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“Sustained,” the judge responded.
“Thank you, Your Honor.” My husband sighed. I turned to look at him with a nod of gratitude, and he smiled, though his lips were shaky.
“The truth, Mrs. Levine, is that you had no way of knowing then if your husband had any grounds to stand on, and you still have no way of knowing now, do you? So, why are you here?” he asked.
“As my husband said, I want to get to the truth,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him.
He tilted his head. “I suppose that’s fair. But I have one more question. Would you agree that the accusations made by your husband are baseless? And by baseless, I mean, lacking foundation, not founded on fact but simply assumption?” he asked.
My heart beat sickeningly as I looked back at him, fighting my lips to speak, but they couldn’t find any words that would work in our favor. Grudgingly, I breathed out the words, “Based on the literal definition of baseless, I would agree that the accusation wasn’t made based on fact.”
If I said otherwise, I would’ve looked like a dumb attorney. And I wouldn’t dumb myself down as an attorney to win a case. As long as my husband didn’t fold, we could still win this. Jared’s questions were soft and didn’t prove whether or not they were innocent either. We just had to plant reasonable doubt, and I did my part. Now, it was my husband’s turn to stand by his words and not, excuse my language, fuck us over.
Chapter 29
Benedict
Myhandswereshaking,and my knees were knocking as I approached the stand. My wife had given me quite the pep talk in preparation for my direct examination and as she got through with questioning me, Mario took to the podium. He was smiling and charming with everyone else but with me, he was angry. I could tell by the hardening of his face, the disgust in his nostrils and the vein standing up in his neck, peeking out over his collar.
“Mr. Levine. The man of the hour. The man responsible for this magnificent waste of time,” he said.
“Mr. Sharpe!” the judge gasped in surprise. “Please. Control yourself,” she said with both the need to instill discipline and shock.
Tiffany’s eyes widened though she seemed to be holding back a chuckle.
“I’m sorry, Your Honor. I’ll control my outbursts,” he said. “Good day, sir.” He turned his attention to me. “Mr. Crawford touched on a very important point earlier with your wife. He drew attention to this whole foolish exhibition being based on an unfounded accusation.”
“Objection! Argumentative and quite frankly just rude.” My wife slammed her hand down on the desk.
“Order!” The judge responded to my wife’s show of dramatics. “It seems as if everyone in this courtroom is slowly losing their mind and forgetting the laws of the court. I understand that this is a very sensitive and emotional time and not a very typical situation, but you will control yourselves in this court, or else I will have this case thrown out!” she ordered.
Closing my eyes, I shook my head at the decision my conscience was pushing me to make. After hearing everything over the past couple of days, how could I blame Mario for being this upset? It was obvious to me at this point that the relationship between them was consensual. In fact, I’d known this before we even stepped into court, and everything else just confirmed it for me. But I couldn’t let my wife down. She’d shatter. Look at her. Her skin was pulled so tight, it looked uncomfortable, as if it would rip apart any second now.
“Yes, Your Honor,” all the attorneys murmured at once.
“Mr. Levine,” Mario said, taking in a sharp breath. “Would you agree that you made baseless accusations against us?” he asked.
Looking at my wife, she was pleading with me, using her eyes to beg me to be vague and cunning with my answer. But this wasn’t the time for that. “At the time, yes I did. I didn’t have any proof so yes, it was baseless.”
“And you, yourself, had never seen anything or heard anything that would give validity to your accusation, correct?’ he asked.
“Except for the shocking discovery of you…” I cleared my throat, not wanting to go into details to describe the collective reference of ‘you.’ “...in that filing room, no. I’d never seen or heard anything.”
“And when you heard this discovery, did you pull your daughter, Ms. Tiffany Levine aside to ask her about what you heard?” he asked.
“No,” I admitted.
“Mr. Levine, what exactly did you hear? And why did it make you jump to that conclusion?” he said, tapping his finger against the podium.
Shivers of discomfort ran through my spine and pulled at my cheeks. “I’d rather not repeat it,” I responded, shaking off the memory and running away from the imagery.
“Mr. Levine, I get that this might be uncomfortable, but this whole court case has been brought together based on Ms. Levine’s sex life, and it is necessary to know what you heard to establish a foundation as I’m sure you understand,” he said.
There was no objection from my wife. I’d never been so desperate to hear her object in my entire life. Instead, everyone just stared at me and waited.
“Mr. Levine, can you please answer the question? What did you hear?” Mario asked.
It felt like things were crawling over my body as I closed my eyes and took a deep breath in and out. “I heard that um… Tiff… uh, Ms. Levine had been discovered um… hm… whew, okay, in an um sexual position with my son’s three best friends,” I managed. A shudder ran through me, and I cleared my throat in an attempt to shoo the discomfort away.
