Page 6 of Infamous

4

NADIA

“Guilty.”

Guilty. Guilty. Guilty.

The word detonates inside me. My ears ring like I’ve stepped too close to an explosion. My lungs seize, refusing air. My head swims, heavy and disoriented, as though I’ve been shoved under water and left to drown.

“On all counts,” the judge drones, his voice flat, merciless, as if he’s announcing the weather and not destroying my world.

The courtroom erupts. The sound is instant, violent; reporters scribbling like madmen, cameras strobing with blinding light, a swell of voices rising in a frenzy I can’t untangle. Laughter, gasps, shouts - they all blur together into one monstrous roar.

I grip the edge of the bench, my fingers clawing into the wood until my knuckles bleach bone white. It isn’t enough. The floor tilts, the walls lean inward, the air thickens until it’s choking me. My body betrays me, my knees buckling, my bones hollowing out until I collapse.

Hands swarm me. Cold, rough, greedy hands. Strangers, ushers, journalists with badges swinging against their chests asthey descend like vultures on a carcass. Microphones stab toward my face, angry mouths demanding I bleed for them.

“Nadia! Nadia, did you know?”

“Was he always violent?”

“What’s it like to love a monster?”

Questions cut through me like glass. Lights burn into my eyes. Voices overlap, scrape, claw. My body convulses under their weight, and still they press closer, closer, feeding off the ruin of me.

My head pounds, my chest heaves, and I can’t breathe. I shove through the swarming crowd, stumble through the aisle, forcing myself toward the doors.

I am no longer a woman. I am a headline. A soundbite. A spectacle they can take home and replay over dinner.

Outside is worse.

The courtroom was a storm, but this - this is a plague. A wall of people crowds the courthouse steps, bodies pressed shoulder to shoulder, faces fever-bright with fascination. Onlookers. Gawkers. Groupies waving cardboard signs like they’re at a concert.

FREE GHOST.

BEAUTIFUL BUTCHER.

OUR ANGEL OF DEATH.

Lipstick red, jagged scrawls that drip across white cardboard like smeared blood.

They scream his name like he’s a rock star, not a convicted killer. Like this is a performance and I’m the opening act, stumbling out shattered for their amusement.

I shove past them, tears pouring hot down my cheeks. My palms slam against strangers’ shoulders, my elbows jab into ribs, my body carving space through the crush. They don’t move for me. They don’t see me. They’re too busy worshipping the ghost of a man who destroyed me.

My chest seizes, breath strangled, panic bubbling sharp in my throat. I claw forward, fighting for air, until finally, I get my space.

Air.

Cold. Sharp. Clean.

I stagger into it, dragging my back against the courthouse wall, stone biting through my blouse. My lungs gasp like they’ve been starved, sucking down salvation that doesn’t save me. The sky spins above me, blue turning black at the edges. My hands won’t stop shaking. My knees fold, and I slide down until I’m crouched on the ground, arms locked around myself like I can hold in what’s left.

But there’s nothing left to hold. Because he’s gone. The future we promised each other is dead, scattered across courtrooms and headlines and rabid crowds chanting his name. And I don’t know how to breathe in a world where Lucian Cross wears the nameGhostlike a shroud, and the world cheers for it.

A shadow falls over me, stretching long across the courthouse steps. I look up through blurred eyes, my back still pressed to the stone wall.

His attorney stands there. Tall, sharp suit, jaw like granite. Except for his eyes, he is a man carved from stone. His eyes softer than I expect, almost pitying, and that cuts me deeper because it’s the only mercy I’ve been shown in the months since Lucian was incarcerated.