“It was his idea!” Grant suddenly shrieked, pointing wildly at our father, his voice cracking with hysteria. “He made me do it! He said the company was bleeding money, he said we had to use her accounts! I just signed the papers! He set her up!”
“You ungrateful little bastard!” Warren roared, the veneer of respectability vanishing entirely. He lunged forward over the wooden gallery railing, his hands outstretched like claws toward his own son.
Two federal marshals tackled Warren mid-air, slamming him into the carpet with a sickening thud.
The judge was hammering his gavel so hard the wood splintered, the sound cracking like gunshots. “Order! Order in this court! Bailiff, secure the defendants! I want this courtroom cleared immediately!”
I sat perfectly still on the witness stand, my hands folded neatly in my lap. The air in the room was electric, filled with screaming, the scuffling of boots, and the weeping of my mother. I watched the fire I had set burn everything to the ground, and for the first time in ten years, I felt absolutely warm.
