Chapter 120

Chapter 120
Eloise

I sat stiff-backed on the bench, the leather cushion beneath me groaning every time I shifted my weight. My palms were damp, not because I was nervous, but because I was waiting for something I’d been craving since I was sixteen: justice. The courthouse buzzed with whispers. Strangers leaned close to murmur about “the Sinclair family scandal” as though it were a daytime soap. Of course it was. Their voices wove together like gnats buzzing in the heat. My eyes, though, stayed fixed on the heavy double doors at the end of the aisle. Behind them, Jadeline was waiting to be called. My stepmother. My father’s wife. The beginning of my family’s curse.

I exhaled slowly, trying to steady my heartbeat, but the thrum inside me only grew louder. Today was the day she’d get her cup of tea served piping hot. And I wanted to watch her drink every bitter drop of it.

“Eloise,” Jaxon, my lawyer, whispered from beside me. His hand brushed against mine, grounding me. I wasn’t, but I didn’t want to act like it. “You ready for this?”

I nodded. “More than ready.” My voice came out low, roughened with steel I hadn’t known I still carried.

Mike was seated a row behind us, his sharp suit pressed and his tie the color of midnight. He didn’t speak, but I felt his gaze drilling into the back of my head, as though he wanted to see the smallest flicker of doubt. He wouldn’t find it. I’d learned how to burn my doubts long ago, leaving only ashes behind.

The bailiff’s voice boomed. “Case number 1452, The State versus Jadeline Sinclair.”

The doors swung open. My throat tightened when I saw her.

Jadeline walked in as though she still owned the room. Her blonde hair was coiled into a perfect twist at the back of her head, her pearl earrings glinting under the fluorescent lights. She wore a beige suit, tasteful, demure, as if she were auditioning for sainthood. Only her eyes betrayed her: sharp, darting, coiled with venom.

She spotted me instantly. A smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth, small enough to hide from others but carved deep enough for me to read. You’ll never win, it said.

But she was wrong.

The prosecutor began, stacking folders onto the desk with neat precision. “Your Honor, we present the charges of fraud, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy, with supporting evidence collected by the police department—including the CCTV footage recently submitted by the victim, Ms. Eloise Sinclair.”

All eyes flicked to me. My spine didn’t waver. I let them look.

The footage played on the screen above the judge’s bench. The grainy black-and-white image flickered, showing Jadeline in the law firm’s archive room, rifling through boxes. Papers spilled like snow. She glanced over her shoulder before slipping an envelope into her bag. The timestamp glared at the bottom corner, an unblinking witness.

Gasps rippled through the courtroom. Someone whispered, “That’s her.”

My father sat across the aisle, his face drawn tight, lips pressed into a bloodless line. His shoulders hunched like the truth itself was a weight he couldn’t shake off. He hadn’t spoken to me since the arrest. But I didn’t need his words—I’d already seen the admission in his eyes. He’d known. He just hadn’t wanted the world to know he’d married a viper.

Jadeline’s lawyer stood, a smooth-faced man in a navy suit. “Your Honor, my client was simply retrieving misplaced files. She—”

The judge cut him off. “While concealing them in her purse?”

Silence.

I leaned back, letting the satisfaction seep into me. For years, Jadeline had painted me as a liar, a troublemaker, a girl with too much imagination. She’d told my father I was unstable, that I resented her for marrying him, that my grief over my mother had turned to malice. And he’d listened. He’d let her words rot our bond until I’d stopped trying to mend it.

Now the rot was on display for everyone to see.

Jaxon leaned closer. “She’s sweating,” he muttered, eyes fixed on her.

He was right. Beneath the flawless makeup, her skin gleamed with a sheen she couldn’t powder away.

The prosecutor pressed on. Witnesses were called, an assistant who testified to missing documents, a colleague who admitted Jadeline had asked odd questions about my mother’s estate. Each statement was another nail in her coffin, hammered in steady rhythm.

When it was my turn, I rose. My heels clicked against the polished floor, the sound echoing like a metronome.

“Please state your name.”

“Eloise Sinclair.”

“And your relation to the defendant?”

I met Jadeline’s gaze head-on. “She’s my stepmother.”

“What did you discover that led to this evidence being presented?”

I recounted everything, the inconsistencies, the spark of suspicion that had turned into certainty when I got my hands on the footage. My voice didn’t shake. I spoke as if the words had been waiting in my throat for years, demanding release.

When I stepped down, Jadeline’s glare could have flayed skin. But I felt lighter. Like each word I’d spoken had cut another rope that once bound me.

The trial stretched on, hours folding into each other. The jury sat impassive, their eyes heavy with the weight of deciding fate. My father’s silence grew louder, until it was all I could hear between the voices.

When closing arguments ended, the judge’s gavel struck. The sound cracked like thunder. “Court will recess for deliberation.”

The jury filed out. The room erupted in whispers again, a hive of speculation.

I stood, turning to leave, when a hand brushed my sleeve.

My father.

“Eloise,” he said, his voice raw. His eyes were rimmed red. “I suspected. I—I didn’t want to believe, not without proof. I thought I could… protect you, protect her, until I know for certain. That’s why I stayed away, in Jennifer’s trial. I couldn’t risk the truth breaking open too soon.”

I stared at him, cold settling in my bones. The excuses curled in the air, sour and weak.

“You knew,” I said simply.

He flinched.

“That’s enough for me.” I stepped back, out of his reach, and turned away.

Because it didn’t matter why. It didn’t matter how he justified abandoning me. The truth was bare: he had chosen silence over me. And now, there was nothing left to salvage.

The jury returned within the hour. Their faces were grim.

The foreman stood. “We find the defendant guilty on all counts.”

The judge’s gavel fell again. “Sentencing will proceed immediately.”

The courtroom stilled. Even the hum of the air conditioner seemed to fade.

Jadeline’s mask cracked at last. Her eyes widened, her lips parted, and for the first time I saw fear ripple across her face. She wasn’t untouchable anymore.

The judge’s voice rolled steady, unyielding. “Jadeline Sinclair, you are hereby sentenced to twenty years in federal prison, without the possibility of parole for the first ten. You will be remanded into custody immediately.”

A collective gasp swelled, then broke into murmurs.

The bailiff moved forward, snapping handcuffs around her wrists. The metallic click was the sweetest sound I’d ever heard.

She thrashed, her composure dissolving into jagged edges. “This is a mistake! I was trying to help—he told me to do it!” She whipped her head toward my father, her voice shrill. “Tell them! Tell them it was for you!”

My father buried his face in his hands. He didn’t move.

Jadeline’s scream fractured through the room as she was dragged toward the doors. “You’ll regret this, Eloise! You’ll—”

The doors slammed behind her, cutting her off mid-curse.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. My chest felt light, almost foreign. For the first time in years, the air I inhaled didn’t taste like poison.

Jaxon grinned, shaking my hand. “She’s gone. It’s over.”

I nodded.. It wasn’t over, my life would still bear scars, my father would still carry his cowardice like a cloak, but Jadeline’s reign was done.

As we walked out into the bright afternoon, my heels clicked on the courthouse steps, steady and unhurried. Reporters shouted my name, cameras flashing like sparks. I didn’t look back.

For once, I didn’t have to.

Because the stepmonster had finally been sentenced. And I was free.