Brandon's POV
I had never understood why people said courtrooms were intimidating.
Until I sat in one.
The room wasn't loud.
It wasn't chaotic.
It wasn't anything like the crime shows on television where lawyers shouted objections every five seconds and judges slammed gavels dramatically.
This room was quiet.
Painfully quiet.
The kind of quiet that made every cough, every shuffle of paper, every breath feel important.
I sat beside Seth in the second row while Dad occupied the seat on my other side. None of us spoke.
We hadn't spoken much since morning.
The silence between us felt heavy, deliberate, as though words had become dangerous things. We sat there wrapped in the illusion of composure, each of us pretending we were strong enough to survive whatever waited beyond those courtroom doors.
The truth was far uglier.
We were barely holding ourselves together.
Seth looked different.
Not physically.
Something deeper had shifted.
