Belle Bonacieux

The trial (fan fiction for the audition):
Belle was sitting oat the accused's desk.
The trial was over and she was waiting for the sentence.
The tribunal was filled with people, so many journalists or simple curious had come to see how her story would have ended.
She was famous now.
She had never dreamed to be famous, nor she had ever wanted fame in her life, but here she was under the flashes of the paparazzi.
All the newspapers had talked about her.
All the tv programs.
She had seen some of the manazgines: her photo had been photoshopped to give her a menacing look, the look of a psycopath, of a serial killer.
"WOMAN KILLS HUSBAND AND CHILDREN"
"EFFERATE MURDERING IN EVERSTONE STREET"
"MOTHER AND WIFE GOES WILD"
Some journals said she had gone crazy, others ipotized that her husband had a lover and she had found out about it and gone wild, others just said she was a monster.
Nobody believed she could have been innocent.
Everyone believed she had killed John and the children. Actually the younger of the kids, Tibo, was still alive, kept in a room of an hospital, still fighting between life and death. He had been seriously injuried, and now he was in a coma, uanble to wake up.
She had asked to see him, but the court had forbidden her to go.
She had seen John and Rosie instead. Slaughtered like pigs, her little girl's eyes were wide opened in terror and she would have never had the chance to calm down.
Belle had cried all her tears in front of her little body, but the print had said that those were fake tears.
Nobody was with her, probably not even her lawyer.
People were talking in a low voice, waiting for the sentence, and the room was filled with murmurings, then suddenly they stopped as the jury entered the room.
"Members of the jury, have you reached a verdict?"
"Yes, your honor, we have. We judge the accused guilty."
Belle was unable to hear the rest.
She would have gone to jail.
She had been judged guilty.
But she wasn't guilty.
SHE WASN'T GUILTY!
It was just a bad dream, it had to be…
Wake up Belle, wake up now!

Background story:
Belle was born in a small country in the south of France. She was the the third child of Victor Thenardie, the only child from his second marriage. Her father died when she was too young even to remember him and she had grown up with her mother and her two half sibilings (an half brother and a half sister, much older than her that didn't feel too much simpathy around the new wife and her little brat) in her granfather's house, a big, creepy palace for an old, creepy man. She had always been scared of him, he was a sinister man and though she didn't really understand that he was a boss of a big criminal organization, she still felt how dangerous he was, and her mother wasn't able to reassure her.
She had grown up in this palace in the countryside in France, homeschooled, she had spent her whole childhood and puberty with her mother and now and then with some daughter of his granfather's friend.
According to the tradition of her old-fashioned family, she had grown up to be one day a good wife, it meant she had to be quiet and silent, to be able to clean and cook and not in need of too much culture. She actually liked to learn new things, she liked to read and she had read some good romances in secret, but she was a shy, fragile girl and she wanted to be accepted, she wanted to hear that she was a good girl so she rarely disobeied to her family's will.
When she was 18 a young man that had started a business with her granfather her noticed her and asked her in marriage, and her granfather had agreed without even asking her.
John Bonacieux, that was the name of the man, wasn't actually a bad man: he was a bit dull, a bit stupid, but he wasn't a criminal. He had inherited from his father a company that produced wine, and since he was having troubles he had had the bad idea to ask for help to Belle's granfather. But the old man had actually helped him, and at least at the beginning everything had gone as planned.
When Belle had married him, he had solved all the company's problems and he was also earning a good amount of money.
Belle couldn't say she loved him, he was distant and not exactly a prince charming from a fairy tail, but he was kind to her and in the end she was happy to have married him.
But the real happiness came with her first daughter, Rosie. Being a mother was all she wanted to be.
A year later her second son arrived, Tibo. She couldn't be happier.
No matter she was just a housewife that could barely leave her home, she was happy just to have her children.
But a little time after Tibo's birth, the problems began: her granfather start to ask to John to return his favour, but even if John did what he was asked there were always more things to do.
John was getting tired and stressed, and so he decided to leave.
He wasn't trying to escape from the Thenardie, he knew it wasn't possible, but he hoped that putting some distance between them it would have changed things.
They went in England, where they took a new big house in the countryside.
Things got better again, the Thenardie kept in touch but they weren't so oppressive anymore.
Everything was good.
Everything kept being good for almost 4 years.
Then something happened.
Belle never really understood what, but a night, a normal night as thousends of others, after she had put the kids to sleep, she had heard shouting from the living room downstairs: unseen she had spied what was going on and she had seen her husband shouting against her grandfather and her halfbrother, ordering them to leave.
They had done so, but not before to menace him "You made a big mistake tonight".
She had gone to bed before somebody could notice her, but she had stayed really tense for a couple of days.
Then nothing happened, and she even forgot about what she had seen.
Only a few weeks later her granfather and her half brother had come to see her while her husband was away, asking her a request that had made her blood turn into ice
"Your husband has started to become dangerous. Tonight, when he comes back, you will put this poison in his drink. He will go to sleep, and then he'll never wake up, and it will seem just an accident."
When Belle didn't answer, showing her fear, the grandfather pushed her
"You have to decide: are you a Bonacieux, or are you a Thenardie?"
They had left, not waiting for her answer.
She had spent the rest of the day wondering anxiously what to do, in the end that night, when her husband had gone to sleep, she had left home in silence and had headed toward the closest police station.
It was late and only a few men were there, she was scared but she still had found the braveness to tell the whole situation to a policeman.
He had written down a report and then reassured her "Don't worry ma'am, the situation is under control. Tomorrow in the early morning I'll send you a group of policemen, you have nothing to fear."
Belle left, feeling a bit calmer, she went back home, silently opened the door and went upstairs. Everything was as she had left it.
She went upstairs, in her room, she didn't turn on the light cause she didn't want to wake up her husband, she walked toward the bed and helped herself touching the corner of it, but she was surprised to feel a sticky liquid under her hand.
She swallowed and tried to continue, but she realized that something else was wrong: in the dark she could start to see things, and it seemed like the room was a mess. She went back and turned on the light: the room was all upside down, but she didn't even notice that.
On her bed, put one on the other, there were her husband and her children, the matress was soaked with blood, and their bodies were cut open by dozens of cuts. She could see their interiors, and their faces were in shock.
She didn't even found the strength to shout.
She was like a broken doll, unable to move, to think.
It had to be only a nightmare, a bad dream, she had to wake up.
Wake up Belle, wake up now!
In that moment a police car announced by a siren stopped in front of her house.
It all got confused, she wouldn't have been able to reconstruct the months that followed that moment: her arrest, the arrival of an ambulance, the police station, the meeting with her lawyer, with the psychologists, the news that her son was still alive, the journalists, the trial, even the discovery, after a medical exam, that she was pregnant again…
It was all like a nightmare.
Wake up Belle, wake up now!
(more to be revealed)