El Diablo isn’t exactly patient.I’m sure if he knew I was here, he’d be acting on it.
And if he’sawareof a random female roaming the halls of his prison, why isn’t he, at the very least, coming to see who she is??
It makes no sense, but there’s only so much baiting I can do before I throw my hands up and say fuck it.
Come at me, Diablo.
If you know where to find me, then come find me.
Being in here has filled me to the brim with information. I know how twisted the doctors in the East Wing are, on behalf of their even more twisted boss. I know about the best places in the prison to keep hidden, and all themanyplaces where Warren Xavier—akaRen—goes tocanoodlewith guards and prisoners alike.
I know Joy has been bringing contraband to Dash, and I know that not knowing who it’s from is sort of fucking with his head.
I know that Jasper and Hancock spend an almost excessive amount of time together. They work most shifts together, and they’re committed to acting like when they hook up, it’s just meaningless sex. But I think it’s abundantly clear that it’s more than that.
I know Linetti, Brenner, and Lucas are highly invested in this underground prisoner fighting ring they callQuiet Night.
Velle knows about it, but he doesn’t care. He’s a little busy, after all…
What with running this entire place, keeping a hundred and one prisoners and twenty guards in line, while also catering to The Ivory’s every whim. Torturing prisoners for him during the day, and torturinghimselfwith whatever physical hold has him kneeling at Manuel Blanco’s feet night after night, like a masochistic junkie. And all the while, he’s been fighting an attraction to Rook as the onlygoodthing he seems to have in his life—other than Joy, that is. Running from them both as if he doesn’t deserve happiness, when that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Granted, I don’t know Velle personally or anything. We haven’t talked, and I’ve still been keeping my distance, because I think he might be one of the few people whowouldactually rat me out to The Ivory. The claws are in that deep; cavernous cuts, exposed and bloody, but he just won’t break free and let themheal.
I don’t know what to think about the very undeniable thing happening between Velle and The Ivory. It doesn’t feel good, I’m sure because I feel for Velle. I know what it’s like to be on that hook.
You didn’t choose it, but it’s there, and you’re powerless to wriggle yourself free.
But then, I also can’t help obsessing over the idea that the reason The Ivory hasn’t been concerned with the intruder in his midst is because he’s too busy wielding his manipulative control over John Chevelle…
The way he did to me before I disappeared.
But I didn’t disappear. I’m right fucking here, and sometimes, in my most depraved moments of weakness, it has me resenting this disguise. Because he doesn’t know it’s me, and maybe if he did…
No. Es ridículo.
I feel stupid even thinking that, because I donotwant The Ivory’s attention on me the way it is on Velle.
Velle is tortured. Even when it seems like it feels good, it’s a mirage. A spell of vicious black magic from an evil being who doesn’t fuckingcare.
That’s the point.He’sthe problem; the source of all this pain and suffering.
If I kill him, then it’ll be over. Spell broken.And we can all finally move on.
So there you have it. In a few short weeks, I’ve become an Alabaster Isle expert. Except that no one knows it. I’m forced to keep all these things to myself, as I’ve been doing my entire life.
All alone, a shadowperson, existing purely to wait, and watch.
Would The Ivory be bothered by my hunting him? Is that even what I’m doing?
After all, what’s the point of revenge if the person you’re exacting it on doesn’t care?
It’s late, and I’ve been in the East, spying on the comings and goings of Felix Darcey and his new doctor, the gorgeous and roboticDr. Love. The screams of another tortured prisoner have me cringing. His name is Kieran O’Malley, and he’s quite sick, made even sicker by the way they’ve been treating him. The poor soul is on his way out.
I predict him lying in a pool of blood in a matter of days, having swallowed his tongue or something like that.
When one of the East Wing’s creepier doctors, Templeton, heads my way, I scamper back in the direction of solitary. I’m heading down the row, going for the door at the end. But then I hear the familiar stomping and shuffling chains of prisoners being dragged this way.
Panicking, I dart back the way I came, making a spur-of-the-moment decision to slip inside one of the empty cells. Leaning up against the cold concrete, heart hammering, I listen to thesounds of an inmate being deposited into one of the other cells. I release a sturdy breath of relief… That is, until the door to the cell I’m standing in opens, and an inmate is shoved inside.
