Men like Derek believed they could charm juries.
The trial date was set three months from the arrest.
Kiara was discharged from the hospital into protected housing under a confidential address. Marissa arranged trauma counseling. The first session left Kiara shaking for hours—but she returned the next week.
Lauren visited occasionally, careful to maintain professional boundaries but unwilling to disappear entirely.
One afternoon, sitting in the small apartment that overlooked a parking lot and a patch of stubborn grass, Kiara held a small pot of soil in her lap.
“I bought them,” she said quietly.
Lauren leaned forward. “Marigolds?”
Kiara nodded.
She pressed the seeds into the soil carefully.
“I don’t know if they’ll grow.”
Lauren studied her.
“They will.”
Kiara exhaled.
“For the first time,” she said, “I’m more afraid of the quiet than I am of him.”
“That’s normal,” Lauren said gently. “Quiet means you have to hear yourself again.”
Kiara absorbed that.
Outside, somewhere in the distance, a car alarm chirped. Life moved on.
Inside, something else was growing.
Not just in the soil.
But in the space where fear used to live unchallenged.
Three weeks before trial, Derek requested a meeting with the prosecution.
Ridley’s tone shifted.
Suddenly, there was talk of negotiation.
Of plea agreements.
Of minimizing trauma for the victim.
Lauren wasn’t in the courtroom when the deal was finalized.
Kiara was.
The terms were clear: guilty plea to aggravated assault, coercive control, and attempted homicide. Full admission entered into record. No contest to the protective order. Sentencing left to the judge.
When Derek stood and said the word “guilty,” it did not sound like defeat.
It sounded like inevitability.
