Aria’s POV
Rhett seemed not to hear her pleas at all.
He turned to look at me, his expression gentle at this moment.
“Handled this way,” he asked me softly, “are you satisfied?”
I stared at him blankly, forgetting for a moment how to respond.
Only then did I truly understand that the reason he had, step by step, pushed Evangeline into prison was not to make a show of it, nor to intimidate others.
It was to use the most direct, the most brutal method—giving her a taste of her own medicine—to reclaim justice for the three years I had lost.
Those scenes of being framed, wronged, and sent to prison; those countless nights behind iron bars when I clenched my teeth and endured; that despair of being believed by no one, heard by no one… at this moment, it was as if someone had finally caug
