What was the point?
What was the goddamn point of any of it?
I passed a window, caught my reflection in the scratched plexiglass, and stopped.
I saw the monster my daughter saw. The monster Harper had finally walked away from.
Tattooed. Hardened. A killer who told himself he was a hero when, really, he was just a coward, too afraid to face what he’d done to the people he loved most.
I was so tired.
Tired of fighting. Tired of surviving. Tired of waking up every morning in this cage and telling myself that tomorrow might be different when tomorrow was just another gray wall, another cold meal, another twenty-four hours of nothing.
I’d been running on fumes for years. Hope for parole. Hope that Gwen might forgive me someday. Hope that maybe, just maybe, I’d get a second chance at a life worth living.
Harper had been the first real thing I’d felt in fourteen years. And I’d let myself believe, like the fool I was, that she might be the beginning of something.
Now there was nothing left to run on.
The tank was empty.
The yard was half full when I walked through the doors. Inmates scattered across the concrete, clustered in their usual groups. I wasn’t looking for trouble. Wasn’t looking for anything. Just moving because standing still felt too much like giving up, and I wasn’t ready to admit that’s exactly what I was doing.
I didn’t notice them until it was too late.
Doyle stepped out from behind the weight rack, flanked by five of his guys. The Southside crew. Mean bastards, every one of them. The kind who hurt people for fun and called it business.
Doyle’s face had healed since our last encounter, but the damage was still visible. Crooked nose I’d broken. Scar tissue above his left eye, where his head had met concrete. He’d spent weeks healing after I’d beaten him for threatening Harper.
Weeks to plan.
Weeks to gather enough backup that even I couldn’t fight my way out.
“Well, well.” Doyle’s smile was a knife. “Look who’s all alone.” His eyes traveled over my face, cataloging the fat lip, the black eye, the bruises I was still wearing from my last fight. His grin widened. “Looks like somebody already softened you up for me.”
I stopped walking. Assessed the situation with the detached calm of a man who’d been in plenty of fights and won most of them. Six on one. Bad odds. They’d positioned themselves to cut off my exits.
“Doyle”—I kept my voice flat—“brought your friends this time.”
“Thought it was only fair.” He cracked his knuckles. The sound echoed across the yard. “Seeing as you didn’t fight fair last time.”
“You threatened someone innocent. I put you in your place.” I cocked my head. “Seemed fair to me.”
His jaw tightened.
Doyle stepped closer. “You’re gonna pay for what you did to me. And then everyone in this yard is gonna see what happens when you fuck with me.”
I should have felt something. Fear. Anger. The familiar surge of adrenaline that preceded violence.
I felt nothing.
What was the point of fighting? What was I protecting? Harper was gone. Gwen was gone. Parole was a joke. I had eleven more years in this hellhole, and for what? To walk out with nothing?
Doyle wanted to hurt me?
Let him.
Maybe the physical pain would drown out the other kind.
