6. Amanda
— ? —
Amanda
The morning I walk out of prison, it’s raining.
Gray sky, gray walls, gray jumpsuit I’ll never have to wear again. The rain is cold on my face, and I stand in it for a long moment before I remember that I’m allowed to move now. I’m allowed to go wherever I want.
I’m free.
***
The appeals process took seven months.
Seven months of hearings and depositions and legal arguments I barely understood.
David Okafor’s sworn statement was the crack in the wall - enough to get us a hearing.
At the hearing, two more witnesses came forward.
A teenager who’d been sneaking out that night and saw a woman matching Vivienne’s description running from the crash.
A security guard from a neighboring property whose cameras caught a partial license plate and a timestamp that didn’t match the prosecution’s timeline.
David never had to testify in open court. By the time the hearing was over, the prosecution’s case had collapsed under the weight of contradictory evidence.
The conviction was vacated three days ago. Not overturned - vacated. The difference matters to lawyers, apparently. It means they’re not saying I’m innocent. They’re saying they can’t prove I’m guilty.
I don’t care about the distinction.
I’m out.
That’s all that matters.
***
Roman is waiting at the gate.
He’s leaning against his truck - the same battered black truck from the cemetery, the one that smells like cigarettes and cold air and something underneath that I’ve never been able to name. He’s wearing dark jeans and a leather jacket, and when he sees me, something shifts in his face.
Not quite a smile. Recognition, maybe. Relief.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey yourself.”
I walk toward him. One foot in front of the other. The paper bag in my hand holds everything I own - a wedding ring I’ll never wear again, the silk dress they finally released from evidence, a handful of letters Roman wrote me that I’ve read so many times the paper is soft as cloth.
I stop in front of him. Close enough to touch.
He looks different. Older. There’s a scar on his jaw that wasn’t there before - a thin white line that makes me wonder about the “accident” the guard mentioned. His eyes are the same, though. Dark and intense and looking at me like I’m the only real thing in the world.
“You came,” I say.
“I told you I would.”
“Every week. For twenty-three months.”
“Every week.” His voice is rough. “For the rest of my life, if that’s what it took.”
He opens his arms.
I step into them.
And for the first time in almost two years, I let myself fall apart.
His arms close around me, and I’m shaking - I can’t stop shaking - and his hand is in my hair, my short ugly prison hair, and he’s holding me like I’m something precious, something worth protecting.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs into my temple. “I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
“I’m not safe.” My voice is muffled against his chest. “I’ll never be safe. Not while he’s-”
“I know. We’ll figure it out. But right now, just - let me hold you. Please. I’ve been waiting two years to hold you.”
I let him.
The rain soaks through my clothes. His leather jacket smells like him. I can feel his heart beating against my cheek - steady, strong, alive.
I pull back. Just an inch.
His eyes meet mine. There’s a question in them. The same question that’s been building between us since the cemetery.
Two years in that cell. Two years of replaying every moment, every glance, every almost-something I’d refused to acknowledge.
I’d felt Roman’s eyes on me at every family event, and I’d told myself it was nothing.
Told myself I was imagining things. Told myself a married woman didn’t notice such things.
I noticed.
I just wasn’t brave enough to admit it.
I rise up on my toes. My hand finds the back of his neck. I feel his breath catch, feel his arms tighten around me.
Our lips are a whisper apart.
“Amanda-”
“Not yet.”
The words surprise us both. I feel them leave my mouth before I’ve decided to say them.
His forehead drops to mine. “Okay.”
“I want to. God, Roman, I want to so much it hurts. But I need-” I stop. Try to find the words. “I need to be someone first. Not Julian’s wife. Not Vivienne’s victim. Not the woman who spent two years in prison for something she didn’t do. I need to be me again before I can be anything to you.”
“You don’t have to be anything to me. You just have to exist.”
“That’s not enough. Not for me.” I pull back further, and his hands slide down my arms, reluctant to let go. “I spent two years being Julian’s assistant. Three years being his wife. Two years being his prisoner. I don’t even know who I am outside of what he made me.”
“Then we’ll figure it out. Together.”
“After.”
“After what?”
I look at him. Really look at him. The scar on his jaw. The tension in his shoulders. The dark circles under his eyes from months of fighting a battle he could have walked away from at any time.
He didn’t walk away.
He never walked away.
“I don’t want comfort,” I say. “I don’t want healing. I don’t want to move on and build a new life and pretend the last two years didn’t happen.”
“What do you want?”
The answer comes from somewhere deep inside me. Somewhere cold and hard and new.
“I want them to lose everything.”
Roman is quiet for a long moment.
The rain falls around us. Somewhere in the distance, thunder rumbles.
“Julian has money, power, connections,” he says finally. “Vivienne has him. They’ve been untouchable for two years.”
“They framed me for murder.”
“And they got away with it. The witnesses weren’t enough to charge either of them - just enough to get you out. Officially, the case is still unsolved. Thomas Mercer’s killer is still at large.”
“Then we find proof. Real proof. The kind that can’t be wiped or buried or bought.”
“You want revenge.”
“I want justice.” I meet his eyes. “And if I have to burn everything down to get it, I will.”
Roman studies me.
I wonder what he sees. The woman from the seating chart is gone - the one who laughed at two in the morning, who wore barefoot optimism like armor, who believed hard work and loyalty would be enough.
Prison killed her.
I’m someone else now.
“They’ll see you coming,” Roman says. “The second you surface, Julian will know. He’ll have people watching. He’ll try to bury you again - or worse.”
“Let him try.”
“Amanda-”
“He took everything from me. My marriage. My sister. My freedom. My mother died thinking I was a murderer.” My voice doesn’t shake anymore. I’m past shaking. “I have nothing left to lose. That makes me dangerous.”
Roman is quiet again. Thinking.
Then, slowly, he smiles.
It’s not a nice smile. It’s dark and sharp and a little bit savage, and it makes something twist in my stomach - want and recognition and the thrill of finding someone who understands.
“I’ve been building a case against my brother for fifteen years,” he says - the same words from that gray consultation room, two years ago.
“I have files. Documents. Recordings. Every dirty deal, every buried scandal, every body - metaphorical and otherwise.” His smile widens.
“I’ve been waiting for the right moment to use them. For the right partner.”
“Partner?”
“If you’re going to war with Julian Vance, you’ll need someone who knows the terrain.”
“What do you get out of it?”
“Besides watching my brother lose everything?” Roman steps closer. His hands frame my jaw, tilting my face up toward his. “I get to fight next to you. I get to watch you take back what they stole. I get to be there when you make them pay.”
His thumbs brush across my cheekbones.
“And someday,” he says quietly, “when this is over - when you’ve found yourself again, when you’re ready - I get to kiss you without either of us wondering if it’s the right time.”
I should say no.
I should walk away, disappear, build a quiet life somewhere Julian will never find me.
But the woman who would have done that died in a prison cell, watching the months tick by, knowing her mother would never forgive her for a crime she didn’t commit.
The woman standing here now - the one with short hair and hard eyes and a hollow space where her heart used to be - she doesn’t want to disappear.
She wants to destroy.
“I need to see it,” I say.
“See what?”
“The house. The mansion. I need to see where it happened.”
Roman’s hands drop from my face. His expression shifts - cautious, calculating.
“That’s a risk. Julian might be there.”
“I don’t care.”
“Amanda-”
“Take me back to that house.”
Roman looks at me for a long moment.
Then he nods.
“Get in the truck.”
I get in the truck.
He pulls out of the prison parking lot, and the gates disappear in the rearview mirror. Ahead of us, the road stretches toward the city - toward the mansion, toward Julian, toward Vivienne and her baby and the life they built on top of my grave.
I watch the raindrops race across the window.
“There’s something you should know,” Roman says. “Before we get there.”
“What?”
“Vivienne moved out six months ago. Julian kicked her out right after the appeals started - said she was a liability.”
“Where is she now?”
“Small apartment in the city. No money. No status. Julian cut her off completely.” Roman glances at me. “Turns out mistresses don’t become wives. Not in his world.”
“And the baby?”
“A boy. Sixteen months old now. Julian acknowledges paternity but wants nothing to do with him.”
I wait for satisfaction. For triumph. For some sense of justice.
I feel nothing.
“What’s his name?”
“The baby?” Roman hesitates. “They named him Thomas.”
Thomas.
Like the man she killed.
I laugh. It sounds wrong - broken and sharp and a little bit insane.
“Of course they did.”
The truck turns onto a familiar road. The trees are bare, winter-stripped, but I recognize the curve of the hills, the iron gates in the distance, the shape of the life I used to live.
Roman slows as we approach.
“Last chance,” he says. “We can still turn around. Find a hotel. Plan our next move somewhere safe.”
I look at the mansion rising up ahead. White stone and tall windows and perfectly manicured grounds. The place where I found my husband in bed with my sister. The place where they framed me for murder. The place where two hundred people watched me be escorted out of my own life.
“No,” I say.
“Amanda-”
“I’m done running.” I turn to face him. “I’m done hiding. I’m done being the victim in their story.”
“Then what are you?”
I think about my mother’s face in the courtroom. About Vivienne’s smile as she watched me fall. About Julian’s voice saying you were always temporary.
“The ending,” I say. “I’m the ending they didn’t see coming.”
Roman’s hand finds mine on the seat between us.
“Then let’s go introduce ourselves.”
The gates of the mansion loom ahead, and I don’t look away.