Chapter 11 - The TrialRichard Bennett sat at the defense table.
He looked exactly as he had the night police arrested him.
Calm.
Expensive.
Untouchable.
Adrian sat beside his lawyers.
Judge Cole was separated from them.
The prosecution called former employees first.
They described lost pensions.
Lost homes.
Lost futures.
One seventy-three-year-old widow told the jury:
“My husband worked for Bennett Coastal for forty-one years. After he died, I learned his pension was gone.”
Richard never looked at her.
That was the first moment I saw something inside him crack.
Not guilt.
Fear.
He finally understood that the people he had reduced to numbers now had faces.
Then Keller testified.
Four days.
Four days of evidence.
He described Saint Catherine's.
The medication.
The false identity.
The forged signatures.
The private payments.
Then came the most painful testimony.
Olivia.
She walked into the courtroom.
Every eye followed her.
Three years ago, the world had declared her dead.
Now she stood alive.
She told the jury about waking in a locked room.
About hearing my name used as a weapon.
About believing her own husband wanted her gone.
About wondering whether Sophie had forgotten her.
May you like
When she finished, the courtroom was silent.
Then Vanessa was called.
Related Stories
