Dynamite (Stacked Deck #10) - Emilia Finn Page 0,3

– much the same way Dad is doing on her other side. “I guess it’s lucky I’m the perfect one.” He looks to me and grins. “Sucks to be you, trashbag.”

“Shut the—Agh!” I swing around and swallow down my cry when Jess grabs my damn ear.

Beautiful, perhaps. But she’s mean.

“Sit down,” she hisses under her breath. “Shut your trap. I have nothing to lose here today. Whether you’re a free man or not, my bill is still gonna be paid.”

“You are a trained fighter.” Judge Abram barely meets my eyes. Rather, she studies her notes with a lifted brow that says she ain’t impressed. “You come from a fighting gym, your father trained world title holders, you were trained by him, and by the title holders. You won your first sanctioned fight when you were…” She flicks over a page and reads aloud, “five years old.”

“I was four,” I whisper to Jess. “I won that ribbon when I was four!”

“Shut. Up.” She smiles for the judge, but pinches my thigh under the table.

“You have a striking lineup of wins, Mr. Hart.” Finally, Abram’s shrewd eyes come to me. “But they do not excite me. When your fans see you, they see your magnanimous smile, your wins, your arrogance. But when I look at you, I see that you believe yourself to be above the law. You consider yourself untouchable, and when you’re fighting, you’re a danger to society.”

“Wait.” She’s not smiling. She’s not impressed at all. “I don’t fight anyone who didn’t ask for it first.”

“Luke!” Jess growls. “Shut up.”

“No, hold up.” I stand, because I guess I wanna be thrown into jail for contempt of court or some shit. “I don’t pick on anyone, ma’am.”

“Ma’am?” The judge’s eyes are like laser beams, cutting my head off. “You will call me ‘Your Honor’,” she declares with venom. “I did not work my entire life to be called ‘ma’am,’ when I am the most powerful person in this room, Mr. Hart. Do you understand?”

“I-I’m sorry,” I stutter out when images of a toilet in the middle of a crowded room flash through my mind. “Your Honor. I didn’t mean to disrespect you or your courtroom. All I’m trying to say is that I don’t pick on people, I’m not a bully. I don’t hurt anyone weaker than me.”

I look across the room to Kora’s boyfriend and his two buddies – all three have neck braces and various ‘broken’ bones. They’re all lying. I beat their asses, I won, but all three of them made their own casts in the science lab at the college.

“I stand up for myself. I don’t let people beat on me. I don’t let people beat on others, either. But I also don’t kick when they’re down. I was trained to end a fight, Your Honor, not to start them. I was trained to neutralize a threat, stop the war, then walk away.”

“Inspiring.” She’s not inspired at all. “Do you want to know what I think, Mr. Hart?”

No. I really don’t think I do.

“I will tell you,” she pushes on. “I think you have anger control issues. I think you consider yourself an exception to the rule, someone who does not have to follow the law.”

I open my mouth to speak. To argue my defense. But the judge lifts a brow and silences me with ease.

“I think that if you took even a moment before today to learn the customs of a courtroom, you’d know it is not your place to address me, but your counsel’s. You’d know not to call me ‘ma’am’. And you’d know that it’s probably best if you wore a tie.”

I look down at my shirt, my jeans. Then I look back to her.

“I think you consider yourself a little bit special, Mr. Hart, and before we release you into society as a full-fledged adult, it is my job to knock you down a peg or two, lest you do real damage.”

She snaps her file closed and folds her hands over the top. “I am ordering twelve one-hour sessions with a therapist who specializes in your brand of arrogance. You are to complete all twelve sessions without missing a single one, and if, at the end, your court-appointed therapist deems you safe for society, then I will waive this six-month sentence in a medium-security facility that currently has your name on it.

“If, however,” she continues when my heart jumps, “you fail to attend a single session, or the court-appointed therapist is concerned that