She wasn’t confused. She wasn’t trapped.
She was a spy.
A serpent coiled inside my home, breathing poison into my air, watching me from behind lowered lashes while she relayed my weaknesses to the woman who had taken everything from me.
My fury ignited like wildfire.
And this time, I didn’t try to put it out.
In the past, my rage would have demanded immediate, personal retribution.
I knew exactly how it would have played out. I’d done it before, countless times.
I could see it with brutal clarity—my hands closing around her throat, thumbs pressing into the fragile column of her windpipe, feeling the pulse flutter beneath my skin.
The moment when fear would finally replace defiance in her eyes. The instant when life would drain from her gaze and justice—cold, absolute—would be served.
That was how men like me settled accounts.
But this time, something stopped me.
Not mercy. Not forgiveness. Something far more dangerous.
Restraint.
It gnawed at me, this inexplicable hesitation, even as my anger burned hot enough to cauterize reason. I told myself it was strategy, that getting my hands dirty would be sloppy. Emotional. Beneath me.
Yet the truth was uglier: I couldn’t bring myself to touch her. Not in rage. Not in punishment. Not in any way that would harm her.
So I chose prison instead.
Control without proximity.
We already had the groundwork laid.
Fabricated evidence. Forged documents. False financial trails. Witness statements rehearsed and planted like landmines. All pointing toward Elena as the architect behind Maria’s murder.
It was effortless to feed it to my contacts inside law enforcement. A nudge here. A sealed envelope there. Names whispered into the right ears.
The system responded exactly as it always did—efficient, obedient, blind to truth when wrapped in credibility.
Before dawn, they stormed the club she went to every night.
She didn’t fight.
Didn’t scream.
Didn’t run.
They cuffed her wrists, read her rights, and led her out as if the verdict had already been decided.
By the next day, the case was sealed tight: first-degree murder, conspiracy, obstruction of justice. Clean charges. Heavy charges. The kind prosecutors loved. The kind that almost never fell apart.
By noon, she was transferred to Blackridge Correctional Facility.
A maximum-security graveyard.
Processed. Filed away.
