At 5 a.m., my husband beat me with a wooden walking stick while I was six months pregnant, and his mother laughed, screaming, “Hit her harder!” His sister filmed my suffering as I lay bleeding on the kitchen floor, unaware that I'd secretly sent an SOS to my former Marine brother. Then, just as my husband raised his weapon again, every light in the house went out.

Three months later, the marble corridors of the County Judicial Complex were packed to capacity for the trial of *State v. Trent, Helen, and Nicole Vance*.

I arrived through the private judges' entrance, flanked by Alex and Marcus. I was seven months pregnant now, my belly round and high beneath a simple, elegant navy maternity dress. I walked with a slight limp from my healing femur, leaning lightly on a plain metal cane, but my chin was held high.

When we entered the courtroom, the gallery fell into dead silence.

Seated at the defense table were the three monsters of my past.

Trent looked like a ghost. He had lost thirty pounds in detention; his orange jumpsuit hung loosely from his frame, his cheeks hollow, his eyes sunken and dull. Beside him sat Helen, wearing a drab gray prison uniform, her hair unwashed, her face lined with deep, bitter furrows. Nicole sat between two defense attorneys, crying silently into her palms, her wrists cuffed together.

Richard Vance sat in the first row of the gallery, completely alone. None of his former colleagues, friends, or club members were there. He looked like an old man who had already attended his own funeral.

“All rise for the Honorable Judge Patricia Harris,” the bailiff called out.

The proceedings were swift and merciless.

ADA Ramirez didn't waste time with flowery speeches. She walked to the center of the courtroom, turned on the two eighty-inch projection screens facing the jury, and pressed play.

The kitchen came to life in high definition.

The sound of Helen’s voice echoed through the courtroom: *“AGAIN! Teach her some respect!”*

Juror number four, a middle-aged woman with glasses, gasped and pressed her hand to her mouth. Juror number nine, an older man with veteran pins on his lapel, clenched his fists so hard his knuckles turned stark white.

Then came the sound of the oak stick striking bone.

My scream filled the courtroom—high, desperate, terrified: *“PLEASE, TRENT! THE BABY!”*

And then, Nicole’s voice through the microphone, giggling: *“The family group chat loves this! They're calling it the Lazy Wife Correction!”*

Nicole buried her head on the defense table, sobbing loudly. “Turn it off! Please, turn it off!”

“Quiet at the defense table!” Judge Harris barked, her eyes blazing with disgust as she watched the screen.

The video played on until the lights went out, capturing Trent’s final sneer: *“Nobody's coming to rescue you.”*

When the lights came back on in the courtroom, ADA Ramirez turned to the jury. She didn't say a single word. She simply gestured toward the screen, then toward me, sitting in the front row with my hand resting gently on my child.

It took the jury less than forty-five minutes to deliberate.

When they filed back in, nobody looked at Trent. In criminal trials, when the jury doesn't look at the defendant, the verdict is already written in stone.

“On count one, Attempted Premeditated Murder, how do you find the defendant, Trent Vance?”

“Guilty,” the foreperson stated clearly.

“On count two, Aggravated Domestic Battery with a Deadly Weapon?”

“Guilty.”

“On count three, Cruelty to an Unborn Child Resulting in Great Bodily Harm?”

“Guilty.”

On and on it went. Helen Vance was found guilty on all counts of aiding, abetting, and criminal solicitation. Nicole Vance was convicted of felony accomplice to battery, reckless endangerment, and illegal transmission of non-consensual violent imagery.

When the final verdict was read, Helen let out a ragged, screeching wail, collapsing into her chair. Trent simply stared at the mahogany desk, his soul completely hollowed out.

Judge Harris wasted no time. She looked down from the bench, her glasses perched on the bridge of her nose, her eyes cold as winter ice.

“In my thirty-two years on this bench,” Judge Harris said, her voice trembling with righteous fury, “I have rarely witnessed such depravity, such sheer, monstrous arrogance. You three treated a vulnerable human life—and the innocent child she carried—with less dignity than one would afford a feral dog. You believed your wealth and your social standing placed you beyond the reach of human decency and the law.”

She looked directly at Trent.

“Trent Vance, for the crime of attempted premeditated murder, you are sentenced to twenty-five years in the state penitentiary. For the crime of aggravated battery on an unborn child, you are sentenced to an additional ten years, to be served consecutively. You will serve thirty-five years before you are eligible to breathe free air. Remand him.”

She turned to Helen.

“Helen Vance, for your active participation and encouragement of this atrocity, you are sentenced to fifteen years in state custody.”

And finally, to Nicole.

“Nicole Vance, for your callous, sadistic exploitation of this crime for online amusement, you are sentenced to seven years in the state correctional facility.”

The gavel slammed down with the finality of a tombstone.