Serenity
Xander spread three folders across the kitchen table and looked at me and Rita with the face of a man who was about to ask us to trust him with something dangerous.
“The strategy works,” he said. “But only if we can back it up. If your father testifies that Vivica killed David Jamison and that he helped dispose of the body, and if we can produce corroborating evidence of Vivica’s criminal history to establish her as someone capable of that act, the prosecution’s case against you falls apart.
They built everything on text messages and an anonymous tip.
We give them a more compelling suspect who can’t defend herself and a witness who was there that night, and the jury has reasonable doubt before I even finish opening arguments. ”
“And the anonymous tip?” Rita asked from the chair by the window, her cane resting against the armrest.
I listened to him talk and couldn’t help the warm flood of feelings flowing through me.
I needed to shake out of it, though. I was practically disgusting and he would never have me.
Besides, I needed to stay focus on my defense.
This was about me getting out of a serious jam.
I could spend my life in prison, and here I was lusting after this man. I needed to stay focus.
“What kind of proof are we talking about?” I asked.
“Vivica’s dealings. Financial records, communications, anything that paints her as a woman who operated outside the law and was capable of violence or ordering violence.
The more documented her criminal behavior, the easier it is to convince a jury she killed a man who raped her daughter.
Honestly, that narrative almost sells itself.
A powerful woman discovers her child was assaulted by a teacher and takes matters into her own hands?
Half the jury will want to acquit her posthumously. ”
Rita made a sound that might have been a laugh if it had any warmth in it. “Vivica didn’t do a single selfless thing in her entire life. And now we’re going to make her a hero. Lord have mercy.”
“We’re going to make her useful,” Xander corrected. “There’s a difference.”
The buzzer rang at 4:17. I knew because I’d been watching the clock since three o’clock, calculating whether Dante would actually show up or whether he’d find a reason not to, the way he’d found reasons not to show up for most of the important moments of my life.
Piano recitals, graduations, and the times when Vivica was being overbearing and running my life.
Dante Banks had perfected the art of being technically alive while functionally absent.
I buzzed him up and opened the door and waited.
When he stepped off the elevator and walked down the hallway toward me, I noticed he looked older.
Thinner in the face. His suit was pressed but his eyes were tired.
I could see the weight of the phone call I’d made three days ago still sitting on his shoulders.
I’d told him everything. The arrest, the charges, the ankle monitor wrapped around my swollen ankle.
I’d told him I needed him and he’d said he’d come.
That was the most fatherly thing he’d done in years.
He hugged me in the doorway and held on longer than I expected. His arms wrapped around my belly and I felt him adjust when he realized how big I’d gotten, and something in his grip tightened and he pressed his chin against the top of my head and said, “I’m sorry, baby. I’m so sorry.”
“About time.”
That was Rita. With an expression on her face that could have curdled fresh milk. She didn’t move toward him. Didn’t extend a hand or a greeting. Just stood there like a judge who’d already passed sentence and was waiting for the defendant to figure it out.
Dante released me and looked at her. “Rita. Don’t start with me. I just walked in the door.”
“And that’s the problem, isn’t it? You just walked in.
Your daughter has been sitting in this apartment for a couple of weeks with an ankle monitor on her leg and a murder charge on her head and you just walked in.
Where were you last month? Where were you last year?
Where were you when she needed a father instead of a check? ”
“I’m here now.”
“Here now.” Rita repeated it like the words tasted sour. “Here now isn’t good enough, Dante. Here now doesn’t fix twelve years of nothing. You need to fix this.”
He turned back to me and I could see him trying to find something to hold onto, some version of this conversation where he wasn’t immediately on trial. “Serenity, tell me what to do. Whatever you need.”
Rita stepped forward before I could answer.
“Why does she have to tell you? Why does your daughter, who is about drop a baby and facing life in prison, have to instruct you on how to be her father? You created this mess, Dante. You and your trifling, petty, narcissistic wife who shipped her own child off to boarding school because she was too selfish to raise her. Serenity was fourteen years old at Ashford. Fourteen. And you let Vivica send her there because it was easier than fighting for your daughter. And when that monster put his hands on her, where were you? When she called you crying from that cabin, what did you do? You drove up there and buried a body and drove home and went back to your little life and left your child to carry that secret alone for twelve years. You’re nothing but a deadbeat with a paycheck.
You may have money, Dante, but you are a terrible father. ”
Dante’s jaw flexed. He looked at Rita with something building behind his eyes and I saw the moment he decided to swing back.
“You should be one to talk, Rita. Look at how your kids turned out.”
Before another word was spoken, Rita cocked back her hand and slapped Dante so hard a string of drool flew out of his face.
The palm against his face sounded like a gunshot.
His head snapped to the right and he stumbled half a step and by the time he straightened up Rita had already turned her back and was walking toward the living room.
Dante touched his face. His cheek was red and his eyes were wet and he looked at me like I was supposed to say something about what just happened. I didn’t. He earned that.
Xander cleared his throat. “Let’s sit down. All of us. We have a lot to discuss and we don’t have a lot of time to discuss it.”
We sat at the kitchen table. Rita came back from the living room and took the chair at the end, furthest from Dante.
She folded her hands on top of her cane without looking at him.
Xander sat between them like a referee at a fight that had already gone to the cards.
I sat across from my father and watched him rub his jaw and try to collect what was left of his dignity.
“Tell me what I can do,” Dante said quietly. The arrogance was gone. The slap had knocked it out of him or maybe it was the truth in Rita’s words that did the real damage. Either way, the man sitting across from me now was smaller than the one who’d walked in.
“We need you to testify,” I said. “You tell them you were there that night. You tell them Vivica found out what David was doing to me and she handled it. She killed him. You helped her bury the body. She wrote the resignation letter. Everything that happened after he died, you and Vivica did together. I was a fifteen-year-old child who didn’t know any of it until years later. ”
“Serenity…”
“We also need you to help us get proof of Vivica’s other dealings and proof that she sent the resignation letter.
Financial records, communications, anything that shows who she really was.
Xander needs to build a profile of her for the jury.
The more we can prove she was capable of this, the easier the story lands. ”
Dante leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.
I knew that look. It was the same look he’d had my entire childhood when something hard was in front of him and his first instinct was to find the exit.
He was calculating the cost. Testifying meant admitting to accessory after the fact, obstruction, disposal of a body.
It meant prison time. Maybe not a lot, but some.
And some was more than the zero he’d been enjoying while I sat here with a monitor on my ankle.
“I don’t know, Serenity. I don’t know if I want to get that involved. We might be able to find another way to—”
“You are such a bitch-made nigga.” Rita’s voice came from the end of the table like a verdict. She wasn’t yelling. She wasn’t even looking at him. She said it to the wall and it bounced off and hit him anyway.
Dante’s mouth opened and closed. I watched his face cycle through shock and anger and then something that looked a lot like shame, because he knew she was right and there was nowhere to hide from it at this table.
“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said. My voice was calm.
Steady. I didn’t raise it because I didn’t need to.
I pushed my chair back slowly, stood up, and walked down the hallway to the bedroom.
The folder was in the top drawer of the nightstand where I’d put it two days ago.
My mother was meticulous about her leverage.
She documented everything, every transaction, every wire transfer, every handshake that happened in shadows.
And Dante’s name was on more pages than he probably remembered.
I carried the folder back to the kitchen and set it on the table in front of him.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Open it.”
He opened it. I watched his eyes move down the first page and saw the exact moment the color left his face.
Wire transfers to offshore accounts. Shell companies registered in his name that funneled money from city contracts Vivica had approved.
Kickbacks from developers who needed permits expedited.
A paper trail that connected Dante Banks to a federal corruption scheme that spanned most of Vivica’s time in office.
Every dollar documented. Every signature preserved.
Every crime timestamped and cross-referenced with public records that would make an FBI agent weep with joy.
He turned to the second page. The third. His hands were shaking by the fourth.
“What the fuck.”
“Daddy.” I sat back down across from him and folded my hands on the table. “You either help me, or we can write to each other from our respective prison cells. Your choice.”
Rita was smirking at the end of the table. She didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. Her face said everything.
Dante looked at the folder. Looked at me.
Looked at Rita. Looked at Xander, who had the decency to keep his expression neutral even though I could see the gears turning behind his eyes.
Then Dante looked back at the folder and I watched him do the math.
Accessory to covering up the killing of a rapist, with a sympathetic narrative and a good lawyer?
Maybe three to seven years with the possibility of parole.
Federal corruption charges, wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy?
Twenty-five to life. No parole. No sympathy.
No version of that story where he came out looking like anything other than exactly what he was.
The silence lasted a long time. Long enough for me to feel the baby shift inside me. Long enough for Rita’s smirk to soften into something harder and more permanent. Long enough for Xander to pick up his pen and hold it over his notepad, ready to write down whatever came next.
Dante closed the folder. Set both hands flat on the table. Stared at a spot somewhere between me and the wall. When he finally spoke, his voice was hollow. Scraped out. The voice of a man who’d just watched every exit in the room lock at the same time.
“Tell me where to start.”
Rita leaned forward. “Step up and be a father for once. You spent years being pussy whipped and Vivica’s puppet. Grow a pair and help your child.”
He didn’t respond to that. He just sat there with his hands on the table and his eyes on the folder and the look of a man who understood that the next chapter of his life had just been written for him by the two women he’d failed the most.
Xander started talking, outlining the timeline, the testimony structure, the evidence they’d need to compile. His voice was steady and professional and I let it wash over me while I stared at my father’s broken face and tried to name the feeling sitting in my chest.
It wasn’t guilt. It wasn’t satisfaction. It was recognition.
I had just done exactly what my mother would have done. Kept the receipts. Found the leverage. Applied it without flinching and watched a person fold under the weight of their own secrets. Vivica would have been proud of me and that thought made me want to throw up more than the pregnancy ever had.
I put my hand on my belly and felt the baby kick and promised her silently that I would be different. That I would be better. That the cycle of women in this family using love as a weapon and secrets as currency would end with me.
But even as I made the promise, I could feel the folder on the table between us, still warm from my father’s hands, and I knew that promises made in rooms like this had a shelf life that was shorter than anyone wanted to admit.