She asked. Gerald has it. Has anyone challenged the chain of custody on the physical evidence? Emily, has anyone looked at whether the badge logs match your actual work schedule? Emily, he stopped her.
I don't want you involved in this. A silence. Dad, she said, and the word landed the same way it always did, like something warm placed carefully into a cold room. I've been involved in this since the day you found me. Everything I am traces back to you making one decision on a rainy night in Phoenix.
There is no version of the situation where I am not involved. He didn't have an answer for that. He never did when she spoke like that. He just said, "I don't want this to cost you anything." "I'm a lawyer," Emily said.
Let me do my job. The afternoon session was worse. The prosecution called a former colleague of Marcus' named Dennis Hartley, a man Marcus had worked beside for 3 years at Meridian Technologies without ever quite trusting. Dennis was the kind of person who smiled at you and then looked slightly away from your eyes. The kind of person who remembered your weaknesses and filed them somewhere for later.
Dennis testified that Marcus had complained about being passed over for a project lead position, that he had made comments about the company's leadership being unfair, that he had on at least two occasions expressed what Dennis described as frustration with how people with his background were treated. Reigns let that phrase settle. "And what did you understand that to mean?" He asked. Dennis shrugged a careful, calculated shrug.
I took it to mean he felt like his past was being held against him. His hell's angel's history that he couldn't move up no matter what he did. Did he seem angry about that? He seemed Dennis pretended to search for the word, resigned like someone who had decided the rules didn't apply to him because the rules had never been fair to him. Marcus felt Gerald's hand pressed briefly against his arm beneath the table.
Don't react. He didn't react, but something went tight in his chest and stayed tight because Dennis Hartley wasn't entirely lying. Marcus had said those things. He had felt those things. He had spent three years at Meridian doing solid work and watching someone like Ryan Mitchell, younger, smoother with no past worth mentioning, collect the promotions and the project assignments in the quiet handshakes after meetings that meant your future was bright.
He had said to Dennis once after a particularly pointless team meeting where Ryan had taken credit for a troubleshooting solution Marcus had developed. People like me don't win these games. We're not supposed to. He hadn't meant it as a threat. He had meant it as a tired man talking to someone he mistakenly believed was a friend.
Now that sentence was sitting in a courtroom being shaped into something it wasn't. Gerald rose for a cross examination. Mr. Hartley, in your 3 years working with Marcus Walker, did you ever see him do anything dishonest? Not directly, Dennis said. Did he ever threaten anyone?
Not openly. Did he ever in your presence discuss stealing company data? No, but thank you, Mr. Hartley. But people don't always say what they're planning. Thank you, Gerald repeated firmly.
Reigns didn't bother with redirect. He didn't need to. The damage was already done in the way Dennis's eyebrows had moved and the way three jurors had nodded slightly, and the way the word resigned still floated in the air like smoke. Court recessed at 4:45. Marcus was escorted to a private conference room to meet with Gerald, and he sat down in a chair that was slightly too small for him and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.
"How bad was today?" He asked. Gerald set his briefcase on the table and exhaled slowly through his nose. "I want to be honest with you, please." Hartley was effective, not because he said anything provably true, but because he added texture.
A jury doesn't always convict on facts. They convict on narrative. And Reigns is building a very clean narrative. Bitterman with a violent past feels the system cheated him decides to take what he thinks he's owed. That's not who I am.
I know that. Then how do we show them? Gerald was quiet for a moment. He straightened a pen on the table that didn't need straightening. We need character witnesses who can speak to who you became, not who you were.
We need something that breaks the story Reigns is building. Marcus looked at the ceiling. He thought about Emily's voice on the phone. I'm a lawyer. Let me do my job.
What if someone filed to join the defense team? Marcus asked. Depends on who and in what capacity. Someone withstanding. A licensed attorney.
He paused. Someone who knows me better than anyone. Gerald studied him. Your daughter. It wasn't a question.
Marcus nodded. She's an attorney. She passed the bar four years ago. Family law mostly, but she's sharp. She's the kind of person who finds things that other people don't think to look for.
Gerald was quiet for a long moment. I won't lie to you. It's unusual. It creates a perception issue. The prosecution will argue she has emotional bias.