She didn’t look at me.
Not once.
Ramirez and Harlow wrenched me off the ground like Iwas nothing, shoving me toward the squad car. My body shook, my limbs weak.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go.
I stole a necklace to bring back a piece of my mother’s happiness. To remind her of the love she lost.
Instead, I’d taken away the one person she couldn’t afford to lose.
“Dad, I’m sorry,” I sobbed, my voice breaking apart. “Mom…I’m so sorry.”
I barely heard Ramirez mutter, “You’re gonna go away for a long time, young lady.”
I didn’t care.
Because my father wasn’t moving.
And my mother?—
She still wouldn’t look at me.
1
MAYA
Montana Women’s Prison, Billings – present day
“Maya Belrose, I’m gonna miss you,” Katy murmured behind me, her fingers working my hair into a French twist with the kind of skill that made plastic clips and strips of cloth look like salon tools. She’d been styling my hair every morning, somehow making me the best-coiffed inmate in the place.
I tilted my head back to catch her eye. “I’m gonna miss you too.”
“You know,” she said, tucking in the last section and smoothing it down, “when I get outta here someday, I’m opening a salon. And you better be my first appointment.”
I laughed, even as my chest tightened at the imminent goodbye. “Only if you swear not to chop it all off the second I sit in your chair.”
Katy scoffed, her mama-drawl thick with sass. “Hell no! That hair of yours is a national treasure. I’d sooner take a chainsaw to the Mona Lisa.”
I grinned.
Then she added, “The girls are gonna miss your cakes, Maya Bel.”
She wasn’t wrong. I’d always loved to bake, but I never expected to flourish as a baker behind bars. I had no real tools, and I was just guessing half the time, but somehow, the recipes still held. And for a while, that small bit of sweetness kept us all going.
The cell door unlocked with a clang.
“Belrose!” the guard’s voice rang out. “Time to go.”
I turned to Katy, wrapping my arms around her in a fierce hug. In four years, I’d shared this cramped space with a rotating cast of women. Some ignored me, some despised me, and others made it their mission to break me. The bruises faded, but the lessons never did.
Katy was different. She didn’t see just another inmate to compete with or bully to feel bigger. She saw the person underneath. She reminded me that I was still human.
“Stay out of trouble, girl,” she murmured.
I smirked. “No guarantees.”
She pulled back, searching my face, her eyes narrowing. “You’re not thinking?—”
