Page 192 of Broken Pieces
They don’t know a goddamn thing about what happened in that alley. Don’t know the soft boy who gave up his bed, so I didn’t have to sleep on the floor. They don’t know that everything he did to them was to protect me.
But I don’t move.
I sit there, fists clenched in my lap, nails biting into skin, teeth grinding down the words building in my throat.
Because I already know the truth.
None of them wants to listen.
Not the people watching with their smug little smirks, or the cops who refused to write my full statement.
When Rainer and I sat down to tell them every fucking detail of what those three assholes did to me, they didn’t ask questions. They looked tired, uninterested, as if they had already decided I was just a kid from the system, causing problems again.
Zane doesn’t seem right sitting there.
He doesn’t seem like the boy who made me laugh until I couldn’t breathe. The one who stood in the kitchen at midnight, making me cheese melts because I couldn’t sleep. The boy who pulled me into his arms and told me he fucking loved me, his voice shaking when he said it.
Now he sits there, shoulders heavy, eyes empty. The spark that always burned in him is gone. It’s as if they had already taken everything from him before the judge even arrived.
Bryce’s old man stands, smooth as ever, as if he’s not a lawyer but the fucking director of this whole mess. He scans the courtroom with a calm detachment, eyes skating over the rows until they land on someone.
I follow his gaze.
And there they are.
The three assholes.
Bryce, Liam, and Connor.
All sitting in the front row, right behind the partition.
Bryce has a metal contraption strapped across his jaw, locking his mouth in place.
Connor has a bandage across his cheekbone, barely clinging to skin that’s not even bleeding.
Liam’s got his arm in a sling, but he’s still using it to scroll on his phone.
It’s a goddamn courtroom performance written and staged to twist the truth into something else.
I shift my eyes back to the man orchestrating it all.
Bryce’s father adjusts his tie, calm as ever, as he leans in close and says something to his son. Then there’s a smug smile that curves across the man’s face, the kind of expression you want to slap off with a crowbar.
Rainer shifts beside me.
“It’s stacked against him,” he mutters. “Poor kid never had a chance. You don’t win against assholes like that. Not when their daddies can buy the ending.”
Cassie’s fingers slip into mine before the words have even finished hanging in the air.
She grips my hand tight. I feel her shaking, but I don’t glance at her.
I can’t. All I can see is Zane.
Sitting there, cuffed and silent, while they script his future from across the aisle.
Someone in the courtroom tells us to stand as the judge enters the room, but it barely registers—another command echoing through the fog in my head.
Everything blurs around the edges.
