AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Noted, Mr. Wyndham,” she said dryly. “Please go on.”
Zach went on for several minutes about how he couldn’t understand why Torus would beat him up. Molly just stared at him. Had his lawyer not told him they were countersuing under the revenge porn laws?
Maybe he was banking on the fact that she would be too embarrassed to talk about the videos in court. If so, he was wrong. She’d been humiliated so often she was out of fucks to give. It might not be a very nice saying, but it was the truth. She was willing to go through the pain and embarrassment at least one more time to show the world what a bastard her ex truly was.
After Zach’s side had presented their case—with the attorney using various xenophobic slurs and calling the Kindred “alien vermin” and “invading scum”—Councilor Paige had finally gotten the chance to speak.
Molly had watched as the Kindred’s head attorney absolutely tore into her ex’s defense.
“So, Mr. Wyndham, you claim my client had no reason whatsoever to attack you and take your computer equipment—is that correct?” she asked.
Zach nodded his head.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
From the corner of her eye, Molly saw Zach’s attorney—an older man in an expensive looking gray suit—shaking his head. She understood what was happening then—her ex had always been what her Mom called “bullheaded”—meaning he wouldn’t listen to anyone else’s advice. Clearly his attorney had told him it was a bad idea to go with this defense and pretend that he had no idea why Torus would attack him, but Zach had decided to do whatever he wanted.
“So you think the fact that you sent a compromising video of Molly Byrne—who happens to be your ex-wife and my client’s current Mate—had nothing to do with the fact that my client, Commander Torus, came to exact revenge?”
Zach frowned.
“What video?”
“Mr. Wyndham, please don’t play dumb with me,” Councilor Paige had snapped. “I’d like to remind you that lying on the witness stand is perjury. Now I’ll ask you again—did you or did you not send a compromising video of Molly Byrne—which you took without her knowledge—to my client, Commander Torus?”
Zach got a sulky, mulish expression on his face.
“Yeah, so what if I did?” he demanded.
“You sent that video to Molly’s boss—who also happens to be her husband or ‘Mate’ to use the Kindred’s terms,” Councilor Paige said. “You sent it to him just as you sent it to every other employer that Molly has had in the past five years. You did it to hurt and humiliate her and to make her lose her job! Which I will show had happened multiple times in the past,” she went on, speaking to the jury.
“So what?” Zach demanded again. “It’s not like I hurt her or threatened her or anything—he can’t come beat me up just because I sent him a video of her! That’s not a reason to go into that weird berserker state—that ‘Rage’—my lawyer said so!”
Molly thought Councilor Paige was going to contradict him but she only said mysteriously,
“We’ll go into the causes of Rage later in this trial. Right now I’m just trying to establish that you sent a compromising video of Molly Byrne to Commander Torus and to every other employer she’s had in the past five years.”
Zach had gotten that mulish expression on his face again and Molly had been sure he was about to lie. Councilor Paige must have thought so too because she frowned warningly at him and said,
“I want to remind you that I have witnesses that will corroborate what I just said.”
“Okay, yes, fine—I sent it,” Zach had snarled. “But she deserved it! That bitch left me high and dry with no warning! She deserted me when I needed her the most!”
Molly had to fight to keep her face neutral. It was true that she had saved up her money until she had enough to live on her own and afford an attorney for a no-fault divorce and then she had slipped away in the middle of the night. But that was because she was sure that Zach wouldn’t let her go otherwise. He liked controlling her too much to ever let her leave.
As for her leaving him “when he needed her most”, that made no sense. He didn’t need her for anything except as someone he could abuse and hurt on a regular basis. With his money and fame, Molly figured he could find someone else to meet his needs—she’d had enough of his mistreatment.
At Zach’s response, the jury had stirred and murmured among themselves. The Judge reprimanded Zach and told him she wouldn’t tolerate that kind of language in her courtroom. And then Councilor Paige had said,
“No further questions,” and allowed Zach to hobble off the witness stand—which he did, making sure everyone in the courtroom could see how badly he was hurt.
Councilor Paige next called on several of Molly’s ex-employers who admitted, uncomfortably, that they had fired her or “let her go” because of the salacious videos Zach had sent them and their clients.
“So there was no problem with Molly’s performance?” she probed, raising her eyebrows at the principal of the last elementary school Molly had worked for.
“Er, no.” The principal, a balding man by the name of Albert Jenkins, shifted uncomfortably in the hard wooden witness chair. “She was an excellent teacher and the children loved her. But the parents in the school got upset when the video er…got out. They started demanding that we let her go. So…” He shrugged. “We had to. It was unfortunate, but several of the parents said they didn’t want their children being influenced by someone who would make that kind of video.”
“And were you told that Molly didn’t make that video at all—did she explain that she was recorded without her knowledge or consent?” Councilor Paige asked, frowning.
