Page 79 of His Orders

I am Ivy Dawson, and I’m ready to speak.

32

IVY

It has been thirty-eight days since Daniel Holt was arrested.

In that time, the world has shifted beneath my feet in slow, seismic ways. There is a new rhythm to life now, a strange balance between recovery and anticipation. Ethan and I move through the days like two people building something carefully from the ashes, each of us choosing each other again in the smallest, quietest ways. His hand on the small of my back when we walk. The tea he brings me without asking. The way he stands behind me, steady as stone, as I learn how to breathe without flinching.

But today, the rhythm breaks because today, I take the stand.

The courthouse rises in front of us like an old stone fortress, proud and tired and humming with ghosts. Inside, everything smells like cold marble and paper, like time caught in the seams of chairs too stiff and air too dry. My heels click against the polished floors, each step a whisper of defiance. I wear black. Simple. Strong. My hair is pinned back, my hands calm even when my stomach trembles beneath the soft curve of my dress.The baby shifts once, slow and steady, like she knows. Like she understands that today is not just mine. It is hers too.

The courtroom is full when we walk in.

People line the benches, press against the walls, whisper into cupped hands. Press. Activists. Families. Women I have never met and may never see again, all watching with a kind of hunger that makes my skin tighten. But I don’t let it show. I keep my chin high. Ethan is beside me, his presence like gravity. Cassie sits a row back, fingers laced tightly in her lap, her jaw set like stone.

And across the room, Daniel.

He wears a gray suit, tailored and sharp, as if it could disguise the rot beneath. His hair is too neat. His smile, when he sees me, is all teeth. A performance. He sits between two of the best defense attorneys in the state, their table littered with legal pads and sleek black binders. He looks untouchable. But I know better now.

The judge enters, a woman with silver hair and a voice that cuts like bone. The room rises, then settles into breathless stillness. The prosecution begins. Statements. Evidence. A timeline built from ledgers and surveillance, from phone records and financial transfers, from testimony given under oath by women whose names I now carry like secrets in my chest. There are charts. Diagrams. A slide deck that flickers like firelight against the far wall.

Daniel’s lawyers counter. They are good. Calculated. Charismatic. They paint him as misunderstood, assertive but not cruel. They call the women confused. They use words like "unstable", "emotional", "regretful". They wave their hands likemagicians, conjuring doubt from shadows. And for a moment, I feel it again—the ache of disbelief, the fear that truth might not be enough.

Then the prosecutor calls my name.

I rise.

Every eye turns. Every breath holds. I walk to the stand, each step its own quiet reckoning. The bailiff swears me in. I speak my name, my age, my profession. I place my hand on my belly for just a second as I sit.

The questions begin. They are clear and measured, perfectly designed to build a bridge.

"Ms. Dawson, how do you know the defendant?"

"We dated. Off and on for three years."

"Can you describe the nature of that relationship?"

I don’t tell them everything at once. I let it unfold the way it did for me. Slowly. With charm first.

“He was brilliant. Charismatic. The kind of man who could walk into a room and leave with every pair of eyes following him. I wasn’t the first woman to fall for him. But I thought I’d be the last.”

A few jurors shift. I catch one woman folding her hands tighter.

“In the beginning, it wasn’t obvious. He didn’t raise his voice. He wasn’t the type to throw plates. He just made himself the center of everything—my time, my attention, my decisions. He made it seem like love.”

I glance at the defense table, then return my gaze forward.

“He didn’t like when I wore certain things. He said they were distracting. Said they invited the wrong kind of attention. He told me not to talk about my job around his friends because it made me sound too ambitious. And when I pushed back, he’d go quiet for hours. Sometimes days.”

The judge nods, as if she’s heard these stories before.

“The first time he hit me, I thought it was an accident.”

I let the words settle before I go on.

“He’d been drinking. He was angry because I answered a message from a male coworker during dinner. He knocked the phone out of my hand. And when I tried to pick it up, he kicked it across the room and shoved me into the kitchen wall. Not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough to make me stay still.”

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