Chapter 9

Pre-trial mediation was scheduled three weeks later.

I went with Elliot.

Conrad had lost weight noticeably — his suit looked borrowed. The exhaustion on his face was real.

I didn't feel sorry.

Being found out isn't suffering. It's consequence.

Conrad's solicitor opened by angling toward romantic partnership, shared purpose, potential voluntary transfer.

Elliot didn't change expression. He slid the evidence forward, one sheet at a time.

"Complete payment records. All funds traceable to my client and her parents."

"CCTV from the developer's office, establishing the genuine purchasing intention and identity of the party."

"Conrad Dunmore's own messages, explicitly stating the purpose of the registration was to make it up to her."

"Harper Sterling's recorded statement acknowledging awareness that the purchase funds did not come from her, and admitting to secondary injuries caused to my client."

He paused.

"And this is a power of attorney document bearing a signature that — on preliminary comparison — shows material divergence from my client's own handwriting across multiple authenticated samples. We've applied for court-ordered forensic analysis."

The other solicitor's colour left his face.

Conrad's head snapped up.

I held his gaze. I didn't look away.

He finally understood, I think, that I wasn't threatening. I was going to see him prosecuted.

At the mid-session break, he stepped in front of me.

"Stella. Talk to me."

"There's nothing to say."

"I know I was wrong. But are you really trying to destroy me?"

I found it genuinely funny.

"Conrad, you still think you're the one being destroyed here?"

"My company's gone. My reputation's gone. My family—" his eyes were beginning to redden — "isn't all of this enough?"

I looked at him.

And I saw, even now, that he could only see himself.

"What about me? The money you took from me. The flat you used to settle your emotional debts. The way your mother humiliated my parents in front of every person we know. Did you do that accounting?"

He went quiet.

"The most disgusting thing about you," I said, "isn't that you were in love with someone else while you were with me. It's that you wanted everything from me without loving me at all."

"I did love you—"

"You found me useful. That's not love."

"I just — couldn't let go of Harper."

"So you kept her in your heart and kept me to carry the weight? You were going to have us both? Marriage to me, feelings for her, my money, her attachment?"

He went rigid.

"I thought... after the wedding, I'd have made it right. Found a way."

"Right. Trap me with a marriage, grind down my resistance over time."

A long, broken silence.

"You're not wrong," he said.

"I know."

I walked away.