CHAPTER FIVE
Grateful she was provided the comfort of sitting at a table in the hearing room at the Middle Tennessee State Penitentiary rather than being required to stand at a lectern, Ashley stared at the members of the parole board. They lined the long table opposite her, their faces stoic.
A red-haired man in an ill-fitting pinstriped suit, who she assumed was the public defender called to represent her ex-husband, sat at another table to her right. To the attorney’s right, an empty chair stood, waiting for the monster that would soon fill it.
Almost nine years had passed since the day Ethan had tried to kill her. But now, being in this room with the board resembling the jury who had convicted him of attempted murder, it felt as though it had just happened yesterday. She remembe
