Chapter 66 From day one

Chapter 66 From day one
The courtroom was smaller than I expected.
I had built it up in my head over three weeks into something vast and formal and crushing, the kind of room that swallows people whole. But it was just a room. High ceilings, pale wood paneling, two long tables facing the bench, a jury box along the left wall with twelve people sitting in it who had been ordinary people yesterday and were now the twelve people who would decide this.
Bruno was behind me in the public gallery.
I had not turned to look at him but I knew exactly where he was because I had watched him sit down before I took my seat at Cole's table and I had held that location in my mind the way you hold something you might need to reach for quickly.
Richard came in at nine oh two.
He came through the side door with his two lead lawyers and he was dressed in the dark grey suit he wore to board meetings, the one that made him look like the most reasonable man in any room, and his hair was neat and his face was composed and he sat at his table and opened a leather folder in front of him and did not look at me.
I looked at him.
I looked at him the way I had been unable to look at him for twelve years, directly and without adjusting anything, without reading his face for signals about what version of myself the next few minutes required.
He was just a man sitting at a table.
Judge Adler entered and everyone stood and sat and the morning began.
Cole's opening was twenty-two minutes. She stood at the front of the room with no notes and walked the jury through the shape of what they were going to hear over the next two weeks. She was precise and unhurried and she used plain language and she did not once look at Richard while she spoke about him, which I had noticed was a deliberate choice, because looking at the defendant while describing their crimes gives them the status of the central figure and Cole was making sure the jury understood that the central figure in this room was the evidence.
Richard's lead lawyer was a man named Grayson.
He was in his sixties, silver-haired, with the particular ease of someone who had been the most skilled person in most rooms he had entered for thirty years and knew it. His opening was eighteen minutes and it was good. I could see it working on the jury even as it worked against me, the careful reframing, the sympathetic tone, the way he said Phoebe Lambert as if I were someone to feel sorry for rather than someone to disbelieve.
He described me as a woman who had been manipulated. Not by Richard. By Bruno.
He said Bruno Blackfield had identified a vulnerable woman in a failing marriage and had used her access to her husband's life to build a case that served his own financial interests in the Monaco dispute.
He said I had believed I was helping someone I cared for when in fact I had been used as an instrument.
He said it with complete compassion.
I sat at Cole's table and kept my face still and my hands flat on the table in front of me and I did not turn around.
The first witness was Harlan.
Grayson took him apart methodically. Not aggressively. He did not need aggression. He asked precise questions that Harlan had no clean answers to and let the jury watch Harlan search for words he could not find and that was enough.
Cole rehabilitated him on redirect but the damage was managed rather than undone and I watched the jury and two of them were already looking at Harlan the way people look at something they have decided not to trust.
At eleven fifteen Judge Adler called a twenty minute recess.
I stood and Cole put her hand briefly on my arm and said nothing, which from Cole meant things were going as expected, and I walked to the small room behind the courtroom that had been designated for our use and sat on the hard chair inside it and pressed my hands together on the table.
The door opened.
Bruno came in and closed it behind him and sat beside me and looked at me.
"Say it," he said.
"Grayson is good," I said.
"Yes," Bruno said.
"The jury believed the compassionate version," I said. "Two of them are already reading me as someone who was fooled rather than someone who acted."
"It is the first hour," Bruno said.
"I know," I said.
"Cole has not put her main evidence in yet," he said. "Rosa's statement. Matteo's testimony. Daniel. The metadata. The Geneva firm." He looked at me steadily. "Grayson is good but he is working without a floor under him and he knows it."
I looked at the table.
"When they put me on the stand," I said. "He is going to do to me what he did to Harlan."
"Yes," Bruno said. "He is going to try."
"The difference is I have clean answers," I said. "Harlan did not have clean answers because he was guilty. I have clean answers because I did nothing wrong."
"Yes," Bruno said.
I looked at him.
"I know that," I said. "I just need to feel it in the room rather than just know it in my head."
Bruno reached across and covered both my hands with one of his.
"You are the most honest person in that courtroom," he said. "That is not something Grayson can perform his way around. The jury will see it. Not today maybe. But they will see it."
I held his hand.
The door opened and Cole's assistant put her head in.
"Two minutes," she said.
I stood and straightened my jacket and looked at Bruno.
He stood with me.
"I will be there," he said. "Every minute."
"I know," I said.
We went back in.
Richard was already at his table when I came through the door and this time he looked up.
He looked at me the way he had always looked at me when he was calculating. Reading my face for information, looking for the signal that told him what I was going to do next.
I gave him nothing.
I sat at Cole's table and opened my notepad and looked at the front of the room and did not look at him again. 
Grayson called a financial expert who spent ninety minutes explaining the Monaco transaction in terms designed to make Bruno's involvement look central and deliberate and Richard's look peripheral. He used charts. He used specific account numbers. He was meticulous and the jury listened and took notes and I sat and watched and kept my face still.
At four fifteen Judge Adler adjourned for the day.
I stood and collected my papers and turned and Bruno was already on his feet in the gallery and our eyes met across the room and he looked at me with the expression that had nothing professional in it and everything personal and I held it for one second and then turned and walked out with Cole.
In the corridor Cole said, "Tomorrow I put Rosa on the stand."
"Good," I said.
"It shifts everything," Cole said. "Today was Grayson's best day. He does not have another one like it."