Serenity
Of all the people Justice could’ve sent, he sent him.
The guard walked me to the visitation room and when the door opened, Xander Wall was sitting at the metal table in a navy suit with a leather briefcase and a fresh lineup.
I wanted to turn around and walk right back to my cell because there was absolutely no version of this reunion that I was prepared for.
I was wearing a county-issued jumpsuit that made me look like an orange traffic cone with a belly.
My edges were nonexistent. My skin was dry.
And the man I’d had a crush on since I was nineteen years old was sitting three feet away from me looking like he’d just stepped off a magazine cover.
Life had a sick sense of humor.
I’d known Xander since forever. He was Justice’s boy from Hampton, always around during holidays, cookouts, and those late-night card games at Quest’s penthouse where the brothers would drink too much Banks Reserve and argue about sports.
Xander was always there. Tall, quiet, smart in a way that made you pay attention when he talked because he didn’t waste words.
His warm honey skin was clear and he sported a Caesar cut with deep onyx tinted waves.
A full beard adorned his face and he had the most piercing eyes I’ve ever seen.
Whenever he looked at me, my panties would flood.
He had this calm energy, steady and warm. He smiled with his whole face and I used to find excuses to be in whatever room he was in, even though he never looked at me as anything more than Justice’s little sister.
Because that’s all I was. Justice’s little sister.
Off limits. Untouchable. Xander respected my brother too much to ever cross that line and I respected myself too much to throw myself at a man who wasn’t reaching.
Besides, I always had an on-and-off-again thing with Julian before we finally got married.
So I crushed from a distance and eventually life got loud enough to drown it out.
Julian, drugs, rehab, Mega, the pregnancy, Vivica.
There wasn’t room for a crush when your world was on fire.
But here he was. And here I was. And the fire was still burning, just in a different building.
“Serenity.” He stood up when I walked in. Xander had manners that most men didn’t bother with anymore. He looked at my belly first, then my face, and something flickered behind his eyes that he covered quickly with professionalism. “Sit down. How are you feeling?”
“Like I’m eight months pregnant in a jail cell in Connecticut. So, amazing.” I lowered myself into the chair across from him and my back screamed at me because that cot was doing permanent damage to my spine. “I appreciate you coming, Xander. I know this is last minute.”
“Don’t do that. You know I’m here for you.
Justice called and I was on a flight that night.
There was no hesitation.” He opened his briefcase, pulled out a legal pad and a pen.
The warmth in his face shifted into something sharper.
Lawyer mode. “I’ve been looking into your case since I landed.
Let me tell you what we’re working with. ”
I nodded and folded my hands over my belly and braced myself because whatever was coming next was going to make this situation more real than it already was.
“They found a body buried in the woods about forty-five minutes outside of Hartford. It’s nothing but bones at this point, been in the ground for over a decade. Buried with it was a phone and a wallet belonging to a David Jamison.”
Hearing his name out loud, spoken by someone who wasn’t me, in a room with fluorescent lights and a guard outside the door, made my stomach drop.
David Jamison. The man who was supposed to be my teacher.
The man who groomed me, touched me, got me pregnant at fifteen, then looked me in the face and said I got what I wanted from you.
The man I put a kitchen knife into because my body decided it was done being a victim before my brain caught up to the decision.
I didn’t flinch. I kept my hands on my belly and I looked at Xander and I waited.
“The phone had text messages on it. After all this time the data was still recoverable, which is unusual but it happens. The texts indicate that you were the last person in contact with him before he disappeared.”
“Okay.”
“That’s what they have, Serenity. Texts and a body. It’s circumstantial. There’s no DNA linking you to the burial site, no murder weapon, no witnesses. This is a cold case that’s been sitting in a file for twelve years and it got reopened because somebody called in an anonymous tip.”
“An anonymous tip saying what?”
Xander paused. Set his pen down. Looked at me directly.
“The tip alleged that you have a biological child fathered by David Jamison. The prosecution is going to want to test the child’s DNA to establish paternity.
If they can prove Jamison fathered your child, it gives them motive.
A sexual relationship between a teacher and a student that resulted in a pregnancy and potentially in his murder. ”
My whole body went cold. I could feel the baby shifting inside me, responding to the tension that was flooding through my blood.
I thought of my other child, the one I had no choice but to give up.
She didn’t know about me, and David and I wanted to keep it that way.
Her life that had nothing to do with any of this.
They wanted to drag her into it. They wanted to test her blood and stamp her with a dead man’s name and rewrite her entire existence to build a case against me. I couldn’t let that happen.
“She’s his,” I said quietly. “The child is his. I gave her up for adoption when she was born. She lives with a family in Silver Spring and she’s happy and she doesn’t know I exist. I don’t want her dragged into this.
I don’t want her knowing who I am, or who he was, or what happened.
She deserves to stay exactly where she is. ”
Xander was quiet for a moment. Not judging.
Processing. I could see him recalculating the case with this new information, running legal scenarios behind those brown eyes.
“We can fight the DNA request. There are privacy protections for adopted minors that make compelled testing difficult. It’s not impossible for them to get it, but I can make it hard enough that it buys us time.
The bigger issue is where the tip came from. ”
“It came from my mother.”
He blinked. “Vivica?”
“She’s dead, but she set this up before she died.
She was the only person besides my father who knew about the pregnancy and the adoption.
She’s the only one who would have had enough details to lead the police to that body.
” I paused because what I was about to say next was going to change how Xander saw this case entirely.
“She’s also the one who helped me bury him. ”
Xander’s pen stopped moving. He looked up at me and his lawyer face cracked for just a second, just long enough for me to see the man underneath it.
The Xander who used to bring sweet potato pie to Rita’s house on Thanksgiving and play spades with my brothers until two in the morning.
The Xander who once told me I looked fine at Justice’s birthday party and then immediately changed the subject like the compliment had escaped against his will.
“You need to talk to my father,” I said. “Dante Oldsman. He was there that night. He helped. He knows what happened and he knows what Vivica did. If anybody can corroborate the truth, it’s him.”
I hesitated before saying the rest because sending Xander to Dante was a gamble.
Dante wasn’t family anymore. He was Vivica’s ex-husband who’d been working with Mega before Mega caught two bullets from my own gun.
Dante was complicated. But he was also the only person alive who knew what happened in that cabin.
“I’ll find him,” Xander said. “I’ll talk to him.”
He wrote something on his legal pad and then set the pen down again and I knew what was coming because the air in the room changed.
His posture shifted. His eyes got softer but more direct at the same time and I recognized that look because I’d seen it on Justice’s face a hundred times.
It was the look someone gives you when they need the truth and they’re giving you the courtesy of asking instead of assuming.
“Serenity. Did you kill David Jamison?”Was it you, or was it Vivica?
That’s what he meant.The room got very quiet.
I could hear the fluorescent light buzzing above us, the guard shifting his weight outside the door, my own heartbeat pulsing in my ears.
I looked down at my hands on my belly. At the baby who was growing inside me and who would one day ask me questions about my past and I would have to decide how much truth she could carry.
I didn’t answer.
Xander watched me not answer and something settled in his face.
An understanding. A decision. He picked his pen back up and said, “You have a bail hearing on Monday. No priors, no flight risk, and the evidence is thin. You should be able to come home on bail while we build the defense. I’m going to make that happen. ”
“I cannot have this baby in this place, Xander. I need to be home.”
“You won’t. I promise you that. On Monday morning, I’m getting you out of here.”
He started packing up his briefcase and I watched his hands. Long fingers, clean nails, no ring. I caught myself and looked away because this was not the time. This was absolutely, categorically, not the time to be noticing Xander Wall’s hands while sitting in a county jumpsuit charged with murder.
He stood up and buttoned his jacket and looked at me one more time. “Try to rest. And don’t talk to anybody about your case. Not the guards, not the other women, nobody. Everything goes through me from now on.”
“I know the drill. I’m a Banks.”
He almost smiled at that. Almost. “Yeah. You are.”
He knocked on the door and the guard let him out.
I sat there alone in the visitation room with my hands on my belly, the ghost of his cologne still hanging in the air.
When I was nineteen I used to daydream about Xander Wall asking me out.
Taking me somewhere nice. Looking at me across a table with candlelight between us instead of a metal surface bolted to the floor.
Funny how life works. The man I’d been wanting to notice me for years finally showed up, and it took a murder charge to make it happen.
I stood up slowly. The guard walked me back to my cell.
I sat down on that terrible cot, stared at the ceiling, and tried to rest like Xander told me to.
But my mind wouldn’t stop running. Because if Vivica planted the anonymous tip about my daughter, what else did she plant?
What other secrets did she leave behind like landmines waiting for the wrong foot to step on them?
She’d spent her whole life collecting leverage on everyone she loved.
I was just the first detonation. There could be more coming.
For Quest. For Justice. For Prime. For Rita.
My mother was dead and buried and she was still the most dangerous person in this family.