Kylian
The courtroom filled quickly on the first morning of trial, press and public alike crowding into every available seat, and I felt Ella's hand tighten in mine as we took our places near the front of the gallery.
"Nervous?" I asked quietly.
"Terrified," she admitted, her voice steady despite the word. "But ready. I've been ready for a long time."
Adrian sat at the defense table looking thinner than he had at the emergency hearing months earlier, the weight of the intervening weeks visibly wearing at the confidence he'd once worn so easily. His attorney rose for opening statements first, painting a picture of a grieving fiancee whose trauma had distorted her memory of an unfortunate accident, of a man wrongly accused based on circumstantial evidence and a stepsister's coerced confe
