Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 89840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89840 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
He looks like he wants to say something, but he whimpers and his head shakes as it weakly falls to the floor. He knows this is it. All the lies, the cheating, the deceiving . . . it’s over. Even if he wanted to fight back, he wouldn’t make it far. Truthfully, after all those punches to the face, I don’t think he can.
A hand touches my shoulder and I look up at a blurry version of Samuel.
“You ready?” he asks, offering a hand to me. I nod, taking it so he can help me to my feet. He moves several steps away from Dominic, and I lay on the middle of the floor while Sam kneels down next to me.
“This is it,” Sam says, smiling. “The police will walk through that door, take him away, and you’ll be a free woman. No lying, abusive husband to hold you back anymore.”
I cup one of Sam’s cheeks with a sigh.
Then I close my eyes and do my best to fight a satisfied smile, just as the police pound on the cabin’s door.
PART FOUR
A YEAR AND FOUR MONTHS LATER
SIXTY-SEVEN
BRYNN
There was a question Shavonne asked me the night I told her about my plan to get back at Dominic: “What do you hope to gain from this?”
At first, I couldn’t figure out the answer. I once was too afraid to look back at the events that had transpired, or to think about how badly he’d hurt me. It was easier to pretend it’d never happened or that I’d just had a stroke of bad luck, than to face the truth.
I would have rather lied to myself. After all, we humans do it best. We lie to ourselves and fabricate these stories in our heads so we can believe them. But eventually the story will crack, and the lies will spill out, and you’ll drown in the truth.
There was something about seeing Dominic as a state governor. Knowing he was this crooked man overseeing all those innocent lives and making decisions for others when his decisions were downright evil, did not sit right with me. Men like Dominic Baker and John Bolton are corrupt, and they hide behind their money to find loopholes in the law, so they don’t go down. They make sure everyone else is burned and charred before the flames dare come their way.
It finally hit me a few hours later that what I wanted out of this was simple: to win. I wanted Dominic and John Bolton to see that even at their superior levels, they could not prevail and that a simple woman like me could take them down, no matter what.
It’s been a year and four months since the events at the cabin and the verdict for the North Carolina v. Dominic Baker case will be read today. I wish it could’ve been Brynn Wallace v. Dominic Baker, but his wrong doings amount to much more with his status. After finding out what he’d done, everyone hated him. The state of North Carolina immediately impeached him after his arrest and didn’t waste any time arranging a trial. This trial has been the talk of the country for a very long time.
I’m sitting on a park bench with my phone in hand, oversized sunglasses on my face as my leg bounces relentlessly. John Bolton’s verdict was given two weeks ago, and now it’s Dominic’s turn. Of course, John got off with a weak sentence. He threw Dominic under the bus when the news came out that I’d been preyed on and raped, but his role as a New Orleans judge was still revoked. The police had asked why Shavonne and I had come to North Carolina, and I admitted that I wanted to face Dominic. I wanted him to own up to what he’d done, and I had Shavonne do most of that for me. I also told them that when Shavonne confronted him, he panicked about his role as governor and kidnapped her, then came after me, and that’s how the whole thing at the cabin transpired.
The proof about John was in the phone records between him and Dominic, as well as the unsigned nondisclosure that Dominic stupidly had left in a pile of old files. There were calls made several times between John and Dominic the night of my attempted murder, and witnesses who came forward to inform officials that John and Dominic had been eating at the same restaurant I was a waitress in. To my complete surprise, one of the neighbors in Marshview claimed to have been walking their dog when she saw Dominic pull up to the house with a woman of my description.
Dominic confessed that he’d spent a few nights in John Bolton’s rental. There was no proof of rape, so John didn’t get charged for that (some straight bullshit), but Dominic did confess to receiving drugs from John to make sure I couldn’t fight back or deny his advances. Despite Dominic’s confession, John still denied raping me. The only reason John confessed to the drugs is because they caught his dealer, who was willing to rat him out for a shorter sentence of his own.