Blake’s hand slides upward, confident, familiar. Not asking—he never asks. He reads the room, the shifts in my breathing, the way my body answers before my mouth does.
His mouth finds mine, unhurried, testing. I let him. I always let him—on my terms.
Outside, a car passes, tires hissing on wet pavement. Somewhere, someone is typing another comment about who they think I am.
Blake’s knee presses between mine. His breath warms my throat.
“They’re obsessed,” he murmurs. “That’s power.”
I smile into his mouth.
Yes, I think. It is.
And when I finally fall asleep, the thought settles comfortably in my chest: if they’re calling me a villain now, it’s because the story finally belongs to me.
Chapter Fifteen
Evelyn
The riot looks better in slow motion. That’s the first thing I hate about myself today.
On my screen, Shae goes down like a felled saint—white prison uniform smeared with a sacrificial kind of red. The handheld shakes for three beats, then steadies at a brave-documentarian angle we’ll pretend happened by accident. I already know the sound bed I’ll want: the high fluorescent hum we captured in the chow hall, pitched low and layered under a single piano note that never resolves.
Blake leans in my doorway and watches me watch her. “You’re doing the thing,” he says.
“What thing?” I keep scrubbing back and forth along the timeline, looking for the frame where sympathy overtakes skepticism. There’s always a frame.
“The baptism.” He drifts into the makeshift edit bay and drops into the extra chair, knees out, unbothered on purpose. “You wash her in tragedy and tell the audience it’s holy.”
“Good morning to you too.” I trim three frames off a guard’s elbow, and the whole hallway becomes choreography. “If I’m baptizing anyone, it’s the viewers. They need absolution for wanting this much spectacle.”
“Blessed are the complicit,” he murmurs.
I mark the place where Shae’s head hits the cinder block and the camera jerks. That tremor is worth ten interviews.
“Angle B,” I say.
He slides his thumb drive across the console. “C.O. body cam. Ridge unlocked it for us.”
The screen fills with the world as seen from a chest: hysteria in fisheye, scuffling feet, an officer’s breath as he runs. Shae comes into view farther down the corridor, already small, already chosen.
I lay the body-cam under our main. The cheap mic gives me a grain that feels like truth. The grain lies, but it lies convincingly.
“You’re going to hell,” Blake says, like he’s calling the weather.
“I can take notes there,” I say. “Play it from the top.”
We run the sequence. Sirens in their tinny key. An inmate shoves another into a doorjamb; a guard overcorrects, baton raised; a tray shatters—then, in the mess, Shae turns her head perfectly to camera, a slick of blood painting her cheekbone like stigmata.
“Pause,” I say.
Blake’s finger hovers. “You want the tear.”
“Of course I want the tear.” I feather the keyframes and give it two fewer milliseconds than my gut begs for. Leave the audience the hunger of almost.
“You know these choices are why they call you the butcher,” he says, neutral. “You go through truth like a deli slicer.”
“Better a butcher than a taxidermist,” I say. “I don’t stuff dead moments and pretend they’re alive.” I point at the waveform. “Listen to the second scream. Not the first—the second. That one isn’t performance.”
