Deliverance (Lucious/Cookie, Anika/Malcolm)

Chapter Five: Don't Leave Me This Way

Summary: "You can't have your husband, so I can't have mine, either?" Hell hath no fury like a Lyoness scorned...unless it's up against the wife of a SEAL.  

Note: MDC stands for Manhattan Detention Center.

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"Aggravated assault. Eight years. Good behavior gets him out in five."

"No charges. No years. He gets out today."

"C'mon, Annalise!" District Attorney Raquel Alvarez had had it up to here with this obnoxious Philadelphia attorney, who seemed to have had her New York bar card reactivated just to aggravate her. "Lucious Lyon has been lying in a coma for the past six weeks-"

"So what?" Annalise scoffed. "It's not my client's fault that Cookie Lyon doesn't know when to say when."

"Wow." Alvarez's eyebrows shot skyward. "You really put the a-s-s in 'classy,' Keating. This is a hell of a deal. If Lucious Lyon dies, I'm upping the charge to murder. He pleads down to manslaughter if he's lucky."

"If you'd stop using Google to find things to charge my client with, maybe I'd be more concerned." Assault in the first degree was a ridiculous enough charge, but once Alvarez offered to plead Malcolm down to attempted involuntary manslaughter – a crime that didn't even exist – Annalise knew she was dealing with a lightweight. "Look," Annalise said. "I'm sick of Lucious's wife all over my TV with her grieving widow bullshit while a real hero is rotting in solitary confinement at Rikers."

"He stabbed an inmate, Annalise," Alvarez reminded her.

"To save his life, Raquel." Annalise yanked out the incident report from Rikers Island and threw it across the table. "Even the guards said that kid would've died if my client hadn't drained that abscess in his thigh."

"With a shiv, Annalise? I could charge him on that alone."

"But you won't," Annalise predicted with a shrug. "DeVeaux should've never been there in the first place because he was never a flight risk. That was your doing, wasn't it, Alvarez? The overcharging, the denial of bail, indefinite solitary...all of this is your doing. If I didn't know better, I'd think Malcolm DeVeaux nearly killed your husband."

"If he wasn't a flight risk, then why did his wife leave the country?" Alvarez countered, side-stepping Annalise's insinuations.

Annalise laughed. "You're going to penalize my client because his pregnant wife went back to her native country? Something she had every right to do?"

"Nobody told your client to mouth off to the judge during the bail hearing." After about 10 minutes of hearing what a menace to society he was - dialogue was that undoubtedly coached by Thirsty Rawlings - Malcolm cut the judge off and told her to get on with it. The judge was kind enough to tack on a contempt of court charge before she dropped the bomb: no bail. Anika had screamed and fainted at the time, but according to the press, Malcolm didn't move a muscle, didn't as much as glance back at his wife as they took him away. "Why would Mr. DeVeaux's wife run if she didn't have anything to hide?"

"Well, let's see." Annalise flipped through her files once again, retrieving a thick stack of papers. "Here are some of the kinder things being said about my client's pregnant wife on social media. Lessee...bitch, we're gonna rape you til you have your baby and then we're gonna kill it and you...Betta not catch that ho in the street or else I'ma put all my bullets in her chest...I'm gonna cut that bitch's stomach open and stomp her baby...pictures of her house, her family's house, her phone number, her car." Annalise mused for a second. "It's kind of strange how they go after Mr. DeVeaux's wife and not Mr. DeVeaux, isn't it?" Both women paused to reflect on Annalise's statement, and then it was back to business.