Bodies

vingt-huit

Milan swallowed thickly.

For some reason just uttering his name caused the energy in the room to shift.

Or maybe that's just how she felt.

Nicoletta looked at Milan over her glasses frames, waiting patiently for Milan to begin. Wiping her sweating palms on her pants, Milan opened her mouth to speak.

"I met Ramses when he was 19. I was 14 at the time. He was best friends with my brother." Milan kept her answers short and sweet. She resisted the urge to reminisce about her brother and kept her face trained solely on the abstract painting of carnations behind Nicoletta's desk.

"I understand," Nicoletta responded slowly, taking a deep breath herself. She then closed the binder she was looking through and stacked her hands on top of it, looking at Milan with a bleak face. "Milan it is to my understanding that you lost your parents to gun violence as well as your brother is very heavily gang affiliated. You lived with your maternal grandparents until their passing and are now without a permanent address."

Milan's jaw dropped infinitesimally. But she didn't protest because it was true. To have her story spat back at her in such a professional manner caught her off guard.

"I want to let you know once more that this trial will not be easy. The city of Chicago has been after Ramses for a very long time and with the evidence they have, they have the power to send him to jail for a very long time. As his only character witness thus far, they will do everything in their power to demoralize you and sell you to the jury as a by product and supporter of gang violence." Nicoletta's spill hung heavily in the air.

"Their questions will be scathing, rude, and contradictory, but you must not bend. As we go through the rest of this case file, I want you to understand that this is not me personally calling your character into question, but a run through of what you may face if we let you take the stand."

Milan saw Valerie looking at her from her peripheral vision, she sort of wanted to back out of everything at this moment, but she didn't come here for nothing. It was worth a shot.

Squaring her shoulders back in her seat, Milan sat up straighter and folded her hands in her lap. "Thank you for letting me know, Nicki. Please continue."

Nicoletta gave a her small smile before reopening her binder and going back to the page she once was on. Her face immediately morphing back into the stoic one that was their before for the first question.

"Details from the night your parents were murdered say that Mr.Young was at the scene of the crime scene. It was even noted that he might have been the one who made your home a target, or could it be that your brother brought the ultimate untimely death of your parents on your household?"

It was like a bazooka gun shot through her chest.

She could imagine Ramses looking at her from his seat as she must maneuver through this question, not incriminate him, and disassociate her brother from the situation. All while the never scabbing wound of the loss of her parents festered from being poked at.

"It was none of their fault that night occurred." Milan stated as calmly as she could although her heart was screaming.

In her head she was transported back to her old child self screaming bloody murder when the windows shattered in her parents's bedroom. The ringing in her ears that seemed to almost burst her brain when she saw them being carried out in gurneys and the distraught cries of her grandmother when she arrived at the police station to pick them up.

She had ran it over in her head a million times since that night, and she had worked through a million times how she could have saved her parents. Who was to blame and how she could get her revenge.