Page 9

Something smacks me in the face, but I can’t lift my head with the weight hanging off the back of my skull.

It happens again.

“Kid, you need to get the fuck up or I’m going to have to carry you like a baby.”

I vaguely recognize the voice. There’s another slap.

It’s harder than the last two and it forces my eyes to open.

Niko hovers above me. The edges of his face are blurred, but it’s him.

Or at least, I think it is, from the blue-silvery eyes and tattoos stretching up through his collar, covering the full expanse of his neck then crawling down his arms.

“You going to get off the floor now?” he asks.

My jaw swings when I try to talk, only allowing an incoherent mumble.

He doesn’t act on his threat to treat me like a baby.

Instead, he lowers to sit beside me and stares up at the yellowed ceiling of my shitty apartment that an offender like me should be lucky to have.

That’s what the parole officer said when he completed his inspection.

No, his exact words were, “You must have a guardian angel watching over you to land on your feet like this.” As though I should be grateful for losing my entire life when I was innocent.

Just like the ceiling, my life was once clean, unmarred by the actions of the inconsiderate bastards who made a home out of me. I should be thankful that I’m not rotting away for the rest of my sentence. But it wasn’t supposed to be my sentence when I didn’t commit the fucking crime.

Everything I found enjoyment in has been tainted.

I don’t know the fucking world anymore. Cars look different.

So do phones. The world I left isn’t the world I’ve been released into.

I’m like an animal that was kept in a zoo then put back out into the wild without any reference of my environment.

How the fuck am I supposed to live, lead a life, when I’m twelve years behind everyone else?

Twelve fucking years.

The first couple of years, I could have adjusted. I still had hope of an appeal working in my favor, hope for freedom. To breathe without someone timing me, to piss without someone watching me.

After years of solitary, it waned. Now, I don’t even trust myself anymore.

Nothing about me or the world is familiar.

Even the fucking clock looks different as it ticks away on the wall.

It’s a stupid thing to notice, something inconsequential that most people wouldn’t notice.

Yet I do, because I’m like an alien visiting this new planet for the first time.

Everything has a faint resemblance to what I remember, yet it’s not the same.

The one thing that they tell prisoners to keep them sane is to remember there are people waiting for them.

Life sentences don’t get that. They get tasks to complete so they feel like they’re contributing during their sentence to prevent them going crazy.

But I didn’t. Segregation doesn’t allow the opportunity to learn or socialize.

No fucking eighteen-year-old has social skills.

They’re not really an adult. But I’ve been thrust into an adult body when the last time I was free I was a teenager, allowed to make stupid decisions like believing in hope.

My high slowly wears off, and I sit myself up. It doesn’t stop the tremor in my jaw, and Niko copies me as he bends his knees and sits opposite me on the shitty fucking floor. There are stains on it—cum, blood, or piss. Who fucking knows when I can’t even afford this shithole?

“How long?” he asks without any judgment in his tone.

I no longer have parents after they disowned me, so he doesn’t get to act like it. Or worse, like an older brother.

“How long, what?” I mumble as my jaw continues moving of its own accord.

“Have you been using for?” Still, there’s no judgment. No ire at me needing an escape.

But I lie. “I’m not. I was prescribed some meds to help with the insomnia and they space me out.”

He doesn’t buy my bullshit, and the meds I was given weren’t for anything mental.

It was all physical. That’s something I never knew about prisons.

Something I never thought about before my life was ruined.

Being around people who have nothing to lose provides a new insight into the human psyche.

A person with nothing to lose isn’t shackled by expectation or responsibility.

They’re truly free to do whatever the fuck they want because having no repercussions doesn’t pose a threat.

“Yeah?” Niko scoffs. “You a horse now?”

My brows pinch together as he raises to his full height and towers over me. He takes half a step forward, and my jaw locks. The tension calls his attention, and he abruptly stops. His voice is softer, calmer, as he says, “Ketamine is for horses. Don’t take that shit.”

He slowly holds his hand out to me, but I refuse it as I force my body to move.

I manage to get on my feet, however shakily, and he stares.

There was a time that he offered me protection, but his familial ties weren’t enough when my own were more insidious.

If I was beaten for the sins of my blood, I could accept that.

But to live knowing that your own fucking family are repulsed by the thought of you sinks deeper.

“My offer still stands,” Niko softly says to my back as I stumble through the one-bedroom apartment.

I go into the bathroom and wash my face, ignoring his attempts to get me to work for him.

Money doesn’t interest me. Neither does crime.

So working as a hired brute for a mafia family might keep me out of prison, but it’ll also force me to be around people.

The clean patch of tile where the mirror once sat glares at me under the lights.

I can’t look into that thing when the motherfucker staring back at me isn’t me.

It will always be him. The first-born twin, the only one who should’ve existed when I was always destined to be his reflection. Even his death fucked my life up.

“Kane?” Niko asks from the other side of the bathroom door. I leave the water running so he fucks off. But he knocks on the door and says, “Don’t do anything stupid, kid.”

I almost laugh.

Almost—a word that can be used for the majority of the events in my life.

I almost didn’t get sentenced for a crime I didn’t commit.

I almost got into college.

I almost died.

I hate that fucking word. It only exists to highlight how close a person gets to everything they need. Hope and almost go hand in hand. Years of hope resulted in almost getting freedom. The bars aren’t there, the noise has disappeared, yet I’m still not free. I’m almost free.

I continue lying like it will trick me into believing it too. “Nothing stupid,” I agree. “I’ve got a shift in half an hour. I’ll see you next month.”

He acquiesces, and I wait until he makes the short walk from the bathroom to the front door. The walls are thin as fuck, so thin that I can hear him lock the door behind him. I stay in the bathroom and wash my face with ice-cold water until my cheeks are numb.

The silence is the biggest mindfuck. I haven’t had silence since I was seventeen. There has always been noise—someone screaming as they wipe their shit on the walls, guards’ boots pacing while they do their checks, a CO being a condescending prick because they don’t have any real authority in life.

Now, it’s just silent.

Nothing other than my own thoughts.

My alarm blares from the living room, which is exactly three steps away, and I count out each annoying repetition of the trill sound before I leave the bathroom.

My steps are robotic, and I pick up my keys, phone, and a hoodie before leaving the apartment.

The edges of the hallway are littered with dust, junk mail, anything that has fallen off the bottom of people’s shoes, leaving a clear line that everyone has walked through because no one looks at the trash in this shithole, which is why none of us make eye contact as I walk out of the apartment.

Moving somewhere no one knows me was supposed to offer a chance at a life. But I can’t escape the shit in my head. The next eight hours will be filled with ghosts.

Strangers’ conversations filter through as I make my way to the cemetery for my night shift. A literal graveyard shift. My stomach churns as I pass an all-night diner, but my entire body freezes at one sound.

A laugh.

It’s late, so she can’t see me across the road as she stands there, like she’s fucking innocent, with a smile on her face. It could be a hundred years and I’d always recognize that laugh. The sound that once filled me with warmth now only heats my blood with rage.

Delilah fucking Leroux.

She’s as beautiful as ever, with her hair neatly held together.

The uniform doesn’t fit her rich-girl, prissy image.

There’s not a universe where any member of the Leroux family would work.

Yet she stands there, outside of Carol’s Diner, with a name tag pinned to her lapel, flirting with some dickhead.

Murderer isn’t enough of a descriptor for what she’s done. Not when she buried two people in one casket. And now she’s living her fucking life like nothing happened.

The man isn’t her type. He’s too normal, when she’s been crafted by the devil. Jealousy isn’t a new emotion. I’ve envied many people, many things. But this is different. I don’t want to fuck her, I want to fucking ruin her.

Delilah rolls her eyes at whatever the man says, then leans up on her toes to kiss him. She hasn’t just moved on from the events of the past, she’s fully ignored them. There’s no guilt or remorse eating away at her.

I don’t continue walking. I step back into the shadows between two buildings and watch her. I watch her kiss him, how she runs her fingers through his light brown hair in the same way she did to me. She smiles at him—in the same fucking way she did to me.

Bringing my phone to my ear, I call the overbearing dickhead who acts like a mama bird.

“Does your offer of working for you still stand?” I ask before Niko can say anything.

An engine slows in the background of his call, but he doesn’t hesitate. “Yeah, kid. I’ll pick you up and we’ll go through the rules.”

Before I entered prison—before I was falsely sentenced for a murder I didn’t commit—I had dreams of owning a tech company, making things out of nothing.

Now that Delilah has made me a murderer, her lies have grown and become reality.

And my dreams have evolved. Fuck creating anything—destruction will be therapeutic.

But she’s going to beg me to end her suffering.