Chapter 8: Justice in the Courtroom
Chapter 8: Justice in the Courtroom
During the preliminary hearings, Patricia, utilizing her expensive legal team, remained incredibly stubborn, desperately trying to blame everyone around her to escape prison. She slandered her elderly mother-in-law as violent and delusional; accused the nurse, Diego, of being a drug-addicted thief seeking revenge for a failed extortion attempt; claimed the guard Tomás and the maid Lupita had conspired to frame her; and finally, aimed her venom at Mariana, stating that the soldier daughter was suffering from PTSD, making her hallucinate and act uncontrollably.
Patricia’s defense attorney stood up and grandly declared that the dog cage was merely a "temporary and necessary security measure," used in a state of emergency to prevent Consuelo from harming herself and others while waiting for medical transport.
Immediately, the calm prosecutor stepped up to the podium and requested that Lupita’s photograph be projected onto the massive screen in the center of the courtroom. The vast hall instantly fell into a dead, heavy silence. All eyes locked onto the cruel image on the screen, then turned to glare at the woman sitting in the defendant's chair. The photograph spoke louder than ten thousand words of defense.
Next, the witnesses took the stand one by one under oath. Diego stood there, the scars from his beatings still visible on his face. Though his voice occasionally trembled from the trauma, his testimony was coherent, clear, and unwavering, exposing the entire process of how Don Arturo was poisoned with sedatives and forced to sign papers.
Lupita, wiping away tears, detailed every day she had to live in terror, threatened by Patricia with termination, withheld wages, and even false police reports of theft if she dared breathe a word of what was happening in the house. Tomás, with the rigid posture of a military veteran, testified that Patricia had explicitly ordered every staff member never to inform Mariana of her father's death, threatening to fire anyone who disobeyed.
After days of intense trial, as the court ordered Mariana to be escorted out of the courtroom to await the jury's deliberation, Patricia, in a fit of desperate, unhinged rage, turned to glare at her stepdaughter. She spat on the floor and hissed venomously:
"Do you think you won, you little brat? Do you think you can take everything back?"
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Mariana stopped walking. She turned calmly, facing the hateful glare of the woman. In her eyes, there was no hatred, no anger, no gloating. There was only profound pity for someone who had entirely lost their humanity.
"No, Patricia. I don't think I won. I just think… my grandmother was lucky enough to survive."
