“You beast! How dare you think of this? Tasha fought with her family to be with you and gave you everything! And this is how you repay her? Disgusting! Looking at these happy memories, doesn’t your conscience hurt? When she was screaming for help, were you still thinking about this? Do you deserve anything?!”
Insults filled the courtroom and people threw rotten eggs and vegetables at me again.
The bailiffs moved in again to control the crowd, but people looked ready to break through, their angry shouts ringing in my ears.
Vincent kicked me hard and I crashed to the floor. My knee slammed into the tiles, the pain almost numb.
“Erickson!” he shouted coldly. “You still dare to remember these things? You have no right!”
Lying on the ground with blurred vision, I saw my in-laws. My mother-in-law collapsed into her husband’s arms, crying, while he held her with shaking hands and looked at me as if I were a monster.
“If Tasha knew what you were really like, she’d rather die than marry you!”
The memory continued. It was the day we took our wedding photos. Tasha, in her wedding dress, spun on the lawn with her arm linked through mine.
“Enough!” Vincent shouted, grabbing the metal connector on my head. “Turn off the machine! I won’t let him remember any of this!”
The technician rushed to stop him. “Captain Newton, no! If you interrupt it now, it will cause permanent brain damage!”
“Brain damage? He deserves it! Why should he enjoy these happy memories now? Tasha has been in the ICU for five years and he’s here thinking about the good times. Isn’t that ridiculous?!”
The shouting grew louder. Some yelled for me to die, others called me selfish and cold-blooded.
I lay on the ground with blood at my lips, but those memories kept replaying in my mind. The memories that once kept me going were now the sharpest knives hurting me.
“You don’t understand! You don’t understand at all!”
“Don’t understand? What’s there not to understand!” Vincent grabbed my hair and smashed my face into the floor.
“We know you hid in the study while your wife was attacked! We know you protected the killer for five years! We know Tasha is still unconscious! What else do you have to say?” My forehead hit the floor, blood blurring my vision.