Maddox
Idied fifteen days ago. My heart stopped beating, it no longer pumps, but somehow, my feet still move when my brain commands me to walk. I eat, sleep, and pee like an everyday person. Only I know I’m dead because only I can feel the hollowness inside of me.
Under different circumstances, a life inmate would have relished the freedom I’ve had the past fifteen days. I was cuffed to my bed, but the door of my hospital room could have been a revolving door of visitors if I didn’t turn them all away.
I love my parents and siblings, but a man without a soul can’t do idle chit-chat.
I’m also sick of pretending I am fine when I’m anything but. Grief doesn’t go away. It comes in like waves. Sometimes it’s a calm, nurturing flow. Other times it represents a tsunami.
Today is the latter.
The burns on my hands have healed, so my time at Ravenshoe Private Hospital is over. I’m being transported back to Wallens Ridge, and none other than the warden himself is helming my transport van. He felt like a fool when he was informed by Ravenshoe PD that one of his inmates was detained hundreds of miles from his prison. I can only imagine how beetroot red his face was when Agent Moses was assigned to investigate how an inmate escaped a maximum-security prison unnoticed.
Agent Moses’s eagerness to get in Dimitri’s good books placed his entire operation on the line. Production came to a screaming halt, and the seven-figure digits in his bank account dwindled to a pittance when he learned the guards couldn’t be bribed with ‘what ifs.’ They wanted money, and who better to get that from than the man who has profited from them for months on end.
I want to say Agent Moses’s downfall made my grief less noticeable, but unfortunately, that would be a lie. I feel Demi’s loss every day because in my heart, I know she’s gone for real this time. My belief doesn’t stem from the fact I saw her demise. It comes from deep within me, from a part of my soul only she could activate. The flame extinguished. There isn’t even a wick left to relight if the opportunity arose.
The woman I love is gone, and I plan to become just as invisible.
I’ll serve my sentence in silence. I will bide my time, then, when the timing is right, I’ll join her on the other side. I can’t do that now because there are matters I need to attend to, but soon, I’ll be as free as Demi. Finally unshackled from this miserable existence.
“Let’s go,” Agent Moses says with a clap of his hands.
He tugs on the shackles curled around my wrists and ankles, assisting me from my hospital bed before nudging his head in the direction he wants me to walk. I don’t miss the heated glances of the nurses and admin staff when I shuffle past. When they look at me, they don’t see the man Demi did. They see a monster, a murderer, and a man without a heart, and since their assumptions are spot-on, I haven’t bothered to correct them.
I am the lowest of the low. There are only four men beneath me. Col, Agent Moses, Dimitri, and Rocco. I plan to trim my list down to one as soon as I can.
When I’m guided out through the delivery entrance at the back of the hospital, my eyes shift to the right from the quickest flurry of red capturing my attention. Justine is standing at the end of the guarded alleyway, peering my way. When she was young, her hair matched the vivacity of her personality. Now, it gains her the attention neither of us want her to have. She’d hate for her admirers to gawk long enough they’ll see the scars of her assault no number of layers can hide, whereas I’m afraid they’ll see her scars as proof of the fierce woman hiding beneath them.
I want her to find her prince charming and achieve her happily ever after. I just want it to be farfaraway from here.
“If you want your bank account returned to what it once was, keep your eyes front and center, Arrow,” I warn Agent Moses when his hooded gaze slings to my baby sister, who’s eyeballing my transfer like she’s an up-and-coming journalist instead of a defense attorney. “You don’t need to bribe me to get the goods. You merely need to shut the fuck up and listen.”
He doesn’t appreciate my tone, but like the whiny bitch he is, he takes it up the ass like he was born to follow instead of lead. After slotting into the seat next to me in the transport van, he signals for the driver to go. His eyes don’t drift back to peruse Justine for the second time. It’s unfortunate. The toothbrush I stuffed into my pocket two weeks ago is still in its rightful place, except it no longer has smooth edges. They’re sharp and edgy—as is the razor blade I fixed to one end.
As my thumb authenticates the sharpness of the blade on my shank, I sling my eyes to Agent Moses. “Did you do as I asked?”
After lifting his chin, he discloses, “It wasn’t easy convincing him, but when I said it was you, he accepted your next available appointment.” As his lips curve into a smug grin, he twists the top half of his body to face me. “That’s proof it was smart of you to realize what we had was a good thing. If you scratch my back, Ox, I’llalwaysscratch yours.” When air involuntarily whizzes from my nose, he tries to make out he isn’t the scum on the bottom of a seedy one-star motel shower floor. “I really wish things had turned out differently. Demi didn’t deserve to go down the way she did.” Forever a cockhead, he showcases a side of his personality he should have kept hidden. It makes the shank in my pocket super heavy. “I guess that’s what you get for trying to play both sides. When you try to pit good against evil, it doesn’t matter which way the chips fall, you’ll always be on the losing team.”
He shrugs like he didn’t place Demi’s death on my shoulders before he hooks his boots onto the seat in front of him. After scooting down in his seat, he drops his chin onto his chest. He’s out cold not even ten seconds later.
I could take him out now with one nick of the big ugly vein pulsating in his neck, but as I said earlier, there’s a time and a place for everything. Now is not the time nor the place to sentence Agent Moses for his crimes—unfortunately.
Approximately five hours later, I enter the secret room Demi and I had our last meeting in without shackles or the shadows of burly, money-hungry guards. The chair Demi and I fucked on sits in the middle of the windowless room, and the scent of her sweat-slicked hair is still lingering in the air. It should make me hesitant about what I’m about to do. Instead, it fills me with so much remorse, I don’t wait for the guards to latch the locks into place before I show my guest the shank I prepared specifically for him.
Rocco doesn’t flinch when his eyes drop to the toothbrush/razor combination in my hand. He has the audacity to smile. “What’s the matter, Ox? Having a bad day?”
“More like a bad year,” I reply, my voice unrecognizable. “And it all started with you.”
I don’t give him the chance to recant my accurate statement. I nudge my head to the documents I requested Agent Moses leave in plain sight, so he’s so bogged down with evidence, even if he wanted to speak, he couldn’t.
After taking in the surveillance images of him at a well-known pharmacy chain, collecting the misoprostol prescription that killed my unborn baby with Demi, Rocco raises his eyes to mine. “I bought your girl pregnancy tests. I didn’t knock her up.” Like a fool who has no clue I’m barren of a soul, he raps his knuckle against my chest. “You would have known if I had been in with her aft—”
Before all his scorn can leave his mouth, I pin him to the padded wall of the cell before I squash his jugular with my shank. “She lost our baby because ofyou. She almost fucking died because she took thetablets yousupplied her.You’rethe reason she bled out.”
“What the fuck are you on about? I didn’t give Demi any tablets. I told India…” His words trail off as his brows pull together in confusion. After a couple of silent seconds, he mutters, “India offered to buy the tests for me. She said she was going to the pharmacy.” His chest heaves as well as mine does when it dawns me on where I’ve heard the name India before and who said it. “She wouldn’t have… he’d fucking kill her if she…”
His pupils widen to the size of saucers as his stomach gurgles. Barely a second later, he pushes me off him like grief hasn’t doubled my weight. When I object to his aggression with a perfectly structured left swung hit, he shouts into my face. “Dimitri is in India’s house now! He’s there with his fucking daughter.”
