Page 11 of Freedom’s Inferno

Charlie pushed back from the desk, the chair wheels screeching against the hardwood. The backpack swung onto his shoulder with a dull thud, and he crossed the room in three long strides. He didn’t look at me when he reached the door, just paused long enough to drag a hand through his dark hair before disappearing into the hall. The door shut with a muted click, but the echo of him stayed behind, pressing against my skin.

I stood frozen, eyes locked on the empty chair behind Richard’s desk; his ghost stared back at me, karma thick between us. My arms tightened around the robe as I exhaled a shuddering breath.

Charles Sterling thought he could cage me, dictate terms, and pull me into his war with Costa. He didn’t understand that I had already fought my way out of one set of bars, and I wasn’t about to allow myself to be confined again.

Chapter 5

Chuck

Ididn’t get much sleep. My mind was too busy turning over every word Lana said, searching for truths under stones.

She admitted to killing Richard. That was surprising.

I knew she did it, of course she did, but I never imagined she would come clean so easily. Still, maybe that was the point. Maybe her confession was meant to knock me off balance, to convince me she was telling the truth about the twenty million. I couldn’t trust her, but I needed to keep her close until this shit was sorted. I would not be the only one with an axe hanging over my head.

By the time Lana was up, I had already used the downstairs bathroom to shower and dress myself. I sat on the edge of the sofa, barely able to contain my restless energy. Seven-thirty in the morning and I was ready to go.

Across the room, a framed wedding photo caught my eye. I hadn’t noticed it the night before, but in the thin morning light it was impossible to miss. Lana and Richard stood beneath an arch of white flowers, her hand resting on his chest, his arm banded possessively around her waist. And there I was, just off to the side. Best man. Smile fixed, jaw tight, already aware I was edged out of the frame long before the picture was taken.

Yale came back to me in sharp, unwelcome flashes. Richard and I had been inseparable then. Late nights, shared classes, plans that stretched too far into the future. We’d talked about everything: firms we’d build, money we’d make, how we’d never turn into our fathers.

Then he met Lana.

Suddenly, he was always busy. Dinners cancelled. Study sessions cut short. He’d shrug it off, promise we’d catch up soon, but “soon” never came. Everything revolved around her after that, like she’d pulled him into her orbit and I’d been left drifting outside it.

I still remembered the first time Richard introduced us. But, I didn’t need an introduction. He had no idea I’d been working up the nerve to ask her out for weeks.

I’d first laid eyes on her at a college party. One of those stupid keggers Richard dragged me to against my will. Too many strangers and too much noise. The first thing I’d done was find a wall to keep at my back.

She came out of nowhere.

The low light threaded through her red hair, bouncing around her shoulders in thick waves. Her eyes were huge and brilliant, this vivid blue, like they’d captured the essence of the Caribbean ocean. She didn’t belong in a basement that reeked of stale beer and cheap cologne.

“There you are,” she’d said, jabbing the tip of her index finger at my chest. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”

Before I could open my mouth she closed the distance between us, both hands gripping the front of my shirt, and kissed me.

The kiss wasn’t a peck.

Her body melted into me, her lips breaking against mine with a kind of loose, unhurried intention that short-circuited every coherent thought in my head.

The party disappeared—the noise, the bodies, the bass thudding through the floor—all of it fell away until there was nothing left but her mouth and the strawberry scent of her hair.

My cock throbbed with the specific, disorienting sensation of wanting something I hadn’t known existed thirty seconds ago.

She pulled back, blinking at me. “What’s your name again?”

I stared at her, mouth hanging open like a fucking trout.

Something across the room caught her attention then. A shout, a friend calling her name, some thread of the party pulling her back into itself.

She patted my chest, lips tipping in a small frown. “I have to go now.”

I’d stood against that wall for a long, long time after that.

Then, one semester and two blue balls later, she walked into my Ethics in Finance lecture and sat right in front of me. She was always early, always the first student with her hand in the air. Her arguments cut straight to the rot at the center of whatever the class was dissecting. And that mouth. She had a way of cutting a man down with nothing but words, and leaving him grateful for it.

She never threw me a second glance, but the woman consumed me. At first, I dismissed it as purely academic admiration, but it gnawed at me, a relentless hunger I couldn’t quite starve out.