nervous hands that morning, her eyes scanning everything not with fear but with something far more dangerous — attention.
The oak doors of the Superior Court groaned open, releasing a rush of conditioned air and murmured confidence, and inside waited men and women who billed more per hour than Lydia earned in a month cleaning institutional kitchens, men who smiled with their mouths and calculated with their eyes, men who had already decided how this story would end.
At the defense table sat Victor Hale, headmaster of Crestwood Preparatory, one of the most powerful private academies in the state, a man whose donors included senators, judges, and CEOs who sent Christmas cards instead of subpoenas, and beside him lounged Richard Latham, a litigation legend known for turning human suffering into footnotes and settlements into silence.
This case, as far as they were concerned, was already d*ad.
