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.
