Olivia
I watched as Ethan transformed. The easy-going, charming man I had married was still there, but he was overlaid with a new, harder persona. It was the Ethan I had first met, the reckless gambler, the one who made audacious bets and played to win, but this time, his focus was not on a student election. It was on the complete and utter destruction of Michael Connolly.
Our war room shifted its strategy. It was no longer just about building a legal case; it was about dismantling an empire. While I continued to work with the DA's office, preparing Sarah-Jane for her grand jury testimony and corroborating the evidence from the diary, Ethan launched a parallel offensive. He became a general, commanding a small, secret army of his own.
He used his "gray area" contacts to leak damaging information about Connolly's business dealings to a select group of aggressive, independent journalists. Stories began to appear online, not about the criminal case, but about Connolly's shady real estate deals, his exploitation of non-union labor, his environmental violations. They were small cuts, but they were starting to bleed him.
He also used his knowledge of the financial world, the skills he had so long dismissed, to wage a covert economic war. He and Jake identified the publicly traded companies that Connolly secretly controlled through shell corporations. Ethan then used his own money, and the influence of some of his more adventurous friends in the investment world, to short their stock, betting on their failure. It was a high-risk, high-stakes game, a mirror of the bet that had first brought us together.
"We're not just trying to put him in jail," Ethan explained to me one night, his eyes gleaming with a cold, strategic light. "We're trying to bankrupt him. We're going to take away his money, and with it, his power. A king with no kingdom is just a man."
It was brilliant, and it was terrifying. He was fighting fire with fire, using Connolly's own tactics against him. He was operating in a moral gray area that I, as a prosecutor, could never enter. But I knew, with a grim certainty, that it was necessary. We were a team, fighting on two fronts. I was the light, and he was the darkness.
The pressure on Connolly was mounting. His name was being dragged through the mud, his stocks were plummeting, and his powerful friends were starting to distance themselves. He was cornered. And I knew that he would soon lash out.
The grand jury hearing was scheduled for a Friday. Sarah-Jane was set to testify, to give a human voice to the cold, hard data we had extracted from the diary. She was our star witness, the key to the entire case. She had been moved to a secure hotel, under 24/7 police protection. But I knew that Connolly would try something.
On the Thursday before the hearing, I was in my office, going over my questions for Sarah-Jane one last time, when my phone rang. It was an unknown number.
"Is this Assistant District Attorney Chen?" a man's voice asked. It was rough, gravelly.
"Who is this?" I asked, my hand instinctively going to the panic button under my desk.
"Just a messenger," the voice said. "I have a message for you from Mr. Connolly. He wants to propose a deal."
My blood ran cold. "I don't make deals with criminals."
"You'll want to hear this one," the man said. "He knows you have the diary. He knows your witness is ready to talk. He's willing to offer you a trade. The diary, and your witness's silence, in exchange for something you want very much."
"There's nothing he has that I want," I said, my voice laced with a contempt I didn't feel. I was terrified.
"Oh, I think there is," the man said, a cruel chuckle in his voice. "He has your husband. He has Ethan Brooks."
The world tilted on its axis. I gripped the edge of my desk, my knuckles white. "What are you talking about?"
"Your husband has been a very busy man. Making a lot of enemies for Mr. Connolly. It would be a shame if something… unfortunate… were to happen to him. A car accident. A robbery gone wrong. He's made himself a target."
It was a threat. A direct, unambiguous threat against Ethan's life.
"You drop the case," the man said, his voice hard. "You bury the evidence. You make Sarah-Jane disappear. You do this, and your husband gets to live. You don't, and we can't guarantee his safety. You have until tomorrow morning to decide."
The line went dead.
I sat there, my body trembling, the phone still pressed to my ear. They had found my weakness. My one, true weakness. They weren't threatening me. They were threatening him.
I thought about my career, about the years of hard work, about the case of a lifetime. I thought about justice, about my duty as a prosecutor. And then I thought about Ethan's smile, about the safety of his arms, about the life we had built together in our farmhouse sanctuary.
And I knew there was no choice.
I called DA Thompson. "I'm recusing myself," I said, my voice a dead, emotionless monotone. "I can't be on this case anymore."
"Olivia, what's wrong? What happened?"
"I can't say," I whispered, tears streaming down my face. "Just… take me off the case. Please."
I hung up the phone and buried my face in my hands, my body wracked with sobs. I had come so far. We had come so far. We were so close to winning. But I couldn't risk his life. I couldn't.
I had faced down mobsters and murderers. I had stared into the face of evil and not flinched. But the thought of a world without Ethan in it… that was a horror I could not face. I was a prosecutor. I was a fighter. But in that moment, I was just a woman in love with her husband. And I would do anything, sacrifice anything, to keep him safe.
I had surrendered. The war was over. And Michael Connolly had won.