Page 58 of Justice

Duke was already at the diner when I got there, tucked into the back booth he always picked, the one with a clear view of both the door and the parking lot. Some habits didn’t leave a person just because the danger did, and my cousin had never fully believed the danger was gone.

“You look…”

“What?” I sneered.

“You got a glow about you. I ain’t seen you look like this in a while…”

He slid a coffee across the table toward me, already fixed the way I liked it, and waited until the waitress walked off before I leaned in and dropped my voice.

“Roman’s here in DC. Aubrey saw him at the Banks casino. Or at least he was. I just don’t… I know what’s going on. I need help. I gotta get out of here.”

“Slow down, Cuz.” Duke was tall and lanky, reminding me of Snoop Dogg or Nipsey Hustle. Despite his height he was never athletic and didn’t have a lick of muscle to him. But he still stayed protected in the hood. So much so, he was never bothered. He was one of my few family members who made it out of the hood and became a professional.

At a very young age, he had an interest in all things technology. He would buy defunct computers and rebuild them. He would create personalized software and video games. Eventually he got into computer security and programming. His talents landed him some off the record contracts with criminals. And he was my ticket out of here. He was the reason I had a cleanish background check under this fake alias.

“I can’t slow down. He’ll find me.”

“Listen, I ain’t trying to gaslight you but I doubt he’s coming for you. He’s done the worst possible thing he can to you.”

“You don’t know him like I do. He is a narcissistic sociopath. When I decided to leave him, he went scorched earth. He will never stop torturing me. NEVER!” The fear strained my throat.

I’ve seen so many bitches get online and talk about how their exes were narcs. But most of them weren’t. True narcissistic personality disorder was rare. And my ex-husband had it, along with sociopathy. He was not capable of empathy. Evil was his blood-type.

In my job as a defense lawyer, I had met my share of cluster-B personalities. NPD, antisocial, borderline, you name it, I’d sat across an interview table from all of them. I knew the hallmarks cold. And my husband was that to a T. He was so smart and so charming about it that I didn’t clock what I was looking at until it was already too late. That’s the thing nobody tells you about a man like Roman. By the time you meet him, it’s already too late.

The love bombing came first. Three weeks in and he was already telling me I was the only woman who’d ever understood him, that his exes had all been crazy and jealous. He proposed in month four. I felt chosen. Special.

Then came the charm that only worked in public. Roman could walk into a room full of judges and have every one of them feeling like his best friend inside ten minutes. My own mother loved him right up until the day she died still thinking I’d married a good man. The cruelty only ever came out behind our own front door, quiet and precise, by which point I’d already built my life around him.

That’s the next hallmark I still can’t believe I missed. The isolation. It never looked like isolation. It looked like concern. My sorority sisters were a bad influence. My best friend was jealous of my marriage. One by one, everybody who might’ve told me something was wrong got pushed out of arm’s reach, until the only voice left explaining what was normal was his.

And the rage never looked like rage to anybody but me. He didn’t yell. Yelling leaves witnesses. His rage came out in things like my case files rearranged the night before trial, a whispered comment about my weight thirty seconds before a closing argument. Death by a thousand cuts, every one deniable, every one small enough to make me sound unstable instead of him.

Worst of all was the lack of remorse. Not once did I see that man’s face crack with actual guilt. He could destroy something I loved and speak calm as still water, like I was the one being unreasonable.

I had every hallmark memorized. It didn’t save me from a single day of it.

“I’ll find out what he’s here for,” Duke said, reaching over to squeeze my hand once. “Could just be visiting. Business, maybe. I think you can count on him leaving you alone.”

“You don’t understand.” My voice came out sharper than I meant it to, but I let it. “A man like him lets nothing go. He ruined my life, Duke, and I promise you he’d rather see me dead than let me just live one, quietly, somewhere he can’t reach.”

Duke didn’t argue that part. He knew better than to argue that part, because he’d been the one who helped me disappear the first time, the one who understood exactly what Roman was capable of when he decided a thing belonged to him.

“So what do you want to do?” he asked instead. “Another new identity? I thought we were waiting until you had enough cash to flee the country clean.”

“I am. I thought six months but now I’m thinking six weeks.” I turned my coffee cup slow between my hands, watching the steam curl up off it instead of looking at him. “I can get my son and get out of here for good.”

Six months. I’d said that number so many times it had started to sound like a prayer instead of a plan, something I recited to keep myself steady rather than something I actually believed I’d survive to see through. Six months to save enough. Six months until Keenan was old enough, close enough, findable enough for me to make my move. Six months of living two entire lives at once under one roof, mother and fugitive and nanny and, God help me, a woman falling for a man who had absolutely no idea what he’d let sleep two doors down from his daughters.

Because that was the truth sitting underneath everything else I hadn’t said out loud to Duke yet, the one I could barely admit to myself in the quiet of my own head. I was falling for Justice Banks. Had been for weeks now, longer than I wanted to admit, longer than made any sense given everything I still had left to run from. It had started small, the way these things always do. A cup of coffee already made the way I liked it before I even asked. The way he checked twice that Dream’s seatbelt was buckled before he ever pulled out of a driveway. The way his face changed when he laughed at something one of his girls said, like the laugh cost him something and he was glad to pay it anyway. None of that was supposed to matter to a woman with an exit plan already drawn up in her head. It mattered anyway.

And the falling wasn’t even the cruelest part. The cruelest part was knowing, clear as anything, that the man wanting me back had no idea who he actually wanted. He was in love with a woman who didn’t exist on paper, built out of a fake name and a manufactured file and every soft lie I’d handed him one careful piece at a time. The real me came with too many secrets. Too much trauma. Things I was too broken to even speak on. Justice Banks did not sign up for that woman. He signed up for Skye.

So I needed to be gone sooner than later.

Duke was watching me and nodding his head. I knew that I probably looked crazy to him. His long fingers picked up his ice water and held it to his lips, taking a long sip before he spoke.

“Just lay low,” he said finally. “I’ll work on getting you the new papers ready to go whenever you need them. Honestly, though, you’re barely recognizable these days anyway. You’ve gained weight back.”