“It’s either this or jail, Silas,” he says, and the warmth he’d been pretending to wear drops clean off. His voice turns administrative. “Pick your poison.”
There’s no room for interpretation in that. No illusion of freedom.
Adrian’s cane taps softly against the floor beside him, the rubber tip making a dull rhythm on tile. I don’t need to look at him to know he’s tense. I can feel it in the way the room shifts.
“I know what I’d pick,” he says, almost to himself.
Of course he does.
For Adrian, this is simple. A house. A family. A future that doesn’t involve courtrooms and metal doors. He sees an exit. A real one.
I wish it were his choice.
Because if it were his, it would be hopeful. Something that fits him.
For me, it feels like stepping into a space that was never meant to hold someone like me.
Jail makes sense. It follows the pattern. Fourteen-year-old kills his father. Troubled youth facility. Eighteen-year-old graduates to something harder. There’s logic in that trajectory. No one expects gratitude from an inmate. No one expects growth on a timeline.
But this...this would mean walking into their home carrying everything I’ve done like it’s luggage I can’t put down. It would mean sitting across from their daughter and wondering if shesees herself in me or something worse. It would mean university lecture halls and professors who might never know what I did, or who might find out and look at me differently.
It would mean being part of something that isn’t built on punishment.
I don’t know if I know how to exist in a place like that.
I look at Jake again.Uncle Jake.The name still feels strange in my head. He isn’t smiling now. He looks like a man who understands the weight of what he’s asking. There’s guilt in him, regret, and...something else.
Determination.
Stephanie’s hands remain steady on my shoulders. She isn’t gripping tighter. She isn’t pulling away. She’s giving me space without removing herself.
I exhale slowly.
“No part of this ends quietly,” I say, not as a threat, just as a fact.
If I go with them, I won’t become easier overnight. I won’t suddenly shed the anger that’s been stitched into me for years. And they won’t walk away untouched. Bringing me into their home would change things. It would complicate their daughter’s life. It would test their patience in ways they can’t fully predict.
And if I choose jail, that will change me too. Just in a direction everyone already expects.
The four walls around me feel like they’re listening, waiting for me to confirm whether I belong to them a little longer. The barred window lets in a thin stripe of light that cuts across the floor between us.
The Warden stands rigid, already calculating paperwork.
Adrian watches me with something dangerously close to hope.
Jake doesn’t look away.
Stephanie’s hands are still warm against my shoulders.
I realize then that this isn’t really about whether I deserve a second chance. It’s about whether I’m willing to step into one and risk proving everyone right about me if I fail.
And for the first time since they walked in, the choice doesn’t feel like poison.
It feels like a cure.
CHAPTER 2
Octavia
