Page 2 of Freedom’s Inferno

Lana took his hands, pulling him to his feet. Her fingers were careful as she helped him out of his clothes. His hands pawed at her body.

Every nerve screamed for distance, her stomach clenching tight, but she didn’t flinch, didn’t allow herself to recoil.

He sank into the tub with a groan, the water lapping around him as his head tipped against the rim.

Lana busied herself with small, pointless tasks: folding a towel, adjusting a bottle, her eyes always returning to him.

The rise and fall of his chest slowed, his eyelids fluttering. His breathing deepened into heavy, uneven snores.

She stepped closer. Her hands slid against his damp skin, guiding him with deceptive care. A moment of effort, a sharp press downward, and his body slipped beneath the water. She held him there until the bubbles no longer broke the surface. Her arms taut, she didn’t let go until the silence was absolute.

Lana released her husband with a shudder. Crossing to the bathroom vanity, she stared at her reflection. She blinked. Once, twice. Digging her fingers into her eyelids and smudging her mascara until her eyes burned.

Not enough.

She turned toward the tub.

Her husband sank deeper into the bath, limbs weightless, head lolling against the porcelain like a grotesque puppet with his strings cut.

She stood there, expecting something heavy to pass through but finding nothing except the hollow ringing in her ears.

Fiery rage tore loose in her chest, like a dam bursting. Makeup-streaked tears streamed down her pale face. A feral scream poured out of her, echoing hard against the tiled walls, vibrating the porcelain, ricocheting back at her from every direction. It scoured her lungs and scraped her throat raw, but she didn’t stop.

The bathroom became a chamber for her violent release. years of grief, fury, humiliation, survival. every bruise, insult and violation unspooling at once.

When the last shred of it left her body, she shook, breath ragged, eyes burning. Through the hammering of her heart, one truth rose up, stark and undeniable against the chaos that warred through her chest.

Freedom.

Part One

The First Strike

The descent begins

Mistaking the plunge for flight

This is the first strike

Chapter 1

Chuck

Freedom is a lie. I’ve known this since childhood. And the evidence stretched before me in an ocean of black. Rows of mourners sat with their hands folded in their laps, eyes lowered at the appropriate times, dabbing politely at the corners of their eyes when the silence stretched too long. No one spoke out of turn. No one sobbed too loud. Richard’s funeral was theater, social scripts playing out like they were rehearsed.

The chains aren’t something you can see and touch. They’re etiquette and expectations. Rules dressed up in pressed suits and the mask you wear, because to take it off would mean exile. That’s the trap. That’s the punishment we’re all afraid of: the cage invisible enough that most people don’t know they’re living in it.

As far as I was concerned, the dead were the only ones who were truly free… and only because the end had already come. I was grieving Richard, my friend, my business partner, the closest thing I’d ever had to a brother, and yet, even from his casket the bastard still had me shackled. My grief was the twisted kind, the kind that came with all the complicated feelings of missing someone, while understanding that maybe he wasn’t the person I thought I knew.

I stood there staring at the polished wood, the flowers, the rehearsed prayers, and I couldn’t shake the weight pressing against my chest. Part of me wanted to remember the friend I met in college. The one who’d offered me a place at his table when I had nothing but a scholarship and scars. The brother-in-arms I thought I’d built a life with. But standing there in that church, I couldn’t keep pretending. He was gone, but he’d left me with the mess.

The missing money. The hungry eyes of men like Damian Costa waiting for their pound of flesh. Still, he was mine to mourn. I hated him for a lot of things, but I loved him anyway, and I didn’t know how to separate the two.

Then there was Lana. She stood at the head of the receiving line, her flowing red hair such a stark contrast against all the black that it was almost blasphemous. She was the perfect picture of a grieving widow, eyes red and raw, head bowed as she greeted each mourner who approached with solemn words and warm embraces. She played her part beautifully. But I knew better.

They said Richard died of an accidental drowning. He fell asleep drunk in the tub. Some folks whispered of suicide, but the coroner hadn’t gone that far.

Dickie didn’t die by suicide. Richard Blackwell was too damn narcissistic to allow himself to die in a bathtub. No, there was more to it.