Ramirez hesitated for barely a second before handing over the keys without protest, a quiet nod the only acknowledgment, and turned to leave.
Harlan’s smirk widened, yellowed teeth flashing under the flickering light. “Isn’t it poetic,” he said, low and deliberate, “how fate circles back? We’ll have so much fun here, Elena. Just like old times.”
He chuckled—a guttural, wet sound that twisted my gut, curling it around fear and nausea. “Step inside.”
I froze, rooted to the spot.
Every horror I’d imagined here—gang beatings, starvation, isolation, slow erosion of identity—paled against him.
Here, with access, with authority, with keys jingling like tiny instruments of torture.
“I said get in!” His face contorted, rage coiling into his barked command, identical to the ones he’d used when pinning me down as a child.
My body betrayed me before my mind could catch up. Knees weak, stomach lurching, I stumbled forward into the cell.
The moment I crossed the threshold, the women rose as one.
The cramped room seemed to shrink further as they circled me like wolves, necks cracking with audible pops, knuckles flexing and snapping, the sound punctuated by soft, anticipatory hisses.
“She’s my bitch from the outside,” Harlan announced through the bars, satisfaction dripping from each word. “I want her kept that way. You girls want those extra fish portions you’ve been whining about? Teach the bitch a lesson. Make it hurt.”
The cell door slammed shut behind me, a final, metallic clang that echoed like a gunshot.
His laughter trailed down the hall, fading into the din of shouts, slamming doors, and distant clanging.
The one with the neck tattoos cracked her neck again, grinning like a snake. “Boss man’s got favorites, huh? Let’s welcome you proper, new girl.”
I flinched as fists clenched and unclenched, shadows flickering across the walls, the anticipation tangible.
Nowhere to run. No one to protect me. My arms were useless against five women who had already decided my fate.
This wasn’t just prison.
This was hell.
And it had only just begun.
Chapter 10
RUSLAN BARANOV
Istood before the imposing gates of Blackbridge Correctional Facility, one of the most notorious maximum-security prisons in California, a monolithic beast of concrete and steel that loomed like a monument to human ruin.
From where I waited—just beyond the razor-wire-topped fence that encircled the compound—I could see endless rows of barred windows staring outward like hollow, unblinking eyes.
They reminded me of skulls, emptied of thought, stripped of identity.
Guard towers rose at strategic intervals, jagged teeth biting into the gray sky, each manned by silhouetted figures with rifles slung casually over their shoulders.
Their spotlights swept the grounds even in daylight, slow and methodical, as if daring anyone to test the boundaries.
The beams carved long, erratic shadows across cracked asphalt, shadows that twisted and stretched like living things.
This place didn’t merely contain the broken.
It consumed them.
Blackbridge was a machine designed to grind people down to their smallest components—fear, obedience, survival.
