Chapter 4 Seneca #2
I stayed in the shadow, engine still hot beneath me, watching her silhouette framed against the soft light. I didn’t know what I was hoping to find, only that I couldn’t look away. Jenna Smart, the queen of the courtroom, had just dropped her guard for someone. I had to know who.
The door closed behind her, and the porch light clicked off. I waited a long minute, listening to the steady tick of the bike’s cooling engine, then looked back at the street. No movement, no other cars. Just me and a growing suspicion that whatever game was being played, I was three moves behind.
I made a note of the address, then rode off slow, engine barely louder than the night itself. Tomorrow, I’d come back. I’d see what the next morning brought, and maybe figure out why a defense attorney with everything to lose was sneaking around like she was the one on trial.
I didn’t know if I was watching her for my own sake, or for Bellini’s. All I knew was that someone was about to get hurt, and for the first time in years, I cared enough to want to stop it.
***
The morning after, I made my move early.
I cut the engine and rolled the last block on foot, using the hedges and the stale shadows of upper-middle-class suburbia for cover.
I’d searched for the address and just about shit myself.
The house was quiet with curtains drawn. Jenna's coupe sat in the driveway.
I picked a vantage across the street, half-concealed by a mail drop and an old elm tree, and waited. The sun was just up, burning the dew off the lawns and making the asphalt stink of summer. A jogger passed, then a dog walker, both oblivious to the small drama unfolding behind the tinted glass.
At eight sharp, a figure glided past the living room window.
Not Jenna. This one moved with a different rhythm, hips rolling with a confidence that conveyed authority without arrogance.
I recognized it instantly. Bellini. Even without the robe, even in a soft gray sweater and lounge pants that looked borrowed from a lover, she commanded the space like a judge presiding over her own private trial.
She opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, blinking against the morning glare.
Gone was the severe bun; her hair fell around her shoulders in a tangle that softened the lines of her face.
She looked tired, but not defeated. If anything, she looked more dangerous than ever—like a wolf after a long hunt, blood still wet at the jaw.
My dick pushed against my jeans, and I chuckled.
Fucking the judge who gave me thirty days? Damron would say, “That’s Seneca.”
She leaned against the porch rail and stretched, back arched, face tilted to the sun.
I watched her inhale slowly and deeply, as if storing up oxygen for the day ahead.
She closed her eyes for a moment, and in that instant, the armor dropped.
I saw something raw, something real. A woman who’d fought every inch of her life to be taken seriously, now at peace for the first time in a week.
I’d spent most of the night working on Catherine Bellini’s background and found some pretty interesting stuff.
Bellini was a black sheep. Her record began predictably.
She attended Catholic school, had five older brothers, family restaurants in Yonkers, and a short stint in the state pageant circuit that ended in violent scandal.
But she took a left turn hard and received a law degree at Cornell, clerked with a notorious anti-mob judge, then moved west after a firebomb nearly took out her uncle’s place.
The woman had spent most of her adult life writing op-eds on gender and power in the justice system, the kind of thing that got you on local news if you were lucky and on a hit list if you weren’t.
Her grandfather, one Antonio Bellini, was a legend back east; old Mafia, part of the first generation to go legit, or so they said.
Truth was, the Bellinis just got smarter.
They learned to keep their hands clean while cashing the same checks as ever.
Catherine was supposed to be the outlier, the reformer.
But every photo I found of her in the archives, whether it was a wedding, a graduation, or a funeral, she stood dead center, surrounded by men who all looked like they could snap your neck for a parking spot.
In some of the shots, those men had the same scar I’d seen on her hand, the faint white gleam of an old knife wound.
It didn’t take a genius to see the pattern.
Catherine had never left the family behind.
They’d just given her a different weapon.
The front door opened again. Jenna stepped out, barefoot, hair mussed, holding two mugs of coffee.
She wore nothing but an oversized t-shirt—probably Bellini’s, judging by the way it hung off her frame.
She handed Bellini a mug, then leaned against her, shoulder to shoulder, the gesture easy and practiced.
They stood like that for a long minute, saying nothing. Just two people, alone in the world, finding the one place they could breathe. Bellini glanced down at Jenna and smiled wide. Jenna grinned back and touched Bellini’s face, tracing her cheek with a thumb.
I felt like a voyeur. Or maybe a ghost, watching a life I’d never have. I should have felt angry, or betrayed, or at least vindicated. But all I felt was tired. Tired, and a little jealous that two people could find that kind of peace, even if only for a morning.
They kissed, soft and slow, no spectacle.
Then Bellini looked up, scanning the street with eyes that missed nothing.
For a second, I thought she saw me. Maybe she did.
She didn’t flinch, didn’t signal. She just wrapped an arm around Jenna’s waist and led her back inside. The door closed. The world kept moving.
I walked back to my bike, feeling the morning heat rise through the soles of my boots.
The puzzle pieces fell into place. I now knew why the soft sentencing, the warnings, the way Jenna had fought for me in court like she was defending her own life.
The real story wasn’t in the files or the mugshots.
It was right there, on a porch in the suburbs, hidden behind the oldest trick in the book. Love was like that.
I straddled the bike and started the engine, letting the idle rumble through my bones. It no longer mattered who was playing whom. I knew where the lines were drawn, and I knew which side I was on.