The blank signature line wasn’t the end of the war; it was the end of the first battle. It proved I hadn't signed Marcus's confession, but it didn't prove he had authored the crime. In the serpentine corridors of Washington justice, absence of guilt is not the same as proof of innocence. His lawyers, though reeling, regrouped with the tenacity of cornered rats. Their new strategy was insidious: to paint me as a ghost, a digital phantom who had manipulated the entire campaign's finances from the shadows, leaving no fingerprints, no ink, only a trail of chaos designed to frame her brilliant, trusting husband.
It was a narrative built for the modern age—the invisible, all-powerful woman behind the curtain. It might have even worked, had I not designed the curtain myself.
The next front open
