Too Late

She’s looking at me now. Her eyes are locked with mine and her lips are pressed together real tight like she’s nervous. I like that. I love it, actually. She’s feeling something while she looks at me and I can tell she isn’t thinking about Luke at all right now.

“I love you,” I mouth.

Sloan’s eyes drop to my mouth and I smile at her. Then that stupid fuck-that ridiculous fuckface motherfucking stupid fuck-stands up and walks to the back of the courtroom, right to where she’s seated. He makes his way down the aisle until he plants himself right next to her. He wraps his arm around my fucking fiancé and she squeezes her eyes shut and buries her face against his shoulder, like she’s relieved he moved to be next to her. My eyes meet his-the fucking motherfucking fuckface brainwashing fuck-and he leans forward, blocking my view of her. He stares at me, hard, like he’s threatening me to turn around.

I want to kill him. For a few seconds, I try and think of ways I can do that.

Grab the security guards gun and shoot him.

Run to the back of the courtroom and break his fucking neck.

Grab the pen that I just wrote Paul the note with and shove it right in his carotid artery.

But I don’t. I refrain, because I’m pretty sure this case is going to go in my favor and I’ll be out on bail until the next hearing.

His murder can wait.

It needs to be planned out with more precision and preferably without the eyes of a judge on me.

I decide to turn around. Not because Luke threatens me to do so with that fucking look in his eyes-but because I need to convince this judge that he’s making the right decision when he throws this case out due to self-defense.

I try to follow along as both lawyers stand up and speak. I try to follow along as the judge responds to each of them. I smile when the judge looks at me. But inside, my blood is boiling. Knowing Luke is back there, sitting next to her, holding her. That means she’s probably been with him at night while I’m forced to fuck my own hand, alone in my jail cell. It also means he’s probably been inside her. His fingers, his dick, his fucking tongue. Tasting and taking what’s mine. What was supposed to be only mine.

My pulse is raging when the judge’s gavel comes down. “This court session is adjourned.”

I breathe in slowly through my nose. I release it when I look at Paul. “What the fuck just happened?”

He makes a face like I’m supposed to keep my voice low. My eyes flick to the back of the room when I hear Sloan’s cry. Luke is helping her stand, but her arms are around him and she’s crying. Sobbing.

She’s upset. That can’t be good news for me. She’s upset for me.

“Is this going to trial?” I ask Paul. “You said this wasn’t going to fucking trial!”

Paul shakes his skinny little head. “The judge decided not to take it to trail,” Paul says. “Which means your claims of self defense were upheld. You’ll have to go back to your cell, but only until I can bail you out on the other charges pending against you. It may be four or five hours, but I’ll come get you once your bail is posted.”

I glance back at Sloan, watching as Luke helps her out of the courtroom. Why is she crying, then? If the charges against me were dismissed, why is she crying?

“How long do you think it takes someone to recover from being completely fucking brainwashed?” I ask Paul.

I glance back at him and he shrugs. “What are you talking about, Asa?”

“Like how much therapy do you think a person will need in order to get over being brainwashed? A few weeks? Months? More than a year?”

Paul stares at me a moment and then shakes his head. “I’ll see you in a few hours, Asa.”

He stands, so I stand. The same four guards escort me out of the courtroom.

I should probably be fucking ecstatic that this case just got thrown out. The next one should be even easier, because Paul says Luke’s department isn’t pressing charges. So as long as I cut a plea deal, undergo some psychiatric treatment and give them the information they want on Jon and Kevin, I more than likely won’t be charged with shooting Luke in the fucking chest.

That says a lot about our court system. I fucking come within six centimeters of killing a guy in cold blood, and I walk free because I tattle and claim a mental illness?

I fucking love the USA.

It almost feels like all my efforts have gone to waste, though. Since the moment I started growing suspicious that someone was brainwashing Sloan, I’ve been concocting this elaborate scheme and I’m not even really getting credit for it. I had to deny having anything to do with the fake raid, which was really hard for my ego. I’m fucking proud of that and I want to brag to the world that I pulled it off flawlessly.