My Fake Death Was The Punchline To His Cruel Joke Chapter 17
The moment the news broke, the narrative flipped.
Camille’s lawyers withdrew their motion in disgrace. Stock in her family’s companies plummeted. Two of their largest partners pulled out of major deals overnight.
And I was finally seen by the public for what I was:
A victim.
At the second hearing, the defense still tried to argue that the walnut oil incident was just “an inappropriate but harmless prank.”
Then a side door to the courtroom opened.
Bennett, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, was escorted to the witness stand by two deputies.
He was even thinner than before. His hair was crudely cut, and the faint scars on his wrists were still red.
After being sworn in, he didn’t look at Camille. He looked directly at the jury.
“It was not a joke.”
His voice was hoarse, but steady.
“We all knew Mara had a severe allergy to walnuts. Camille administered the dose. I filmed it. When she collapsed on the floor, gasping for air, my first instinct was to check if I’d gotten a clear shot.”
Camille shot to her feet.
“Bennett, are you insane?”
The judge’s gavel cracked through the silent courtroom, ordering her to sit down.
Only then did Bennett turn to look at her.
“Yes. I was insane. Insane enough to believe she would never leave me. Insane enough to believe that her love was something we all had a right to use for our own amusement.”
He went through the evidence, piece by piece, confirming the chat logs, identifying every participant, and admitting that he had deliberately withheld the marriage license so he could walk away unscathed.
Every word of his testimony destroyed Camille.
And every word destroyed himself.
Three days later, the jury found Camille guilty of intentional assault.
On the day of her sentencing, her face was ashen. From across the courtroom, Bennett looked at me. There was no pleading in his eyes now, just a bottomless, despairing regret.
He sat there in his prison scrubs, a cooperating witness, as ruined and exposed as I had been when I first landed in Denver.
Only this time, I wasn’t going to save him.