He was beyond sick of being glared at from afar, whispered about, buy those who didn’t know anything … because she’d never told them everything. The truth was that, in her desperation for attention, her clawing need to have revenge for what she’d called down upon herself, she overplayed her hand. There was a reason he’d never been indicted, and it was patent. The lies she’d fed to the power-deranged cop, whom she’d manipulated as she did all, plying tears of a helpless child, were unsupported by evidence, and the Ges”copo” had overcharged him. The prosecutor knew it. The rat-faced Assistant DA, chomping at the bit to make her mark as a defender of women, even lying ones, would have indicted him immediately if she were able. Instead, she was stuck breaking the law herself, trying to force an overzealous, overreaching plea by wielding illegal threats of retaliation. No, almost no one in that system knew the law, or, if they did, they thought themselves above it, substituting their own personal quests for it. But they didn’t have it, the proof, and she hadn’t given them anything but claims, most of which she’d invented, as if she’d looked up exactly what to say to frame a charge or been told what to say. 

But the thing that ate at his guts, besides the insane depth of duplicity she had employed the entire time and her refusal to ever admit it, was that her idiot friends just believed her. They were the glarers, the whisperers. They still, years later, coddled her like an infant, having no idea what had actually happened. He had all the evidence … all of it … and it did not play out in her favor. In reality, she’d lucked out, but she was too arrogant and stupid to realize it. See, if he had been indicted, all of it would have come out, and she would have found herself in deep kimchi. But they hadn’t had enough, so, not only did they have to give him a way out, but they sat on the charges against her. They didn’t dismiss them … because they couldn’t. Her friends couldn’t comprehend the significance there. The DA couldn’t dismiss the charges because, unlike with most of her claims, his were backed by evidence. So they sat on them instead, and, once they figured they were safe, they downgraded them. 

And that is really what her friends didn’t understand. She would be a convicted felon now … if he hadn’t let her go. He had the evidence. And she knew she was not innocent, which is why she would never admit anything. He had been unable, per the law, from filing perjury charges, and the Ges”copo” would never have done it, being totally snowed by her. But, if he had pressed the charges in the lower court, it would have all come out, and she would have been left slack-jawed with no way to deny it. Felonies. Multiple. The things she never told her friends. And she would have been sent back up with those multiple charges she couldn’t defend. 

He’d, basically, lived 12 Monkeys with her, with her believing herself wholly sane and painting him as deranged, when he was the only honest man she’d likely ever known. She’d never put two and two together, and the plot never got to the point where she realized who he’d really been. But she, and they, her enablers, were smug and uncaring. She could bask in her perceived victory, but the truth was that she possessed a black, dysfunctional heart, was a pathological liar, was guaranteed to choose exactly what she had tried to turn him into, and, so, hadn’t won a damn thing. She would get her just deserts, and they would be self-inflicted, all for being a petty, judgmental snob.