Chapter 50 Vivica
Vivica
The raid turned up nothing. I found that out from Gerald, who found that out from his contact at the Bureau, who confirmed that federal agents spent hours combing through my son’s casino and offices, but walked out with empty hands and full embarrassment.
They searched the offices, the storage rooms, the counting area.
Every single drawer and cabinet and safe.
Nothing. Not a single document, not a dollar, not a grain of anything that shouldn’t have been there.
Which was impossible. I knew what moved through those buildings.
I knew what rode in those trucks. I’d approved the permits myself when I was mayor and looked the other direction when the product didn’t match the manifests.
There was no version of reality where Banks Reserve and that casino were clean.
None. Unless someone tipped them off before the warrants were served.
That thought sat with me for three days and it burned worse than the prison food ever did. The only person who knew about it was Farah, but she hated them, so she would never help them.
I poured myself a glass of Pinot Noir and sat in my living room surrounded by a house that felt bigger and emptier every night.
The brownstone used to be full of noise.
Meetings in the dining room, phone calls in the study, staff coming in and out prepping for events and press conferences.
Now it was just me and the dust and the grandfather clock in the hallway ticking like it was counting down to something I couldn’t see.
The PR campaign was going nowhere. My publicist, a woman I’d hired the day after my release, had spent three weeks pitching my comeback story to every outlet in the city and the response was consistently the same.
Not interested. The Washington Post didn’t want an interview.
WUSA9 passed on a sit-down. Even the smaller outlets, the blogs and the podcasts that would’ve tripped over themselves to book me two years ago, weren’t biting.
I was radioactive. The affair with India, the text messages, the murder charge even though it was dismissed.
The stain wouldn’t wash out no matter how much bleach my publicist poured on it.
And the silence from my family was deafening.
Dante hadn’t returned my calls since the trial.
Serenity was done with me, that much she’d made clear to my face.
And my sons, the ones who’d hugged me on the courthouse steps and told me they missed me, hadn’t reached out once since that day.
Not a call, not a text, not even a courtesy check-in to see if their mother was adjusting to life outside.
That performance at the courthouse was starting to feel less like a reunion and more like a goodbye I hadn’t recognized in the moment.
But I was free. That was the bottom line.
Whatever else was falling apart, I was sleeping in my own bed, drinking my own wine, and planning my next move without a guard watching me do it.
The city might not want me back today but cities have short memories and long problems and eventually they’d remember that nobody solved their problems better than I did.
I finished the wine around eleven and went upstairs to wash my face and get ready for bed.
The house was dark except for the lamp in my bedroom and the nightlight in the hallway bathroom because even grown women who’ve run entire cities don’t love walking through a pitch-black house alone at night.
I changed into my silk pajamas, the ones I’d missed most in prison because you don’t realize how much you value good fabric against your skin until you’ve spent months in cotton that felt like sandpaper.
I pulled my bonnet on, turned off the bathroom light, and walked back toward my bedroom.
He was sitting in the chair by the window.
I knew it was Quest before my eyes fully adjusted because a mother knows her children’s scent.
I could smell him from across the room and because the shape of him in that chair, legs crossed, posture relaxed, was unmistakable even in the dark.
My heart slammed into my ribs and my hand reached for the light switch but his voice stopped me.
“Leave it off.”
Quest
She was standing in the doorway in silk pajamas and a bonnet looking at me like she was trying to figure out if this was a dream or a threat. It was neither. It was an ending. She just didn’t know it yet.
“How did you get in my house?” Her voice came out steady because this woman could be standing in the middle of a hurricane and still sound like she was chairing a city council meeting. I respected that about her even now. Even tonight.
“Your security system is the same one you had before you went in. You should’ve updated it.”
“I’ll make a note.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “So what is this? You came to threaten me? Scare me into behaving? Because I’ve been scared by better men than you, baby, and it didn’t take.”
“I came to talk. No courtrooms, no glass, no cameras. Just me and you in the dark.”
“Fine. Talk.”
“You sent the feds to my businesses.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You had Gerald file warrants to raid Banks Reserve.”
Her chin lifted slightly. “I was wrongfully imprisoned, Quest. By my own sons. You framed me for a murder that didn’t happen and destroyed everything I built.
My career, my reputation, my freedom. And now you want me to sit in this house and be grateful?
For what? For molding you into who you are!
You would be nothing if it weren’t for my strict upbringing. ”
I laughed because the shit was funny. She really believed the bullshit that came out of her mouth. I was tired of hearing it. I was tired of her hurting the family. I was tired of fighting it. Prime tried to punish her by sitting her in prison but it had to end.
I never even full confronted her about the Rashid shit. What kind of shit was that? She should’ve told me years ago.
“You were a terrible mother.” I wasn’t angry when I said it.
I was tired. Tired of wanting something from this woman that she was never going to give me.
“You were smart and strategic and you built things most people couldn’t dream of.
But you were a terrible mother. And the worst part is you spent your whole life convincing yourself you were a great one. ”
The clock in the hallway filled the silence between us. The home creaked and settled around us.
”Maybe I was,” she said. And for about half a second something honest moved across her face.
Something that might’ve been regret if she was capable of it.
“But I made you who you are. Every hard lesson, every cold shoulder, every time I pushed you out of the nest before you were ready. You run that company because of me. You’re the most powerful man in this city because I built you that way. ”
“You’re right. You did build me.” I stood up from the chair. “You built me into somebody who could do what I’m about to do.”
I watched it register on her face. Even in the dark I could see the shift, the arms uncrossing, the step backward, the mouth opening to say something that would save her because that’s what she’d done her entire life.
Talked her way out of consequences. Manipulated her way around every wall that anyone ever tried to put in front of her.
She was about to do it again. Find the right words, hit the right nerve, make me hesitate long enough to reconsider.
I crossed the room and put my hands on both sides of her face.
For half a second it probably looked like something gentle.
A son holding his mother’s face to tell her he loved her one last time.
She looked up at me and I could see her eyes searching mine for the version of Quest who still wanted his mama’s approval, the little boy she’d raised and molded and controlled for thirty-eight years.
He wasn’t there anymore.
I twisted. The sound was small and final. She dropped to the floor in her silk pajamas and her bonnet with her eyes still open and whatever last words she had planned still sitting on her tongue.
I crouched down and closed her eyes because I couldn’t stand looking in them.
They had always been so empty. Then I stood there for a minute looking at the woman who gave me life and lied about it and controlled everything around her until the control became indistinguishable from cruelty.
I waited to feel something. Anything. Grief or guilt or satisfaction or rage or a sadness deep enough to make me sit down on the floor and not get up for a while.
What came instead was quiet. Just a stillness that filled up my chest where the anger used to live. Like the storm had finally passed and what was left wasn’t sunshine or wreckage. It was just air. Clean, empty, still.
I spent the next hour making it look like what the city would need it to look like. A note in her study, the front door unlocked from inside, the security footage handled. When I was done, there was nothing left in that house that said anyone besides Vivica had been there tonight.
I left through the back, got in my car two blocks over, and drove home to my pregnant fiancée without looking back.