Chapter 2 - The Severed Feed
David Vance blinked, his thumb hovering over the screen of my cracked iPhone. The silence in the holding cell grew heavy enough to suffocate a man. On the five-inch display, a high-definition 4K video stream began to play, crisp, clear, and damning.
The timestamp in the top right corner read 12:42 PM.
On screen, Brooklyn Harrington lunged forward with deliberate momentum, her elbow striking my shoulder. The bowl of hot soup wobbled, splashing onto the quartz countertop, nowhere near her clothes. Then came Callan—stepping into the frame with his teeth bared, his hand coming down in a swift, violent arc across my left cheek. The sound of the slap resonated through the phone’s tiny speaker like a pistol shot.
And then came the climax of the Harringtons' lie.
As Callan recoiled, his heel caught the edge of a stainless-steel barstool. He lost his balance, grabbing wildly at the air, his elbow catching the handle of the hot frying pan on the stove. A torrent of searing oil erupted over his own shoulder and jaw. I hadn't touched the pan. I hadn't even moved.
David pulled off his glasses, his hands trembling slightly. The tired, defeated lawyer who had walked into my cell two minutes ago was gone. In his eyes was the sharp, predatory gleam of an attorney who had just been handed a loaded gun in a knife fight.
"They swore under penalty of perjury," David whispered, his voice hushed with disbelief. "Melissa, Brooklyn, and Richard all signed affidavits stating you threw the pan."
"They thought my father’s company was just a mom-and-pop shop in Mesa," I said, my voice dropping an octave, cold and precise. "They thought I was just a naive girl who married up into Paradise Valley royalty. They forgot that before I married Callan, I spent six years writing security architecture for commercial surveillance."
David stood up, snapped his manila folder shut, and looked at me with newfound respect. "Sit tight, Anastasia. I’m calling the Assistant District Attorney. We’re not just getting you out on bail today—we’re going to burn their narrative to the ground."
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Five minutes later, the heavy door unlocked. But I didn't step out yet. I sat back on the cold bench, staring at the small red light flashing on the security camera in the corner of the holding cell.
Let them prepare their high-priced lawyers, I thought. The war hasn't even begun.
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