Nigel stood and called my name.
I pulled in a breath and shuffled toward the stand. I was sure my feet would give out as I approached, my breaths shallow and my heart erratic as it pulsed frantic beats through my veins.
Emotion pressed fervently at my chest, and my little girl’s face swirled through my mind, her sweet voice an echo in my ear. As if she were near, her spirit fluttering through me on her tiny butterfly wings, brushing across the vacant places where she remained just out of reach.
Calling for me.
I fumbled as I sat down on the chair.
Martin Jennings smiled across at me.
Pleasantly.
As if he’d perfected the act.
As if he held the fate of the world in his pompous hands.
A placating expression that oozed arrogance.
Vile, disgusting man.
Hate hit me like the crack of a sonic boom.
If only everyone here knew what he was truly capable of.
What he’d done.
No. I’d had no proof.
But I knew his guilt as well as I knew his game.
My gut had screamed it. Claimed it. A natural intuition that had risen from inside. An instinct insisting we survive.
And for so long I had.
Survived.
I was sworn in and Nigel Trondow asked me the same questions he’d asked the guys. Only with me like he had done with Sebastian, he went into more detail, beginning from the moment Sebastian and I went on the walk down the beach.
“The pictures that allegedly took place while Kallie was left alone. You claim they took place down the beach without Kallie present?”
“That’s correct.”
I knew no matter what, those images shed me in less than stellar light. The pictures appeared dirty and lewd. No doubt, they gave pause to my judgment as a mother.
My voice quieted as I swallowed around the lump at the base of my throat, my explanation shaky. “We thought we were completely alone…there wasn’t anyone on that part of the beach. That never would have happened in front of my daughter, or in front of anyone else for that matter.”
I realized my statement came across as a plea.
For the judge to understand I would never intentionally place my daughter in harm’s way.
Nigel strode back to the table and pulled out the images he’d marked for evidence that morning.
“Your Honor, these are the pictures taken without Ms. Bentley or Mr. Stone’s knowledge last Sunday, on private property, no less.”
He stated the date they were taken and passed them to the judge.
They were the pictures of Sebastian touching me beneath my bikini top, our passionate kisses, the ones of Kallie from a distance with her face blurred out and surrounded by paramedics.
He handed her more prints. But these…these were the rest of the pictures. The photographer who had sold the condemning pictures had captured moment after moment of that afternoon. There were pictures of me playing in the water with Kallie. Close-ups of her smiling face. The wave. Me screaming when I lost her. Sebastian running in to save her.
They were all there.
I wasn’t entirely sure how this stunning reel of evidence had been obtained.
Sebastian had said he would spare no cost and clearly Nigel had dug until he’d found the proof.
“You’ll see by our own pictures that Ms. Bentley and Mr. Stone’s intimate encounter on the beach did not take place in the same spot where Ms. Bentley lost hold of her daughter behind Mr. Di Pietro’s beach-front home.”
There could be no question.
They were two separate events.
The judge perched her reading glasses on the narrow bridge of her nose. Quietly she perused them, saying little. The bit she did, she directed at Nigel, asking how and when the second set of images were obtained. Bile worked its way through my stomach.
Because no matter how much proof we believed we had, it still came down to perspective. To the way the judge would see, read, and interpret.