Hate Me Like You Love Me (Serena and Caleb) novel Chapter 87

Caleb’s POV

The worst truths about the people who made you are the ones written in black and white by strangers who don't care what the words cost.

Rachel's document sits on the passenger seat of my car, three pages stapled together with the county seal stamped across the top like an accusation.

I've read it four times since she handed it to me. Fraud. Petty theft. Thirty-seven days in county lockup in a state I didn't even know Simon had visited.

And the detail that changes everything — a parole agreement dated eleven months ago, still active, still binding.

My father is a convicted criminal on supervised release.

The engine idles in the parking lot of Whitfield & Associates, William's legal team, the folder pressed against the steering wheel while I try to make my hands stop shaking.

Not from fear. From the ugly, complicated satisfaction of holding a grenade with my father's name etched into the pin.

This is leverage.

I grab the document and walk inside.

David Whitfield's office smells like old leather and expensive coffee. He's a tall man in his early sixties, silver-haired and sharp-eyed, the kind of lawyer who bills four hundred an hour and earns every cent of it. His associate, a younger woman named

Priya Kaur, sits to his left with a legal pad already balanced on her knee.

"Thank you for coming in on short notice." Whitfield gestures to the chair across from his desk. "You said on the phone this was urgent."

"It is." I set the document in front of him. "Rachel Moreau — she's been helping us track Bennett & Associates' connection to Simon. She pulled his records from the states he lived in after he left us. This is what she found."

Whitfield picks up the pages, his expression professionally blank as he reads. Priya leans in, scanning over his shoulder.

The silence stretches for a full minute before he sets the document down and folds his hands on the desk.

"Fraud, larceny, and a parole violation that was later dismissed." He taps the third page. "Currently serving the remainder of a thirty-six-month supervised parole out of Marion County, Indiana. Is this verified?"

"Rachel pulled it from public records. Court documents, booking records, all of it."

"This is significant, Caleb." Priya speaks up, her dark eyes already moving through the implications faster than her pen can write them.

"If Simon is on active parole, his ability to engage in civil litigation is severely constrained. Most parole agreements include restrictions on legal proceedings that could be interpreted as frivolous or harassing."

"Meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning his contest of the marriage starts looking less like a legitimate legal claim and more like a man violating the spirit of his release conditions."

The word sits in the room like a lit match. Withdraw. Simon, forced to back down. Simon, stripped of the only weapon he has left.

"I understand that." Whitfield's voice softens by a degree. "And I wouldn't ask if the stakes weren't this high. But Simon's attorney is backed by Bennett resources. They're not going to fold because we wave a rap sheet at them. We need the full picture — the criminal history and the domestic violence — to make this case airtight."

Priya answers this one. "We'd prepare her thoroughly. Controlled environment, no surprises, every question rehearsed in advance. We'd file a motion to limit cross-examination on the grounds of emotional distress. It wouldn't be easy, but we'd protect her as much as the process allows."

"As much as the process allows," I repeat, and the words taste like nothing. Like the system promising to be gentle while it forces my mother to relive the worst years of her life under fluorescent lights.

I stare at the document on Whitfield's desk. Three pages. Names, dates, case numbers. The cold, bureaucratic skeleton of my father's failures laid out in a twelve-point font.

None of it captures the real damage — the scar behind my ear, the way I still flinch at raised voices, the years I spent wondering if cruelty was hereditary.

"There's another consideration," Whitfield says carefully. "Your mother's testimony would be powerful, but it may not be sufficient on its own. The defense will argue that her account is biased. She's the ex-wife, the woman who stands to benefit from Simon's credibility being destroyed."

"She's also the woman he beat for six years."

"I know. And a judge should weigh that accordingly." He pauses, and the quality of the silence shifts — heavier, more deliberate, the way air changes pressure before a storm.

"But corroboration from a second witness would make the case nearly unassailable."

I know what's coming before he says it. Can feel it building in the careful architecture of his sentences, each one laying the foundation for the question that will crack me open.

Priya stops writing. Whitfield straightens in his chair.

"Caleb." His voice is direct now, stripped of legal hedging. "Are you willing to testify about what your father did to you as a child?"