Chapter 31
Killian
I sat in the conference room waiting for Kennedy to be brought in.
It had been two weeks since Alayah was released from the hospital.
She seemed to be in and out of a depressed state.
The meds the psychiatrist had prescribed hadn’t fully kicked in yet, so she was mostly moody.
Mr. Easton had given her time off work to recover since she couldn’t do much with her hands.
That alone had her frustrated. She cried often, and when she wasn’t crying, she was sleeping.
With sleep came the nightmares. The first one she had in bed with me scared the hell out of me. She woke up screaming and confused.
“No…no, stop! Please!”
“Alayah…Alayah, baby, wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”
I tried to shake her awake, and she woke up screaming and swinging. I wasn’t quick enough with my movements, and she manage to get me in the jaw.
“Shit!”
“Killian? I’m so sorry. I’m sorry.”
She broke into a fit of tears. I moved my mouth to make sure nothing was dislocated, and it wasn’t. It just hurt like a bitch.
“Don’t cry,” I said, pulling her into my arms.
“I hate being like this,” she wailed. “I don’t want to keep hurting you.”
“I think you need to talk to somebody, baby.”
She nodded as she pulled away from me. She tossed back the covers and got out of bed.
“Where are you going?”
“To my room. I just…I think I need to sleep alone for a little bit.”
“Layah…Layah, wait.”
She ignored me as she left the room.
Since that night, she’d been sleeping in her room. That didn’t stop me from waking up when she screamed. I always ran to check on her. Usually, the door was locked. She said she didn’t want me to see her like that. I felt like she was reverting to who she was when we first got back in contact.
Knowing those tapes still existed was really doing a number on her.
She’d agreed to talking to someone and had set up virtual meetings with a psychiatrist. I hoped that it would help.
Honestly, she probably should have been seeing someone all along.
As much as she wanted to live normally, her circumstances weren’t normal at all.
Erica and I had sat in her office going through them.
They were hard to stomach, but we had to get a timeline of the dates from the timestamps.
It didn’t help that we could hear everything.
I couldn’t get the sound of Rodney grunting and Alayah’s whimpers out of my head.
After we finished going through them, I’d gone to the bathroom and thrown up because I was disgusted.
With this evidence, the case Erica and I had been working on would be foolproof. We’d already filed an appeal of Alayah’s conviction with the new evidence presented. I was sure it would take some time, but given everything we provided, there was no way we would be rejected.
The sound of Erica’s voice broke my thoughts.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Yeah. Just in deep thought. I still can’t believe this shit, Erica.”
“I know, but justice will be served.”
The door to the small room opened, and I looked up to see Kennedy walking in with a sour look. Her attorney walked in behind her and took a seat. Kennedy sat, and the guard handcuffed her to the table before leaving the room.
“The fuck are you doing here?” she spat.
“We have a matter to discuss, Ms. Chambers,” Erica said. “I’m sure your attorney has had time to go over the additional pending charges you have.”
Kennedy ignored her as she glared at me glaring at her.
“Don’t I know you?” she asked, squinting at me.
“Alayah and I studied together at your home when we were in high school.”
She smirked. “Yeah, that’s right. You were always sniffing around her like you wanted something. Did you get it?”
I cleared my throat as I reached into my briefcase. “I’m not here to discuss my prior relationship with your daughter.”
“Then how about we discuss the current one. You fucking her?”
“Kennedy,” her lawyer said firmly. “This is a serious matter. I was trying to tell you—”
Erica interrupted her. “Wait. You haven’t briefed her?”
“She wouldn’t let me talk.”
Erica shook her head. “Ms. Chambers, you’re in deep shit. I just wanted to give you a heads-up that we will be filing additional charges against you for obstruction of justice and possession of child pornography.”
“The hell are you talking about?” Kennedy yelled.
“The tapes, Ms. Chambers,” Erica said calmly. “You know, the ones hidden under the floorboards in your closet?”
Kennedy’s eyes widened slightly, but she quickly pulled it together. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Erica pulled a piece of paper from her own briefcase and slid it across the table.
“Really? Because this right here is from forensics. Along with Mr. West, they pulled your fingerprints off several of those DVDs.”
“Again, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Her lawyer turned to her. “Kennedy, you need to come clean if you knew about this. Lying on that stand is only going to make matters worse.”
Kennedy’s head jerked in her direction. “You need to do your fucking job. They can’t stick me with this!”
“On the contrary, we can.” I pulled out the thumb drive and my laptop.
“You see, Ms. Chambers, when you have knowledge of criminal activity, you are just as guilty as the person committing the crime when you don’t report it.
In your case, you knew what Mr. West was doing to your daughter, and you did nothing to stop him. ”
I turned my computer around and pressed play. Her jaw visibly clenched as she watched Rodney assaulting her child. I made sure to turn the volume up so she was forced to listen to it.
“Turn it off,” she said angrily.
I didn’t move. As the video kept playing, she had to listen to Alayah plead for him to stop while he praised her for how good she was. On this particular tape he could be heard telling her how much better she felt than Kennedy herself.
“Turn it off,” she screamed.
This time I stopped the tape.
“How many times have you watched this yourself?” I asked. “You didn’t even flinch when you saw the content.”
“Fuck you.”
“Answer my question: How many times have you watched this? What part of this looks like a seventeen-year-old girl seducing a grown-ass man? You can’t sit here and lie like you did at that trial and say she wanted this. She was begging and pleading for him to stop. She didn’t want this at all.”
“Get out.”
Erica touched my arm. “Killian.”
I ignored her. “You let your boyfriend rape your daughter over and over and over again, and you told yourself she asked for it. You told other people she asked for it. Look at her.” I shoved the computer toward her. “Look at what you allowed to happen.”
“You don’t know anything!”
“The proof is right there.” I tapped the screen. “These tapes were found in your bedroom tucked away beneath a trunk that sat on top of loose floorboards.”
She laughed. “Where is the warrant? You had no right to go through my home. That will never stand up in court.”
It was my turn to laugh. “Here’s the thing about the law, Ms. Chambers. If evidence is turned over voluntarily, I don’t need a warrant. The person who found and turned over these recordings did so of their own free will. They had a conscience. That will stand up in court.”
Her eyes widened as I closed the laptop and placed it back in my briefcase.
“If I can help it, you’re gonna rot in this place—and that’s only if you survive. They aren’t too nice to child abusers here.”
“You can’t prove that I knew what was on those tapes,” Kennedy said.
I shook my head. “We both know you did.”
Erica began packing up. “Just to be on the safe side, I’ve filed a motion to have you take a lie detector test.”
Kennedy turned to her lawyer. “Do something, bitch!”
“There is nothing I can do, Ms. Chambers. The evidence is overwhelming at this point. We just have to go through the motions—”
Kennedy jumped up, causing the table to rattle from the force of her jerking at the handcuffs.
“You’re good for nothing. Get the fuck out of my face. You’re fired!” She turned to me and Erica as we stood to leave. “You are not gonna pin this on me. Do you hear me? Y’all and my whore bitch of a daughter can go to hell!”
Erica shook her head. “We’ll see you in court, Ms. Chambers.”
We left the room with her screaming at our backs. There was silence between us as Erica and I walked out to the parking lot. She stopped just shy of the car and turned to me.
“You almost lost it back there,” she said.
“I know. I apologize.”
She sighed. “It’s over now. We won’t see her again until court. Just don’t lose it in there. I don’t have the kind of pull to get you out of being held in contempt.”
“I promise I’ll keep it together.”
“Good. You headed home?”
“Yeah. I need to check on Alayah.”
“How’s she doing?”
“She’s…there.”
She offered me a sympathetic smile. “Just keep taking care of her. I know things are hard for her right now, but there is light at the end of this dark tunnel. She has to keep her head up. We’re gonna get them.”
I prayed that she was right. Everybody involved in this mess needed to pay, and if I had anything to do with it, they would.
A Week Later…
Today had been the longest day, and all I wanted was to go home, shower, eat, and relax.
I felt like I’d been working around the clock, and my body was tired.
My mind was exhausted. After that meeting with Kennedy, I decided it was best to take a step back from this case.
I was emotionally invested and taking things way to personal… even if it was.
The woman I loved was hurting because of the sorry excuse she had for a mother.
I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t ease her pain.
I couldn’t take it away. Listening to her scream at night broke my heart.
Wiping away her tears only fueled the anger I felt.
This world was already cruel enough. The last thing anybody should have to deal with was the level of cruelty she experienced from her own mother.