one would ever believe her if she told them what happened
Sometimes, the level of my genius was just so astounding.
+25 BONUS
Occasionally, I would glance at her out of the corner of my eyes, and I would notice the vacant, haunting expression in her eyes. She hadn’t even glanced in my direction once, and a tiny part of me found that insulting She could at least look at me even once, and maybe shed a few more tears or two. That would have made me very happy. Even though she seemed to have cried enough over the last few weeks–and particularly today in the bathroom–I still wasn’t satisfied. I wanted her tear ducts to dry up completely, and I wanted her to remember that everything that was happening to her right now was because she thought she could defy me.
Thankfully, the court hearing went smoothly. I barely paid any attention to anything that was said, choosing instead to spend most to the time staring at Olivia. I noticed the way her bottom lip trembled slightly, the way she looked like she was going to crack at the slightest touch. I noticed the look of abject misery on her face, and it made me wonder if I had pushed things too far.
What if the judge saw how emotional she was and decided that he was going to take pity on her?
But there was no need to worry about that. After all, I’d taken adequate steps to make sure that things would go my way. From the way the judge couldn’t even maintain steady eye contact with me, I knew that my plan had worked.
The first step was figuring out how to do things discreetly. After all, if there was a way that it could be traced back to me, then I would be in deep shit. So I had someone else make a sizeable donation to the Sander’s Foundation few weeks ago, which definitely caught his attention. After that, every form of communication was between the judge and the man I’d hired, who made my intentions clear. Everyone had a price in this world. You just needed to find out what price that was, and you were set.
I wondered if Olivia had thought of any of this, or if she was simply hoping that her case would be strong enough to win. I almost felt sorry for her, especially since I hadn’t played my trump card yet.
And it was time for that, right about now.
“Your honour,” Bernard said once the judge asked if both parties had anything else they would like to add, “I do not wish to waste the time of this courtroom, so I suggest we do not go to trial, since this is an open and shut case”
I leaned back into my seat and savoured the look of shock on Olivia’s face, as well as her lawyer.
“Is that so?” the judge asked. “And what, if I may ask, makes this such an open and shut case?”
“Your honour, it is clear that this whole case is nothing but a targeted attack on my client in an attempt his resources and assets so that his hard work can be exploited by a gold–digging, two–faced…”
“Objection!”
nt to st
split
“Withdrawn,” Bernard replied. “But like I said, it’s an open and shut case. What Mrs Reynard–formerly known as Miss Carson–failed to inform the court or her lawyer was that she has in fact already signed a prenup exactly three days before her marriage to my client, Mr Reynard. This agreement clearly states that in the event of an unfortunate divorce, my client will retain full control of his assets, and Mrs Reynard will not receive a single dime from him.”
You could have heard a pin drop in that moment. The entire courtroom went silent, and the look of pure and utter disbelief on Ciara Walter’s face was astonishing, Olivia looked up as well, and her eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when she heard this.
Checkmate.
