Page 151 of Stolen for Keeps
I’d be damned if I let this courtroom take her from me.
And I only had Dom to make it happen.
He was good. Hell, Dom wasgreat.
But as I sat in that gallery, elbows on my knees, my hands locked tight, I could see it. The jury wasn’t with us.
Dom had just finished cross-examining Maya. Graceful, respectful, and cutting only where he had to. He’d drawn out her truth without letting the prosecution twist it. But still, those jurors shifted in their seats, their arms folded or fingers grazing their mouths. I’d seen that look before. Back when I still sat across boardroom tables instead of defense benches.The look of polite interest and reserved judgment? It was not belief.
Maya held herself strong, her chin high as she left the witness box. But I saw the way her hands trembled slightly under the table, tucked beneath the edge where no one else could see.
She was scared. And I was useless to fix it.
Until Dom stood tall once again.
I knew that posture. That calm, focused confidence he got right before he leveled the battlefield.
“The defense calls Annamaria Belrose.”
I saw Maya cover her mouth, stunned. I was just as shocked. This had never been part of the plan.
The prosecutor was on his feet instantly. “This is absurd, Your Honor. A last-minute witness?—”
“You pulled the exact same trick yesterday,” Dom said coolly. “Fair’s fair.”
Across the courtroom, Annamaria froze. Her skin had gone chalk-white.
Dom continued, “The witness has been properly served. She’s in this courthouse. We ask the court to compel her testimony.”
“No!” Annamaria burst out as her parents tried to shield her.
“Then we’ll file to hold you in contempt,” Dom said.
The judge adjusted his glasses. “Miss Belrose, I suggest you comply.”
Annamaria rose from her seat like someone being walked to her own execution.
Dom allowed the silence to stretch for just long enough. Then he stepped forward. “Miss Belrose, to whom did the necklace legally belong?”
Annamaria straightened in the witness chair. “Me.”
Dom tilted his head. “Unless you were alive during Prohibition, I find that difficult to believe.”
A ripple of laughter swept through the gallery, quickly stifled when the judge struck his gavel. “Order.”
Annamaria doubled down. “Itwasmine.”
Dom walked over to the evidence table and lifted a document. “Let the record reflect this certificate of ownership, retrieved from an archived insurance policy taken out by Eleanor Macintosh, Maya Lucas’s great-grandmother.”
He paused just long enough to let the paper land with a crisp thud on the podium. “This necklace was never yours, Miss Belrose. Not by inheritance. Not by purchase. Not by legal transfer.”
Her voice wobbled. “My family claimed it. It was collateral, payment for a debt Maya’s family owed us.”
Dom stepped forward. “The debt that doesn’t exist. No record, no contract, no acknowledgment, just a family myth used to justify theft. What Maya Lucas did was not burglary. It was reclamation.”
He then turned to the jury. “She was there to retrieve what was rightfully hers.”
Annamaria didn’t speak.
