Chapter 1: The Red and Blue Lights The heavy oak doors of the ballroom swung open. Two Chicago police officers stepped inside, followed immediately by three paramedics. The flashing red and blue lights from their cruisers bathed the elegant hotel lobby in an eerie, frantic glow.

Chapter 9: The Plea Deal

The walls were closing in on Preston.

With his disastrous deposition in the civil case, the criminal defense was completely crippled. The District Attorney, a hard-nosed woman named Sarah Jenkins, invited Marcus and me to her office.

“His defense team is panicking,” DA Jenkins said, handing me a file. “They’re offering a plea deal.”

I opened the file.

Guilty to simple assault. Probation for two years. Anger management classes. No jail time.

I dropped the file on her desk as if it were on fire.

“No.”

“Evelyn, trials are unpredictable,” Jenkins warned gently. “Juries can be weird. A good defense attorney might convince one juror that it was a freak accident. If we take the plea, he gets a conviction on his record today.”

“He cracked my daughter's skull open,” I said, my voice shaking with cold rage. “He made her bleed on her dress. He humiliated her in front of two hundred people. Probation is a joke. It’s what you give a teenager who gets into a fistfight.”

Marcus nodded in agreement. “We reject the plea. Take it to trial.”

Jenkins looked at both of us, then smiled a tight, sharp smile.

“I was hoping you'd say that. I didn't want to offer it anyway. We go to trial in four weeks.”

When the news broke that we rejected the plea deal, my mother called me. She bypassed my block by using a burner phone.

“You are going to put your own brother in a cage,” she sobbed into the phone. It was the first time I had ever heard her truly cry. “He won't survive prison, Evelyn. Please. Have mercy.”