The Lawyer’s Lie Chapter 13

The Lawyer’s Lie Chapter 13

Julian lowered his head. Then his face went even paler, his pupils shrinking as he snatched the phone away.

On the screen was a video from the psychiatric facility. Clara had been shocked with electricity, strapped to a

bed, and stabbed with needles.

In the final shot, she was curled in a pool of blood, trembling all over, her lips quivering as she clutched her stomach. She looked as if she were trying to say something.

Her lips seemed to form the words, “My baby…”

The video ended, and Julian did not move.

His eyes were still fixed on the screen, but his pupils had gone completely unfocused.

Those images were like needles, stabbing into his eyes, his mind, and his heart.

Then a sharp, metallic sweetness surged up his throat.

With a wet cough, blood sprayed across the phone screen.

“Mr. Grant!” his assistant screamed, rushing to support him.

Outside, reporters and furious onlookers had already surrounded the car. Rotten eggs and lettuce slammed

against the windows with dull, heavy thuds.

“Julian Grant! You bent the law for personal reasons!”

“Lawyers like you are all rotten!”

“Clear Noah’s name! Give Clara Bennett justice!”

The shouting crashed over him like a tide. Julian clutched his chest and stared through the egg-smeared

window at the furious faces outside.

Suddenly, he remembered the day the appeal verdict had been handed down.

When Clara returned to the apartment, that pile of filthy clothes had been on the floor. So this was what she

had seen that day.

She had carried the agony of Noah being sentenced to death, the abuse and attacks from strangers, and the

inhuman torture she had suffered inside that facility.

And he had seen none of it. He had been blind to everything.

Julian closed his eyes, and another mouthful of blood spilled out.

“Mr. Grant! Mr. Grant!” His assistant’s voice grew farther and farther away.

Then Julian collapsed.

When he woke again, his hospital room was packed with people.

Partners from his firm, former classmates, acquaintances from D.C.’s legal and political circles, and even Mr.

Warren were there.

The old man sat beside the bed, his face livid.

“You’re awake?” Mr. Warren had always been stern, and his voice was ice-cold. “Then explain this to me. What the hell happened?”

Julian looked at him. His lips moved, but no sound came out.

“When you came to me, you told me Wendy was your only protégée. You said she had been assaulted, and

you asked me to help her fight this case.”

Mr. Warren stared at him. “I asked you if the evidence was solid. You said it was. You said you had looked

into everything. So I believed you.”

He paused, and his voice turned even colder.

“And what happened? It was a false accusation. Your protégée framed an innocent man, and I helped send

him to prison with my own hands.”

Julian closed his eyes.

“Do you know what people online have dug up now?” Mr. Warren threw his phone in front of him. “All of Wendy’s evidence was fake. She bribed judges and correctional officers. Noah was tortured in prison by her people for three whole months. And your wife…”

Mr. Warren looked at him, then suddenly let out a sigh.

“I truly regret it.”

“After you married Clara, she came to see me every year.”

“Every Christmas, she wrote me letters. I never agreed to see her, and she never got upset. Those letters were so long. She wrote about how much you respected me, how you saw me as a father.”

“She said it did not matter if I never accepted her, but she did not want you to become estranged from me,

your mentor, because of her.”

The old man took a stack of letters from his pocket and placed them beside the bed.

“Five years. I never answered a single one. I never saw her once.”

“And now, I am even more ashamed to face her.”

Julian stared at those letters, frozen in place.

He remembered how Clara used to ask him every Christmas, “Should we go see Mr. Warren? I’ll come with

you.”

He would always say, “No. He doesn’t want to see me.”

Then she would smile and say, “Then I’ll go see him for you.”

He had thought she was only saying it casually. He had thought she only cared about her brother.

He had thought she did not understand him, did not care about what he felt, and would never put him first in

her heart.

But for him, she had done everything.

And what had he done? He had helped Wendy destroy the person Clara loved most.

The hospital room fell into dead silence. Seeing Julian’s pale face and tightly furrowed brow, Mr. Warren

could not bring himself to say more. In the end, he left.