If Your Heart Doesn’t Lean Towards Me I Don’t Want It Chapter 19
“You still don’t get it.”
“I’m not suing you for hush money.”
“The court can decide the compensation. As for starting over… that’s impossible.”
The last flicker of hope in Ellis’s eyes died.
His lawyer cleared his throat, attempting to bring up our past relationship, implying that my consent to the filming was a mitigating factor.
I didn’t get angry. I simply pushed the case file forward.
“I consented to being filmed by my partner. That does not mean I consented to him giving a third party unrestricted access to the footage.”
“And it certainly doesn’t mean I consented to it being seen by tens of thousands of strangers.”
The room fell silent.
Ellis suddenly rounded on his lawyer.
“Stop talking.”
The lawyer frowned.
“Mr. Lombardi, I’m trying to help you.”
“I said, stop talking!”
His chest heaved. When he turned back to me, his eyes were red-rimmed.
“Coralie, I admit this is my fault.”
“But Tessa already got ten years. Are you really going to push me off a cliff, too?”
I placed my miscarriage report next to the printed text message.
The date was the day the video had leaked.
“When my mother had a heart attack, you held her back from defending me.”
“When I was miscarrying, you said I was making things complicated.”
“Ellis, you brought yourself to this point. I had nothing to do with it.”
His eyes fell to the report. He looked as if he’d been nailed to his chair.
The mediation failed.
As I was leaving the courthouse, my lawyer handed me another document.
Tessa had filed an appeal.
In her statement, she repeated the same name over and over.
Ellis Lombardi.
The lawyer asked, “Do you want to wait for the outcome of her appeal before we proceed with the civil case?”
I shook my head.
“No.”
“Let them each tell their own story. No one is covering for anyone anymore.”