My husband slapped me so hard he split my lip while I was seven months pregnant, and his mother shoved me into a granite countertop until I collapsed in a pool of blood.

The trial of Carter Vance didn't last three months. It didn't even last three weeks.

With the unedited security footage, the medical records from Walter Reed, and forty-two separate wiretaps obtained from his uncle Richard Vance’s seized office phones, the federal prosecutors built a mountain of evidence so insurmountable that Carter’s public defender begged him to take a plea deal.

"If you go to a jury, Carter, you are looking at life without parole," the defender pleaded in the holding cell on the fourteenth day of the trial. "They have you on audio bragging to your associates about how you were going to 'put the farm girl in her place.' They have your mother on record calling her a parasite. The jury hates you. The country hates you."

Carter sat in the corner of the cell, rocking back and forth. His fingernails were bitten down to the quick, bleeding into his palms.

"I won't plea," Carter whispered, his eyes wide and vacant. "Uncle Richard is going to call the circuit judges. He's going to fix this. It’s a game. It’s all a legal game..."

"Your uncle Richard just signed a plea deal this morning, Carter," the defender said flatly. "He took twenty-five years in federal prison. And part of his deal was testifying against *you*."

Carter froze.

The last pillar of his delusion snapped in half.

Two days later, the jury returned after only forty-five minutes of deliberation.

The courtroom was packed with national media. Television cameras beamed the verdict live to fifteen million viewers across the country.

"On the first count of Attempted Second-Degree Murder," the jury foreperson read, her voice ringing clear through the silence, "we find the defendant, Carter Vance... **Guilty.**"

Carter didn't move.

"On the second count of Aggravated Assault with Serious Bodily Injury on a Protected Person... **Guilty.**"

"On the third count of Deprivation of Civil Rights Resulting in Bodily Harm... **Guilty.**"

"On the fourth count of Tampering with a Witness... **Guilty.**"

Every single count. A total sweep.

Judge Marcus Vance-Greene, desperate to save what little reputation he had left after the judicial review board launched an investigation into his own past rulings, looked down from the bench with zero mercy.

"Carter Vance," the judge declared, his voice booming through the speakers. "You are an embarrassment to the legal profession. You abused your knowledge of the law to terrorize, isolate, and nearly murder your pregnant wife. You showed no remorse. You attempted to use the very justice system you swore to uphold as a weapon of extortion."

The judge leaned forward.

"I sentence you to thirty-two years at United States Penitentiary, Florence High, with no possibility of parole. May God have mercy on your soul, because this court has none."

*BANG.*

The gavel struck the block like a cannon shot.

Carter collapsed into his chair, burying his face in his hands, weeping uncontrollably as the federal marshals grabbed him by the shoulders, clicking the heavy leg irons around his ankles.

I sat in the second row, my father sitting beside me in his full dress uniform.