My Boss's Hidden Heir (Elara and Marcus) novel Chapter 176

Elara’s POV

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Elara had never been inside a courtroom before and she hated everything about it. The wood paneling that was supposed to look dignified but just felt oppressive. The fluorescent lights that made everyone look sickly. The way time moved differently here, each minute stretching into an eternity while simultaneously racing toward a verdict that would determine everything.

She sat in the front row behind the prosecution table with Dante on her left and her mother on her right. Marcus was at the witness stand, his hand raised, swearing to tell the truth.

He looked good. Confident and composed in his dark suit, his jaw set with determination. But Elara could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his fingers gripped the edge of the witness box just a little too tightly.

The prosecutor approached, her heels clicking on the polished floor.

“Mr. Thorne, can you tell the court about your relationship with Catherine Thorne?”

“She was my mother.” Marcus’s voice was steady but Elara heard the emotion underneath. “She raised me, supported me, believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself.”

“Can you describe what kind of person she was?”

Marcus took a breath. “She was kind, generous, she had this terrible singing voice but she’d sing anyway, usually off-key show tunes while she cooked dinner. She taught me to read using comic books because traditional books bored me. She never missed a single one of my soccer games, even the ones where I spent the whole time on the bench.”

Elara watched the jury. A few of them were leaning forward, engaged. Others had their arms crossed, expressions neutral. It was impossible to tell what they were thinking.

“When did you learn about your mother’s death?”

“I was seventeen. Senior year of high school. I got a phone call around midnight from my father. He could barely speak, just kept saying there’d been an accident and I needed to come to the hospital immediately.”

“What happened when you arrived?”

“A doctor told me my mother had been struck by a car while crossing Park Avenue. She died at the scene. They said it was a hit and run, that the driver hadn’t stopped.”

The prosecutor walked over to the evidence table and picked up a photograph. “Is this your mother?”

Marcus looked at the photo and Elara saw his composure crack slightly. “Yes. That’s her.”

“For the record, this is Catherine Thorne six months before her death. Mr. Thorne, how did your mother’s death affect your family?”

“It destroyed us.” Marcus’s voice was rougher now. “My father fell apart. He stopped going to work, stopped eating, barely functioned for months. I had to postpone college to help manage the estate and take care of

17:00 Mon May 11

Her Du faruly was never the same

And the detendam Penelope Thorne When did the enter your life!

Abou en months after my mother died. They started dating and were marned less than a year later

How did you feel about their relationship?”

Marcus looked directly at Penelope for the first time She sat at the defense table perfectly still her espression

unreadabir

“I thought it was too fast. That my father was making decisions out of gnef rather than genuine feeling But i was eighteen years old and didn’t know how to articulate that, so I kept quiet”

The prosecutor asked more questions, walking Marcus through the timeline. When he’d learned about the traffic camera footage When he’d discovered Penelope’s car had been the one that killed his mother. The moment everything had clicked into place

Then came the victim impact statement

Marcus pulled out the folded paper from his jacket pocket His hands were shaking slightly as he unfolded a

“My mother was forty-two years old when she died,” he read “She had plans She wanted to travel to italy learn to paint, watch me graduate from college and get married and have children of her own. She wanted to grow old with my father, to be a grandmother, to see what her life would become beyond those forty two

years

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