
The defense tried everything. They claimed Ryan was insane. They claimed Victoria had been manipulated. They claimed Ethan had set the whole thing up to ruin the Sterling family name. They dragged my name through the mud, bringing up my mother’s medical debt, my three jobs, the fact that I’d been a maid, implying I’d somehow asked for everything that had happened to me.
But it didn’t work.
The evidence was overwhelming. The jury deliberated for three days before coming back with their verdict.
Guilty. On all counts.
Ryan was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional fifty years for attempted murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy. Victoria got the same—life plus fifty, to be served in a maximum-security women’s prison in downstate Illinois. As the judge read the sentence, Victoria screamed and cursed and tried to attack the prosecutor, while Ryan just sat there, staring blankly at the wall, finally defeated.
When it was all over, when the gavel fell and the bailiffs led them away in chains, Ethan and I walked out of the courthouse hand in hand, into the bright Chicago sunshine. A hundred reporters were waiting for us, shouting questions, shoving microphones in our faces, but we didn’t stop. We didn’t say a word. We just walked to the waiting car, got in, and drove away.
It was over.
Truly, finally over.
We spent the next month recovering. Ethan’s knife wounds had been deep—one of them had nicked his liver, and he’d spent two weeks in the hospital fighting off an infection. My bullet wound had healed faster, leaving a thin, silvery scar on my shoulder that I’d look at sometimes, a reminder of how close we’d come to losing everything.
We stayed at the lake house in Wisconsin for most of that month, just the two of us, no phones, no staff, no reporters. We cooked terrible meals together. We read books by the fire. We walked along the lake shore at sunset, holding hands, talking about everything and nothing. We made love slowly, gently, like we were both afraid the other would disappear if we moved too fast. We healed.
And then, one crisp November morning, we got married.
It wasn’t a big gala. There were no celebrities or politicians or cameras. Just us, Mabel from the diner, Marcus and his wife, Lila—who’d flown in from Paris and cried through the whole ceremony—and the local pastor who’d married couples in that town for forty years. I wore a simple white dress I’d bought at a boutique in the nearest city. Ethan wore a suit he’d had in the back of his closet for years. The ring on my finger was still the same one he’d given me in the diner—simple, perfect, ours.
After the ceremony, we had a barbecue in the backyard of Mabel’s house, eating hamburgers and potato salad and cake, laughing and drinking beer with our friends. It was the happiest day of my life. Simple. Real. Ours.
That night, as we lay in bed in the cabin, listening to the wind howl outside, Ethan traced the scar on my shoulder with his finger.
“Penny for your thoughts?” he asked, kissing the top of my head.
“I was just thinking,” I said, snuggling closer to him. “About how far we’ve come. From that night in the kitchen, when you locked the door and I thought you were going to fire me. To here. Married. Happy. Alive. It feels like a dream sometimes. Like I’m going to wake up and still be that scared girl scrubbing copper pans at three in the morning.”
Ethan rolled over so he was looking down at me, his dark eyes serious in the moonlight streaming through the window.
“It’s not a dream, baby,” he said softly. “It’s real. We’re real. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life making sure you never feel that scared again. Never feel that alone. I’m going to love you so hard and so well that you forget what it was ever like to be anything but happy. Do you believe me?”
I reached up, cupping his face in my hands.
May you like
“I believe you,” I said. “Because I’m going to do the same for you. You spent so long taking care of everyone else, Ethan. Carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. Never letting anyone see you weak. Never letting anyone get close. But that’s over now. You’ve got me. For better or worse. For richer or poorer. In sickness and in health. I’m here. Always.”
He kissed me then, slow and deep, pouring all the love and fear and hope and joy of the last year into that one kiss. And as we held each other in the dark, I knew that no matter what the future brought—good or bad, easy or hard—we’d face it together.
