Didn’t they see the footage? It’s been three years, Mick, and all I’ve gotten is an FBI profiler asking if I’m clinically insane.
I bet that file calls you a pyro too.
Mick!
But I smiled a little. I missed him. There'd been a very brief period in the beginning where Creed was allowed limited visitation. The public had helped with that. The judge presiding over the verdict had sympathy. Not a lot of it, but enough to get us one visit a year. It didn't end up mattering. The moment I lit that guard on fire, I was forced to revoke all visitation rights. Before then, I'd gotten to see Mickey only once. He'd been quiet, unable to give me much then either. He told me the Ravens were trying, but I could tell he was still so trapped in his grief over Alex that he was only barely functioning. I wasn't any better myself. The five minutes we had together were just fucking depressing.
Sorry, bella. The public is with you. People are sympathetic. But you were more than a victim in those videos. You all killed people. Multiple times. Bad people or not…it’s murder.
Hang in there. We’re doing everything we can. I promise.
“Time’s up,” a gruff voice demanded.
I turned a glare toward the devil guarding my solitary confinement, quickly deleted all our texts, and slapped the phone into his palm. “I want a lighter.”
A sharp laugh escaped him. “You must think I’m an idiot. I know what you did to your last guard.”
I stood. I was shorter than him, but he still took a step back, and I grinned. “I’m curious. Do they pay you well, officer?”
Time, the son of a bitch.Everythingtook time. Mick bribing officials between one chain of command and the next and…the bomb. Yes, another bomb. I realize my track record isn’t looking great, but how else was I meant to get out of there? Mick wired a grand to my guard in solitary each month and in exchange I occasionally got whatever piece I needed to slowly build it. That day at the precinct, when the world was finally watching, I’d wanted nothing more than to be fully explosive, and I intendedto be, but prison had proven to be a harder thing to escape from than I thought. Every second that passed in that cell, I knew that Rafe and Kane were changing, becoming monsters again. I knew because in many ways I was. All that work I did with the Ravens to be the free, bright Arden again, it was null and void. I grieved Alex every day, thanking him under my breath as I hugged myself in my cell. Then in the mornings, I normally cursed him. It was a brutal back and forth of loving him for giving me that tiny fragment of peace andhatinghim for letting me have a taste of what would never be mine again. Grieving Thorne was even harder. His ghost hung in my cell like an impenetrable cloud of smoke, every breath I took dragging him into my lungs. I tried to expel him with heavy exhales and screams, but he sank into me, captured me. I became convinced that my life had become nothing more than a series of failures and hauntings, my nightmares filled with death.
I was building a bomb to break out of prison and gokillViktor Shaw. I knew that I would end up right back where I was, likely with an even worse sentence, but I just stopped caring. Ironically, there’s freedom in letting the idea of freedom go, and it made breathing a little easier when I did. I didn’t let myself reminisce on trying on clothes with the Ravens or riding super bikes with Creed. I just focused on my need to kill, and it grew with every year that passed.
Eight. Fucking. Years.
That’s how long I stared at the same walls. Eight years of being watched, counted, processed, and expected to behave. That cage didn’t starve me or keep me awake until I broke. I was fed. I was allowed to shower. I was given a bed. My body was permitted to continue even though my life didn’t. Time still happened to me. I aged whether I wanted to or not. I noticed it in small, unavoidable ways, bringing a fresh wave of sadness when I did. I didn’t miss my twenties the way people talk about missing them.I just understood, very clearly, that they were gone. Another thing stripped from me before I ever got to find out what it was supposed to be.
But all the while, I was building my way out.
I learned my cell the same way I learned my bedroom at Viktor's, and I created a world of hiding within my cage that no one could perceive besides me. The weak mortar near the sink. The hairline crack behind the bed frame that widened if I worried it long enough with a spoon. I learned how long it took for someone to respond to noise, and how little attention was paid to a woman who stayed quiet and followed instructions. Meals. Cleaning supplies. Paper. Pens. Hygiene kits. Medical packets. I saved what didn’t dissolve or register as missing, swiping items from passing guards or other inmates on the rotations I was escorted to shower. I hid pieces inside the bed frame, behind loosened brick, wrapped in toilet paper and pushed into gaps I expanded a millimeter at a time. Some months I got one usable part through bribing my guard. Some years I had to dismantle what I built, realizing I got the pressure or proper wiring wrong and have to start again.
I was twenty-nine when it was done, prying a brick out of the wall to shove the bomb inside. Twenty-nine when I pressed against my cell door and let the outer wall blast.
The force of the blast crushed into my chest and slammed me to the floor, the wall rupturing outward as concrete and dust tore through the space. The air was ripped from my lungs, my body stunned into stillness as debris fell over me, weight pinning my legs and shoulder. For a moment, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I laid there with my vision swimming and my good ear screaming with pressure, forcing myself not to panic. I was so close. I just had to drag myself out of rubble, and that was exactly what I did—limping and bloodied—but I laughed when the sun hit me. The crumpled wall was a gaping, screamingmouth, daylight pouring in where there had only ever been gray. The light was blinding, sharp enough to make my eyes water, my breath hitching. Still, I ran, shoes slipping on loose dirt, lungs burning. I hobbled between sprints, darting into the woods and scraping myself on branches. Bark tore at my arms and face, thorns catching in my standard issue orange jumpsuit before I tripped and went down hard, copper filling my mouth.
But I got up. I willalwaysget the fuck back up. A superpower, maybe. A death wish, more like it. Love? God, definitely.Rafe. Kane. Thorne. Leah. Alex. Mickey. Heath.Fuck, even Monty and her bad attitude. I didn’t know Matthias, Florence, or Grace well, but I knew they too would burrow inside my name with the others. How—howdid that happen? How did I keep collecting people into what remained to be a highly destructive orbit? Love seemed to be a lesson I could only learn the hard way, but I didn't care if I had to sell myself a thousand times to feel it again. My heart pleaded to be resurrected from the ash prison left me in as sirens split through the trees, red and blue bleeding through the leaves, the sound chasing me, hunting me, reminding me that freedom wasstillsomething I had to earn with pain.
The air shifted. The sound followed, chopping through the sky in a way that made my stomach drop. A helicopter. I ran harder, panic crawling up my throat, already bracing for hands on my back, a gun to my head, the sharp correction of believing for even a second that I could slip the leash. I didn’t look up. I didn’t want to see whose authority was about to claim me. I just kept moving, teeth clenched, heart hammering.
I burst through the trees and barely managed to stop myself from face-planting as the clearing opened up in front of me, the helicopter dropping fast, wind tearing at my clothes, dirt and leaves whipping up around my legs. I staggered back on instinct, my gaze darting back to the trees. Then the chopper landed, themachine settling just long enough for the door to slide open, and a man in black combat gear jumped down. Balaclava pulled tight over his face, familiar, warm brown eyes found mine. "Mickey?" I breathed. He grabbed my wrist and hauled me forward, his glove rough and real around my skin. I laughed, breathless and wild, smiling fully for the first time in years as he pulled me into the chopper and lifted us away from the prison, half of it still burning below. I was, at the very least, consistent.
"When the fuck did the Ravens get a helicopter?" I called, wide-eyed.
“A lot can change in eight years. Welcome back, bella,” Mickey called over the bash of the wind, my curls whipping around as he flew us. “Took every connection the Ravens had to get it from evidence but I couldn’t think of a better prison break gift.” He yanked something from his pocket and dropped it in my lap. “Your jacket and some spare clothes are waiting with the Ravens.”
I stared down, my fingers trembling as I plucked the silver casing into my hands.
“I filled it up,” he promised.
“So have I,” I murmured, and my thumb frantically clicked down.Tink, tink—ignite. The little flame danced in hello,V.S.shining across the lighter.
“This too.” He sat a Glock on my thigh.
I clutched the grip firmly. “They’re not out?”
“Kane is,” he said. “Within seconds of you both breaking out, the feds rerouted all efforts to Rafe.”
I gritted my teeth. “Do you have another bomb?”
