Chapter 280 Garrett

Chapter 280 Garrett

Garrett

That second morning of court was a repeat of the first.

Same nerves, same fear, same urge to throw up every ten seconds.

My poor lion didn’t even know what to do with me by then. He made me coffee, helped me dress, straightened my tie twenty times with equally trembling fingers, and kissed my nerves away between tasks. God, I loved him. He was trying so hard to hide how scared he was, but I knew better.

I knew from the way his hands lingered on me and how closely he watched my face whenever he thought I wasn’t looking. From the way he kept pulling me back for one more kiss, as if each one might protect me from whatever waited inside that courtroom.

When we reached the courthouse, Aslan walked me as far as he was allowed to go. “I’ll be right here,” he whispered, touching his forehead to mine. “You don’t have to survive the whole day yet, wolf. Just walk through those doors.”

“And then what?”

“Then you breathe. And when you can’t, you remember I’m out here breathing with you.” He kissed me one last time and forced himself to release my hand. “Go before I commit a crime and follow you.”

The courtroom looked exactly as it had the day before. Same polished wood. Same reporters waiting to turn the worst moments of our lives into headlines. Same monster seated beside his attorneys as if this were another meeting he expected to control.

I sat nervously by Olivia as the prosecution called for the first witnesses, whose presence had just been approved by the judge.

When the courtroom doors opened, a faint squeak came from behind me. One wheel, then another.

I turned with everyone else and watched a woman push a young man into the courtroom. His body rested crookedly in a specialized wheelchair, secured by straps across his chest and waist. One hand lay curled against his stomach while the other rested on a padded support. His head tilted slightly to one side, and his eyes stared past the rows of people without settling on any of them.

Something about his face pulled at a memory I couldn’t reach. The pale scar near his eyebrow. The light blonde hair that used to fall into his eyes while he carried my tray through Spring Creek’s dining room.

No, God, no…

The air left my lungs. “Lance?”

Olivia’s hand closed around my wrist, but I barely felt it.

I remembered him standing across from me in the laundry room. He’d kept his back to me while pretending to fold a sheet, his hands moving quickly as our voices barely carried over the machines. When I’d asked if he would testify against Graves, he’d panicked and taken off.

But the next day, right before I left, he’d glanced at me. Terrified but hopeful, he had said yes.

One word. That was all he’d given me, but it had been enough.

Now, Lance’s mother stopped beside the witness stand and crouched to adjust the blanket over his legs. She whispered something into his ear and kissed his temple before sitting down.

Lance didn’t react.

“What happened to him?” I whispered.

Olivia’s eyes filled with something I didn’t understand. “Listen.”

Across the aisle, Graves had gone perfectly still. His hand hovered above the document he’d been reading, and his eyes moved from Lance to his attorney.

Not horror. Not grief. Calculation.

Lance’s mother was sworn in. Her voice trembled at first, but she forced it steady as the prosecutor began questioning her.

“Did Lance ever tell you he was being harmed at Spring Creek?” he asked at some point.

“Yes.”

“What did he tell you?”

“He said the treatments hurt. He said Dr. Graves did things to him when they were alone and called it stimulation therapy. He begged us to bring him home.”

“And did you?”

“No.” She looked toward the jury. “Dr. Graves told us those accusations were part of Lance’s resistance. He said our son would lie and manipulate us because he didn’t want to get better. We believed him.”

My fingernails dug into my palms. We had both asked for help. Now it was too late for him.

“When did you last speak to Lance before his injury?”

“Three days before Spring Creek called us. Lance was terrified. He said Dr. Graves knew he had spoken to another patient about what happened during his private sessions. He told us he was going to be punished.”

The room tilted around me.

“What did you do?”

“I spoke to Dr. Graves. He said another patient had encouraged Lance’s delusions and assured us he would handle it.” Her voice cracked. “So we left our son there.”

“What happened three days later?”

“Dr. Graves called and said Lance had suffered a rare reaction to medication during a routine session. He said Lance had experienced a seizure and cardiac arrest, but their staff had responded immediately.”

The prosecutor placed a document on the screen. “What happened after Lance was released from the hospital?”

“We refused to leave our son at Spring Creek and arranged to take him home. That's when they offered to pay for his lifelong care if we signed a release of liability and agreed never to speak publicly about what happened. If we broke the agreement, they could stop the payments, demand everything back, and release Lance’s private treatment records.”

“Did you sign it?”

Lance’s mother looked at her son. “Yes. We took the money, and we stayed quiet.”

No excuses. No dramatic defense. Just the truth.

“We were ashamed,” she continued. “We sent him there. He told us they were hurting him, and we didn’t believe him. Then we needed their money to care for him, so we convinced ourselves that speaking wouldn’t change anything.” Her eyes moved toward me. “But our silence allowed them to hurt someone else.”

The prosecutor showed two recordings.

The first had been taken days before Lance was injured. He stood in his parents’ kitchen, laughing and pushing the camera away while his mother teased him.

The video lasted less than thirty seconds, but it was enough.

That was the Lance I knew.

The second recording showed him in a hospital bed eight days later. A ventilator covered part of his face. He didn’t move when his mother called his name. Dark circular marks showed near his temples, and bruises surrounded his wrists.

I couldn’t look away.

The independent neurologist who examined Lance took the stand next. She explained that he had suffered a severe brain injury from being deprived of oxygen for too long. He would require help eating, bathing, moving, and communicating for the rest of his life.

“Is Lance’s condition consistent with the incident described by Spring Creek?” the prosecutor asked.

“No. Spring Creek reported a brief cardiac arrest followed by immediate resuscitation. The severity of Lance’s injuries indicates a substantially longer interruption of oxygen to his brain.”

“What about the alleged reaction to medication?”

“The hospital’s toxicology results did not support it.”

The photographs of Lance’s temples appeared on the screen. “And these marks?”

“They were consistent with the recent placement of electrical contacts.”

A sound moved through the courtroom as everyone seemed to stop breathing at once.

“In your professional opinion, is Spring Creek’s account medically compatible with Lance’s documented injuries?”

“No. It is not.”

The final document was an internal treatment schedule recovered during the investigation. Lance’s name appeared beside a session scheduled hours after his parents’ last call. Corrective aversive stimulation.

Graves’s signature was beneath it.

Tears rolled down my face. Lance had trusted me. He had agreed to help, and Graves had made sure he never could.

“After the investigation began,” the prosecutor asked Lance’s mother, “did you learn the identity of the patient Lance had spoken to?”

“Yes.”

“Who was it?”

Her eyes found mine across the courtroom. “Garrett Williams.”

Every head turned toward me. For one horrible second, all I could think was that I had done this. If I hadn’t asked him to speak, Lance might still be walking and laughing. He might still be laughing at his mother’s kitchen instead of sitting a few feet away, unable to tell anyone what Graves had done.

Then I looked at Graves. His calm expression was gone. It wasn’t much—just the tightness in his jaw and the way his fingers pressed against the table—but I knew him. I had spent years studying every change in his face because predicting his moods had once been the only way to protect myself.

He was scared.

It didn’t feel like victory. Not when the proof had been carved into Lance’s life. But this time, when I looked at the jury, I didn’t see doubt. I saw horror.

Graves had taken Lance’s voice.

But he hadn’t taken the truth with it.