He understood what was happening. He just didn’t want to see.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
In hindsight, Paris doesn’t believe that Drew meant to shame her when he drove her home later that night. He was shocked, embarrassed, and upset, and while he didn’t express any of those feelings very well, they were understandable.
Unlike what was happening now.
Paris’s new lawyer is in his late forties, with a shaved head, a bulldog neck, and biceps the size of footballs bursting out of the sleeves of his fitted Lacoste golf shirt. Paris had found herself a little starry-eyed when Elsie first introduced them; she had not expected Sonny Everly to be such a hunk.
And then he spoke.
The three of them are sitting at the kitchen table, drinking the coffee Paris brewed and eating the doughnuts Elsie brought.
“Come on, Paris. Why’d you really marry him?” Sonny asks. He isn’t happy with her first two answers. “No jury is going to believe you genuinely loved the guy. He was almost thirty years older, with a history of addiction, who was basically a dick to everyone. He was officially a has-been when you met. The jury needs to understand your relationship so they’ll sympathize that you lost him.”
“He was retired when we met, and I don’t know that version of Jimmy you just described.” Paris’s arms are folded across her chest. She’s aware that it makes her look defensive, but at the moment, she doesn’t care.
“Bullshit. You saw a meal ticket and grabbed it. Or you have daddy issues. Maybe you sensed his mind was starting to go and figured you wouldn’t have to wait too long to talk him into killing the prenup.”
“Fuck you,” Paris says, her voice hot. She looks over at Elsie. The woman doesn’t exactly have a warm personality herself, but compared to Sonny, she’s a cruise ship director. She gives Paris a tiny shrug. I told you.
“None of the above,” Paris says. “We started as friends and we got closer. We liked and respected each other—”
“Did you guys have sex?”
Paris’s cheeks are burning. She glances at Elsie again, who’s now picking at an invisible speck of lint on her blouse. It’s one thing to answer this question for, say, Henry, who was forever interested in other people’s bedroom activities and wanted all the details. But she can’t imagine discussing it with a man she’s just met and a woman who’s probably slept with Jimmy more times than she has.
“Our sex life was normal,” she says.
“Did he require any pharmaceutical assistance to perform?”
“Why is this relevant?” Paris snaps. “What does this have to do with him being dead?”
“It has everything to do with it.” Sonny leans forward, looking right into her eyes. “Everything about your very abnormal, short-lived marriage is relevant. The prosecutor is going to pick your life apart, find all the ways your relationship wasn’t perfect, and paint you as an unhappy, selfish, gold-digging bitch who murdered her elderly husband for the money. The more you tell me now, the more I can prepare for that.”
“Jimmy wasn’t elderly. And I didn’t kill him. Next. Fucking. Question.”
Sonny sighs and looks over at Elsie. “You didn’t talk to her about this?”
Elsie shakes her head. “We never got that far.”
Sonny leans back in his chair, stretches his arms up, and laces his fingers behind his head. Paris once read that this was a power move, something that people—men, usually—subconsciously did to demonstrate their dominance over the people around them.
“Paris, it doesn’t matter whether you killed him,” Sonny says, and for the first time since he arrived, he doesn’t sound completely abrasive. “For the purposes of your trial, I don’t give a shit whether you did it or not. That’s between you and your God. What matters is what story we can sell to a jury in order to plant reasonable doubt that you didn’t do it. In court, what matters is what the prosecutor can prove, and the burden of proof is on them. Nico Salazar is going to craft the most plausible narrative he can to paint a picture for the jury of why and how you murdered your husband.”
“And Sonny’s job is to refute that story,” Elsie says. “He’ll poke holes, he’ll discredit witnesses, he’ll take every scrap of evidence the prosecution has and demonstrate how it can be interpreted three different ways. But if he also has his own narrative that he can sell to the jury about what happened, even better.”
“So then why don’t you both tell me what you think the story should be.” Paris speaks through gritted teeth. “Better yet, just tell me what the hell you want me to say, and I’ll say it. Because clearly me telling you the truth isn’t enough.”