Chapter 2 - The Stranger on the Bench
“All rise.” I pushed myself upright, my attorney, Dana Ruiz, hovering a protective hand near my elbow. The heavy wooden door behind the bench swung open, and the judge stepped out. For a fraction of a second, my exhausted mind failed to process his face. Seven years had turned his dark hair to silver and etched deep lines of weary authority beside his mouth. But the sharp, discerning eyes remained unchanged. Judge Elias Bennett. My father. The mahogany walls seemed to tilt. The last time I saw him, I was twenty-three, standing in the foyer of my childhood home. Marcus had been waiting in a running car outside. My father had warned me that Marcus’s love was a transaction, an isolating force. I had called my father cold and controlling. “If you leave with that man, do not expect me to finance the consequences,” he had said. I walked out, wrapping my pride around me like armor. Now, looking down from the bench, shock flashed in his eyes before years of judicial discipline sealed it away. He stared at his pregnant, battered daughter, and the silence in the courtroom became deafening.
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