She placed a gold-embossed business card on the stenographer’s desk with the precision of a surgeon laying down a scalpel.
“Catherine Bennett,” she said. “Senior Managing Partner at Bennett, Crown & Sterling. I am appearing as lead counsel for Grace Simmons.” She paused, her ice-blue eyes boring into Keith’s soul. “I am also her mother. And I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours realizing that I raised my daughter to be far too kind to a man as structurally deficient as the one sitting across the aisle.”
Keith let out a sound—a choked, pathetic wheeze. He looked at Garrison, but Garrison was busy looking at the floor, his entire legal strategy having just been reduced to a pile of scrap wood in the wake of a hurricane.
Chapter 4: The Forensic Autopsy
Catherine didn’t sit down. She moved around the defense table with the fluid, predatory grace of someone who owned the air she breathed. With two sharp, metallic clicks, she snapped open her briefcase. It wasn’t filled with loose papers; it was organized with the terrifying precision of a combat medic’s kit.
“Garrison,” Catherine said, her voice dropping to a conversational, almost pleasant tone. “I haven’t seen you since the Oracle merger in ’15. You were a junior associate then, I believe? Running red-lines and fetching sparkling water for the partners?”
Garrison Ford, the man who had spent the morning preening like a peacock, looked as though he were trying to shrink into the fibers of his expensive chair. He opened his mouth, but only a dry, raspy click came out.
“Now,” Catherine continued, turning her gaze back to the bench, “let’s discuss the ‘ironclad’ prenuptial agreement Mr. Simmons has been wielding like a blunt instrument.”
