Page 44 of His Verdict

The other child is a little girl. She’s younger, maybe six. She has a bright, gap-toothed smile, two messy brown pigtails, and a light blue summer dress.

The little girl is me.

The world tilts, the floor falling away beneath me. I stare at the image, my heart pounding a frantic, chaotic rhythm against my ribs. It’s me. I know it is. I remember that dress. My grandmother made it for me. I remember the missing front tooth. I remember those pigtails, which my mother used to wrestle into submission every morning.

But I don’t remember the photo. I don’t remember that day. I don’t remember ever meeting a serious-faced little boy in a tiny suit. My childhood memories are a sun-drenched, uncomplicated reel of middle-class suburban life. It's impossible.

I pick up the phone, my hand shaking. We are looking at the camera, but he is looking slightly at me.

Where was this taken? When? Why is a childhood photo of the two of us the background on his phone?

The implications are terrifying, and incomprehensible. This wasn't random. It was something that started long before I ever walked into that holding cell.

The sound of the shower cuts off. My head whips toward the bathroom door. He’ll be out in a minute. The business with the FBI, the calculated confession I was about to make—it all evaporates from my mind, replaced by this single, monstrous, impossible question.

He walks out of the bathroom, a towel slung low around his hips, steam billowing out behind him. He’s rubbing another towel over his wet hair. He looks up and sees me standing by the bed, his phone in my hand, my face a mask of pale, horrified disbelief.

He stops. The playful, post-shower demeanor he usually has is gone in an instant. His eyes narrow, his expression becoming sharp, guarded. He knows exactly what I’ve seen.

I hold the phone up, my hand trembling so hard I’m surprised I don’t drop it. My voice is a raw, ragged whisper, a sound I don’t recognize as my own.

“What the hell is this, Jasper?”

Chapter 21

The question hangs in the air between us, a raw, open wound. He doesn't move. He just stands there, half-naked and dripping from the shower, the towel slung low on his hips, and watches me with those dark, unreadable eyes. The guarded, sharp look softens into something else, something I've never seen on his face before. A deep, profound, and ancient sadness.

“You don't remember, do you?” he says, his voice a low, rough murmur. It's not a question. It's a statement of a fact that has clearly pained him for a very long time.

I just shake my head, unable to form words. My mind is a frantic, scrambling thing, trying to find a file, a memory, a single scrap of evidence that connects my sunny suburban childhood to this dark, serious-faced boy. There's nothing. Just a blank, terrifying wall.

“I never forgot you,” he continues, his gaze fixed on the phone in my hand, on the image of the two of us frozen in time. “Not for a single day.”

He walks over to the bed and takes the phone gently from my trembling hand. He looks down at the picture, and for a fleeting, unguarded moment, the hardened mask of Jasper Donovan Sinclair slips away, and all I see is the sad, lonely little boy from the photograph.

“That was the day of my mother’s funeral,” he says, his voice quiet, stripped of all its usual power and command. It’s just the voice of a man remembering the worst day of his life.“I was seven. I couldn't… handle it. The people, the crying, the silence. My father… was not a comforting presence. So I ran. I slipped away from my security detail and just ran until I couldn't run anymore. I ended up in a park, behind the old cathedral.”

He looks up from the phone, his eyes meeting mine. “And I found you,” he whispers. “You were there, by the big oak tree, trying to catch ladybugs in a jar. You were just… there. A small, bright thing in a world that had suddenly gone completely dark.”

My mind is reeling, trying to place the memory. A park? A cathedral? I lived two towns over from the city's main cathedral. My grandmother used to take me to the park behind it sometimes. It’s a fuzzy, watercolor memory of sunlight and green grass.

“I don’t remember…” I breathe, the words feeling like a betrayal.

“I know,” he says, a sad, knowing smile touching his lips. “I was a mess. A little boy in a ridiculous suit, crying my eyes out behind a tree. You didn’t run away. You came over and asked me what was wrong. I told you my mom was gone. That she had gone to sleep and wasn’t waking up.” He pauses, his throat working. “You didn't say you were sorry. You didn't give me any of the empty platitudes all the adults had been feeding me. You just… listened. You told me that your hamster, Squeaky, had gone to sleep like that, and that you missed him, and that it was okay to be sad.”

A ghost of a memory, so faint it’s barely there, flickers in the back of my mind. A little boy crying. A blue dress. The smell of cut grass.

“You sat with me for almost an hour,” he continues, his voice a low, hypnotic murmur. “You showed me the ladybugs in your jar. You made me laugh. For a single hour on the worst day of my life, you were the only thing that made sense. You were the only person who helped with the grief.”

He looks down at the photo again. “When my bodyguard finally found me, I didn't want to leave you. I begged him to let you come with us. He wouldn’t, of course. So I made him take a picture. I needed proof that you were real. That that small piece of light in the darkness had actually existed.” He finally looks at me, and his eyes are raw with an ancient, unhealed wound. “I’ve cherished that photograph my entire life, Olivia.”

The pieces are clicking into place with a horrifying, mind-altering clarity. My entire life, this man, this boy, has been a ghost in the background, a silent observer.

“You looked for me,” I state, the words a hollow echo in the room.

He nods. “Once I was older, I had my father’s men find you. It wasn't difficult. A little girl in a blue dress at a park near my mother's funeral. They found your name, your address, your school. And I… kept an eye on you. Over the years.”

He says it so casually.I kept an eye on you.As if it’s the most normal thing in the world. He has been watching me. My whole life. My first kiss, my high school graduation, my decision to go to law school, my disastrous engagement to Marcus. He's seen it all. I have been a character in his story for twenty years, and I never even knew it. The sheer, suffocating scale of his obsession is a violation so profound I can’t even begin to process it.