He Deceived Me So I Destroyed His Family’s Legacy Chapter 29
Behind every payment was a name.
Laura.
Tracy.
Amy.
And more women whose files now held nothing but dates and dollar amounts.
Vanessa cried, “I was only doing what he told me to do.”
Adrian replied, “When she was enjoying the Blackwoods’ money, she never once asked if it was clean.”
The families of the victims sat in the back rows of the gallery.
No one cursed at them.
No one screamed.
Their silence was a wall, trapping Adrian and Vanessa in the center of the room.
When it was the defense’s turn, the lawyer asked Vanessa if she was lying to get a lighter sentence.
She wiped her tears.
“I’m not.”
The prosecutor immediately played her statement from the day she was arrested in Cold Spring.
“I only had my assistant deliver the money.”
“It was Adrian who said that as long as the statements never reached the prosecutors, as long as the victims kept quiet, the Blackwoods would never be touched.”
At the time, she hadn’t known she would become a witness.
She hadn’t known investigators were in the next room.
She thought she was only saving herself.
They were the words she’d had the least time to invent.
Vanessa collapsed in the witness chair.
Adrian said nothing more.
After the recess, the bailiffs led him away.
As he passed me, he stopped.
“Nora.”
“If that day, I hadn’t sent Julian to the bridal suite, would you still love me?”
I looked at him.
“That’s the wrong question.”
“It wasn’t one day. It wasn’t one thing.”
“It was every time you knew we were hurting—and every time you chose to let it continue.”
The bailiffs urged him forward.
But he seemed not to hear them. He only said in a low voice,
“I really thought I could still make it up to you.”