Cassian
The second Judge Emory stepped outside the restaurant with us, I knew this wasn’t about to be a pleasant conversation.
Kade looked like he was one inconvenience away from crashing out, Yayo looked like he was trying to figure out whether the judge was worth threatening before or after lunch, and me?
I was still trying to figure out why the hell our mother was sitting across from a married Judge looking cozy enough to make headlines.
The four of us walked down the block until we found a quieter spot away from foot traffic. Emory adjusted his suit jacket and looked between all three of us before letting out a tired breath. “Before y’all start, let me answer the question I know is coming.”
“You mean why you on a lunch date with our mama?” Kade asked without missing a beat.
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Good. Save everybody some time.” Yayo folded his arms. “Because I was definitely finna ask.”
Judge Emory shook his head. “First of all, I am separated. Have been for quite some time. Second, your mother and I have been friends longer than any of y’all have been alive. We went to school together.”
“Friends?” I asked.
“Friends.”
Kade narrowed his eyes. “You expect us to believe you randomly ran into our mama after thirty years and decided to catch up over lunch?”
“I didn’t randomly run into her. I saw her at court during Isaiah and Kayla’s hearing.” His eyes shifted toward Yayo.
“We exchanged numbers afterward and have been talking ever since.”
“Damn.” Yayo scratched his beard. “So old people really do be sliding in DM's.” The judge laughed despite himself.
“Something like that.”
“Well since we got that out the way,” Kade said, his tone becoming noticeably colder, “let’s talk about the reason we actually pulled up.”
The smile disappeared from Emory’s face. “Marius.” The name seemed to settle over all of us like a dark cloud.
“Marius,” Kade repeated. “Because every time we turn around that old nigga got another connection. Another secret. Another person doing favors for him. Now all of a sudden we finding out Chief Elias been tied to him for years.”
The Judge didn’t answer right away, which was answer enough. Yayo noticed it too.
“Oh hell nah.” He laughed humorlessly. “See that’s the look niggas give when they about to tell you some bullshit you don’t wanna hear.”
“It’s not bullshit.”
“Then what is it?” I asked.
Judge Emory rubbed his jaw before looking down the street. “It’s complicated.”
“Complicated?” Kade scoffed.
“The nigga tried to destroy our family. Ain’t shit complicated about that.”
“No.” Emory nodded slowly. “What he did isn’t complicated. Understanding how he was allowed to get away with it for so long is.” That got everybody’s attention. For the first time since we walked outside, nobody interrupted him.
“Marius and Elias go back further than most people realize. Decades further.”
“How far?” I asked.
“Far enough that I’ve known both of them most of my adult life.” The answer didn’t sit right with any of us.
“Then why the hell was Elias covering for him?” Kade pressed.
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m serious.”
Judge Emory met Kade’s stare without flinching. “For years I watched Elias do things that didn’t make sense. Favors. Delayed investigations. Looking the other way when he shouldn’t have. Every time I questioned it, he’d tell me it was being handled.”
“And you believed him?” Yayo asked.
“At first.” The Judge looked genuinely frustrated.
“Then eventually I stopped asking because I realized he wasn’t going to tell me the truth.”
“That don’t explain why.”
“No. It doesn’t.” Silence settled over the group. The kind of silence that only comes when everybody is thinking the same thing. If Emory didn’t know why Elias protected Marius...then what the hell did Elias know? Kade must’ve been thinking the same thing because his expression darkened.
“So what the fuck does any of this have to do with us?” The question hung there for several seconds before Emory answered.
“Because not everything started with Marius. Some of it started with Yuki and Majeston.” Now all three of us were staring. “This started with a secret that several people agreed should’ve stayed buried.”
Yayo threw his hands up. “There y’all go with this secret shit again.”
“I’m serious.”
“So are we.” Kade stepped forward. “Stop talking in riddles and tell us what the fuck is going on.” Emory looked at each of us one by one. For the first time since this conversation started, he didn’t look like a Judge. He looked like a man carrying something heavy.
“The problem isn’t what Marius did.”
“The problem is how many people knew pieces of it and convinced themselves somebody else would stop it.” None of us had a response for that.
Because suddenly this wasn’t sounding like a story about one man.
It was starting to sound like a story about an entire network of people who spent years making choices they regretted.
And all roads seemed to keep leading back to Marius.
As Emory continued talking, my mind drifted somewhere else entirely.
Funny how life worked. One minute you were convinced you had everything figured out, the next you were standing on a sidewalk listening to a judge explain decades of corruption while thinking about a woman who had spent the better part of a year trying to put herself back together.
Maybe that was why I couldn’t bring myself to completely hate everybody involved in all this.
Not Bree. Not Cazmir. Not even Judge Emory.
Because lately I’d learned firsthand how easy it was to judge somebody until you found yourself standing in their shoes, asking for the same grace you refused to give them.
Sera had paid a price for sins that weren’t entirely her own.
After Marius exposed her, everything she’d spent years building collapsed around her almost overnight.
Her parents disowned her. Her mother blamed her for the clinic burning down.
People she’d considered friends disappeared.
Colleagues stopped returning calls. Clients requested transfers.
The reputation she’d worked years to establish was reduced to gossip, headlines, and whispers behind her back.
I watched it happen in real time. I watched her stop eating, stop sleeping, and stop answering her phone.
There were days she barely got out of bed and others where she sat staring at a wall like she was waiting for somebody to wake her up from a nightmare she couldn’t escape.
As much as I hated Marius for what he did to my brothers, what he did to Sera was what made me stop looking at him like a flawed father and start looking at him like a selfish old nigga who only cared about winning.
The worst part was knowing the whole truth—that she wasn’t the mastermind everybody made her out to be, that she’d been manipulated, cornered, blackmailed, and left carrying shame that never fully belonged to her. Yet I never told her.
I told myself it was because she didn’t need to know.
I told myself it wouldn’t change anything.
I told myself digging up old wounds would only hurt her more.
The truth was I was scared. Scared she’d look at herself differently, blame herself even more, and start spiraling all over again after fighting so hard to climb out of that hole.
So I kept my mouth shut and every day that passed made it easier to justify. Especially now.
Lately she’d been smiling again. Working again.
Living again. I’d catch her laughing at something stupid on television or singing while she cooked and find myself staring at her, because for a long time I genuinely thought we’d lost that version of her forever.
The light had come back, not all at once and not dramatically, but little by little and day by day, the same way healing usually happened.
Selfishly, I wasn’t willing to risk that.
What she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. At least that’s what I told myself.
The irony wasn’t lost on me. Bree kept a secret because she thought she was protecting Ysis.
Cazmir kept a secret because he thought he was protecting everybody.
Judge Emory kept secrets because he thought somebody else would eventually handle it.
My father spent a lifetime keeping secrets because he thought he was protecting himself.
And here I was doing the exact same shit.
Funny how everybody always had a reason. A justification. A noble explanation for why they lied. Yet somehow those secrets always ended the same way, with people hurt, trust broken, and somebody standing in the middle wishing they would’ve spoken sooner.
The thought sat heavy on my chest as I listened to Emory continue piecing together fragments of a story that seemed to get uglier the deeper we dug.
In the midst, I found myself wondering if the truth was actually worth it, because every truth we’d uncovered lately seemed to leave destruction in it's wake. Part of me couldn’t help wondering what would happen if Sera ever learned the truth about my father.
What would happen if she found out how much of her pain traced back to a man she never even knew.
More importantly, what would happen if she found out I’d known all along.
“What are y’all not telling us?” Kade finally asked, his patience wearing thin. “Because every answer you give leads to three more questions and I’m about sick of this shit.”
Emory sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose before looking out toward the street. For a moment he seemed to be debating whether he should continue at all.
“You want the truth?” he asked quietly.
“That’s generally how these conversations work.” Yayo deadpanned.