Page 55 of Maddening Fixation

The impossible suddenly made perfect sense.

After I was convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of my life in prison, my grandmother refused to accept the verdict.

She pleaded with my grandfather to intervene.

She begged my father, my uncles, and every influential member of the Flynn family to appeal the judgment or use their connections to secure my release.

No one listened.

To them, justice had already been served.

I was a murderer, and Ravencliff was where I belonged.

But my grandmother refused to abandon me.

Determined to save me, she sought help in secret, telling no one within the Flynn family what she intended to do.

Instead, she turned to an old friend—a man she had known since childhood. Long before she married my grandfather, fate had almost led her down a different path, one that might have ended with the two of them together. Life, however, had other plans, and they had gone their separate ways.

Years later, that man had become the patriarch of the Sokolov Bratva.

One of the most feared men in the criminal underworld.

She went to him and struck a bargain.

In exchange for a promise I have yet to uncover, she asked him to do two things.

First, to use every ounce of his influence to have my sentence reduced from life imprisonment to something less.

Second, to ensure that, for however long I remained inside Ravencliff, the Sokolov Bratva would protect me.

Now, at last, I understand the truth.

Without my grandmother, I would never have walked out of Ravencliff alive.

My life sentence would never have been reduced.

I would have died behind those walls, forgotten by the world and abandoned by my own blood.

And if the Sokolov Bratva had not honored the promise they made to her, I doubt I would have survived even my first year in prison.

A lump rose in my throat as I reached the final pages.

With every line I read, the truth my grandmother had carried to her grave slowly unfolded before me.

The will revealed the bargain she had struck with the old patriarch of the Sokolov Bratva.

Years ago, when they were young, they had loved one another. They had dreamed of building a life together, but fate had torn them apart before either of them could make those dreams a reality.

According to his own handwritten letter, the old man had told her:

“If fate denied us the life we were meant to share... perhaps it will be kinder to our grandchildren.”

So they made a pact.

Upon my release from prison, I was to marry the first daughter of the Sokolov family and remain married to her for no less than two years.

Only after fulfilling that condition would I inherit the fortune my grandmother had left behind.