Cassian #2
“The truth is Marius survived as long as he did because he spent decades collecting leverage. He didn’t build relationships.
He built insurance policies. Everybody owed him something.
Everybody had something to lose. Politicians.
Businessmen. Judges. Police. The moment somebody got themselves into trouble, Marius somehow found himself standing there with a solution. ”
“And Elias?” I asked. The judge looked directly at me.
“Especially Elias.”
A muscle jumped in Kade’s jaw. “Explain.”
“Years ago Elias got caught up in something that would’ve ended his career, destroyed his marriage, and probably landed his ass in prison. Marius made it disappear.”
“Caught up in what?” Yayo asked.
Judge Emory hesitated. “A fourteen-year-old girl.”
A silence settled over us so heavy it was suffocating. I could physically feel Kade go still beside me.
“What?” he asked, his voice dangerously low.
“You heard me.”
“No.” Kade stepped closer. “Say that shit again.”
Judge Emory held his ground. “Elias was caught with a fourteen-year-old girl. Marius found out before it became public and made the problem disappear.”
“Man get the fuck outta here.” Yayo shook his head in disbelief.
“I wish I could.” My stomach turned. The chief of police. Cazmir’s father. The same man who walked around acting like the moral authority on everything.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Marius happened.”
The judge’s expression darkened. “The girl became pregnant, then out of no where disappeared from the conversation. Witness statements who'd last seen the girl disappeared. Including missing person reports and complaints. By the time it was over, there was nothing left to investigate.”
“Jesus Christ. How is that even possible?” I muttered.
“You should know better than anybody that Marius was King during his early tech days. The man was powerful and developed both influential and beneficial relationships all throughout Memphis. Nothing was out of his reach.”
“That’s why Elias owed him. Not because they were best friends and damn sure not because they liked each other. But because from that point forward, Marius owned a piece of him once he buried that information.” Kade looked ready to put his fist through a wall.
“And that wasn’t the only thing.” Of course it wasn’t. Nothing with Marius was ever simple.
“What else?” I asked. Judge Emory looked directly at me.
“Your mother.” The words hit me like a freight train.
“What about my mother?”
“You spent years believing your mother was murdered.”
“Because we thought she was.”
“That’s what everybody believed.”
“What the fuck does that even mean?”
“It means the woman who died obviously wasn’t your mother.
Marius knew her a hell of a lot better than he let on.
She not only worked for him, they were also romantically involved.
When everything with Masina, Yuki and the Syndicate started closing in around him, and she threatened to go public about their affair, it became one problem too many.
So he did what powerful men in his position always do, and began eliminating the problems one by one. ”
“Elias helped push the narrative that the dead woman was your mother. Death certificates were signed, and identifications were planted and rushed without even so much a second glance. The investigation ended before anyone could even begin to ask the right questions.”
I stared at him, trying to process what the hell I was hearing. “You telling me your Elias helped my father cover up a fake murder?”
“I’m telling you Elias helped him sell one.”
“Why?”
“Because by then they were both trapped. Marius knew enough to destroy Elias. Elias knew enough to destroy Marius. They spent years protecting each other from afar because exposing one meant exposing both.”
Suddenly all the pieces started falling into place. The favors, the disappearing reports, the pressure on the courts, the protected investigations, the unexplained connections. All of it suddenly made sense in a way I wished it didn’t.
“Marius wasn’t surviving because he was smart,” Kade said quietly.
Judge Emory nodded. “He survived because everybody around him was compromised.”
“Then why now?” Yayo asked. “Why break ranks now after all these years?” The judge laughed humorlessly.
“Because there was no saving it anymore.”
“The moment officers started losing their heads and showing up on precinct steps, the game changed. The moment bodies started dropping, internal affairs got involved. The moment Marius became a liability instead of an asset, everybody started looking for an exit.”
I found it ironic how the same man who spent decades manipulating everybody had finally become too dangerous for the people protecting him.
“So all this time, this nigga been sitting at the center of a web.” Kade said slowly.
“Yes.”
“And everybody knew pieces.”
“Yes.”
“And nobody stopped it.”
Judge Emory didn’t answer right away.
“The problem with evil,” he finally said, “is that most people don’t participate in it because they’re evil. They participate because they convince themselves somebody else will stop it.”
For the second time that afternoon, nobody had a response because the deeper we dug into Marius, the less he looked like just one man’s problem and the more he looked like a disease that had infected everybody around him.
For the first time in my life, I found myself wondering whether there was anybody left standing with clean hands.
The weight of everything Judge Emory had just laid at our feet settled over the group like wet cement. Nobody rushed to speak because honestly, what the fuck was there to say? Every answer seemed to uncover three more problems, and every problem somehow traced itself back to Marius.
Kade broke the silence. “So where do you draw the line?”
“Excuse me?” Judge Emory looked up.
“You heard me.” Kade folded his arms across his chest.
“At what point do you decide enough is enough? You know what he did to my mother. You know what he did to your daughter. You know what he's done to half the damn city. So where exactly do you draw the line and decide to be on the side of right?”
The question lingered between us as Judge Emory stared back at Kade without answering. For the first time since we’d sat down with him, he looked every bit his age. Not like a respected judge. Not like a man of authority. Just a tired man carrying decades worth of regrets on his shoulders.
“Nah, real shit. I wanna know too. Because from where I’m standing, everybody keep talking about what Marius did. Everybody keep talking about what Elias did. Everybody keep talking about how trapped they were. Cool. We get it. But at some point being trapped become a choice.” Yayo folded his arms.
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I don’t know what you know.” Yayo shrugged.
“What I do know is two dead officers showed up at a precinct. I know me and Kayla almost got railroaded. I know my sister got dragged through hell. I know Cassian’s girl got destroyed.
I know Kade and Ysis been fighting for peace since the day they met.
So if you asking me, everybody who played a role in that shit got a debt to pay. ”
Kade nodded in agreement. “That includes Elias.”
Judge Emory looked away, seeming conflicted.
“Elias was your best friend,” I chimed in.
“He still is.” His expression softened with something that looked painfully close to grief.
“That’s the problem.” Kade’s voice was calm now, which somehow made it more dangerous. “Everybody keep protecting relationships instead of protecting what’s right.”
The words landed hard because there wasn’t a person standing there who couldn’t think of a time they’d done exactly that. Whether it was family, friends, lovers, or people we simply refused to let go of, every single one of us had made excuses for somebody we cared about at one point or another.
Judge Emory stared down the street for several long moments while cars passed and people moved around us completely unaware of the conversation taking place. The city kept moving like our lives weren’t actively unraveling.
“I’ve known Elias since we were young boys. We’ve been through things together that most people couldn’t imagine. We’ve buried family members together. Celebrated births together. Watched each other’s children grow up. There was a time I would’ve trusted him with my life.”
“But you wouldn’t now,” Kade observed.
“No.” The answer came without hesitation.
“No, I wouldn’t.”
The admission seemed to hurt him more than anything else we’d discussed.
“You wanna know when I drew the line?” he continued. “I drew it when innocent people started paying for the sins of guilty men. I drew it when Sera became collateral damage. I drew it when your families became targets. I drew it when I realized my silence wasn’t protecting anybody anymore.”
“Then stop being silent,” Yayo challenged. Judge Emory looked at each of us individually before finally settling his gaze on Kade.
“You really willing to go to war with all of them?” Kade laughed, not because anything was funny, but because the answer was so obvious it didn’t deserve a serious response.
“You must not know me very well.”
“No. I know you perfectly. That’s why I’m asking.”
“Too late for all that. We crossed that bridge a long time ago.” Yayo smirked. A slow smile spread across Kade’s face.
“One thing about us, Judge. Once we commit to something, we don’t stop until the job done.”
I watched the conflict play across Emory’s face.
Thirty years of friendship battling against thirty years of bad decisions.
Then something altered in him. The hesitation that had been lingering there disappeared, taking the doubt with it.
By the time he straightened his shoulders, he looked every bit the powerful man he’d spent his life becoming.
“Fine.”