(POV: Justice Ray Kensworth Sr.)
23:00 GMT | Belgravia – Kensworth Residence
My shoes struck the Carrara marble.
The leather heels echoed softly, like a gavel tapping in a courtroom with no witnesses. In this house, silence isn't peace—it's a code of honor.
There is nothing more expensive than a secret buried without a sound.
I took off my jacket, slowly.
Not from heat, but because the weight of the office felt like evidence I couldn't peel off my back.
I—Justice Ray Kensworth Sr., Chief Justice of the Common Court—tonight stood as a witness who no longer believed in the law he made.
Eleanor sat in the reading room.
She wasn't reading.
She watched the gas fire as if weighing the credibility of an argument. Orange light danced in her eyes, but there was no life there—only calculations of public opinion.
"I've prepared the press release," she said, voice level as statutory text.
"We'll use the narrative: spiritual retreat due to legal burnout. It's credible enough to divert the media."
I only nodded.
Every conversation between us sounded like a briefing for a case that never closes.
"You signed everything," I said. "You understand the legal implications."
"The implication," she replied without looking over, "is keeping this family name immune from precedents of disgrace. Raymond isn't missing. He's a liability to be ring-fenced from the core asset."
I drew a long breath.
Her sentence was like a clause: sharp, lawful, inhuman.
We both knew—this wasn't a talk between parents. It was a negotiation between two parties securing reputation.
"I read the investigator's report," I said. "Raymond depended on alprazolam. That's not an attack; it's impeccable legal evidence."
Eleanor gave a short, dry laugh—the kind a lawyer makes after winning a case on gray morality.
"In our circle, everyone uses something. That's not weakness, Ray. It's a compliance strategy."
"No," I said quietly. "It's loss of control. And I didn't teach him to lose control."
She stood, meeting my gaze with the poise of a barrister ready to corner a witness.
"You taught him rules, not life.
He taught you the result—guilt without jurisprudence."
Her voice was soft but cutting; each word a statute stripping me bare.
"You loved him through legal clauses," she went on, "and he paid you back with emotional contempt of court."
I fell silent.
It wasn't a sentence. It was a verdict.
And I, Chief Justice, had just lost in my own house.
I turned away.
On the wall hung a photo of little Raymond Jr. in a mini robe for Halloween. His smile was wide, but his eyes didn't face the camera—as if awaiting approval from a bench that never convened in his childhood.
My hand touched the frame.
Cold, like holding a case file I should close and never can.
"Wilson lost a child," I whispered. "Sato lost financial control.
But I… I still have evidence."
"Evidence?" Eleanor arched an eyebrow.
"Ray, this isn't a courtroom."
"No," I answered softly. "It's the last court: conscience."
She smiled—cold.
"And who presides this time? You, or your guilt?"
I didn't answer.
I opened the desk drawer. Inside, a metal flash drive glinted in the firelight. Illegal, but silent. I drew it out as if entering an exhibit in chambers.
Label: Exhibit R.
The campus CCTV that went missing.
The last fifteen seconds before Josh jumped.
Eleanor watched from a distance, her eyes still cold—like a juror who knows the verdict but waits for the spectacle.
"You really want to see that?"
"I don't want to," I said. "I must."
I held the flash drive tight. The metal was cold, but real. It felt like gripping guilt given the shape of law.
"I'm not looking for truth, Raymond," I whispered to my son's photo.
"I'm looking for a legal basis… to forgive why I let you become a monster."
Eleanor looked at me—truly looked, this time.
In her gaze was not grief, not love—perhaps fear that the laws we built were turning back to bite us.
I sat in my chair.
Its leather embraced me with professional chill. I'd always thought this seat was where I thought; it is only a mute witness where a man slowly decays while upholding the law.
My hands trembled around the drive.
A small thing, heavy as every court I've ever convened. I clicked it into the laptop. The sound was as clean as unsealing evidence in chambers. And then everything changed.
Blue light from the screen devoured the room.
The fire dimmed, surrendering without a sound. The antique clock ticked on—the rhythm of law advancing even after morality has stopped.
I looked at the screen.
Black.
Buffering.
Silence.
Then—my son's silhouette appeared.
"Show me, son," I whispered.
"Show me what kind of justice you inherited from me."
But when the word left my mouth, my lips shook.
Justice snagged in my throat, turning into something rawer: unstructured grief. My chest tightened—not from sorrow, but from the shock that I still had a heart.
My hand pressed the desk.
Nails bit into the wood, leaving marks. I tried to hold my breath; my lungs betrayed me. The sound that escaped was unfamiliar—hoarse, strangled, broken. A sob never trained to exit with elegance.
"Ray?"
The voice came from behind.
Eleanor stood in the doorway, still in her suit, one shirt button undone—fatigue or worry, I couldn't tell. The screen's light washed my face, making me look like a defendant in my own court.
She paused a few seconds.
Her steps moved closer, cautious, as if approaching a wounded animal.
"Ray…
What are you seeing?"
I didn't answer.
I just raised a hand and pointed at the screen, where Raymond Jr. now stood—black shirt, calm face, a thin smile that did not belong to a human.
Tears fell.
One, two, then many.
I don't remember the last time I cried.
Perhaps never.
And now my body didn't know how to do it with grace. The tears came on their own, ragged, shameful, true.
Eleanor watched me for a long time.
In our life there are only two categories: victory or defeat. Tonight she saw something beyond both—ruin.
"Ray…" her voice shook, no longer cold. "Stop. Turn the video off."
"No," I said softly. "I need to see the evidence. I need to know… how much truth he inherited from me."
My sob turned into a brief laugh that snapped mid-breath.
"I taught him justice, El… and he mastered silence instead."
"He handed down verdicts with cleaner hands than mine."
I looked at the screen.
There, the image of Raymond Jr. smiled faintly, then raised his hand as if taking an oath of office.
And through the beads of tears blurring my sight, I knew:
It wasn't an oath to a nation.
It was an oath to himself.
"You taught me well, Father."
I repeated it, voice wrecked.
"You taught me well… Father."
I bowed my head.
Tears fell onto the keyboard, sounding like rain on case files. Blue light pooled in the drops—forming two faces: mine and my son's.
Two judges without mercy.
At last, Eleanor's hand found my shoulder.
Cold, but not clasping—like someone unsure whether she was touching a person or the rubble.
"Ray… he is still your son."
"No," I said. "He's my most mistaken clause."
The screen shuddered.
The final frame held Raymond Jr.'s eyes, staring straight into the camera—into me.
Then darkness.
I dropped to my knees.
Not from weakness.
But because my knees refused to bear an ego too heavy to stand before evidence.
Eleanor watched wordlessly.
And for the first time in my career, there was no appellate room for tears.
FADE OUT.
The flash drive's click blended with the antique clock's tick.
Blue dimmed to black.
Only one sentence remained in my mind—whispered, yet ringing like the last gavel in a world that has lost its conscience:
"We don't raise children in this house… we manufacture verdicts."
—To be Continued—