“All rise.”
The courtroom was smaller than Bianca expected, wood paneled, fluorescent lights humming overhead in a way that felt almost obscene given what was being decided inside it. She sat straight-backed beside her lawyer, Kemi on her other side, Ethan directly behind her in the gallery, close enough that she could feel him there without turning around.
Ingrid sat across the aisle, composed in a way that made Bianca’s skin crawl, dressed like a woman attending a charity luncheon rather than a woman who’d stood outside a child’s window three nights ago. She didn’t look at Bianca once, eyes fixed forward, chin level, every inch the picture of a concerned relative rather than a woman under active police investigation.
Bianca counted the ceiling tiles without meaning to, an old habit su
