The Rogue Mate

Chapter One.

Three years later they decided that they hadn’t ruined my life enough.

Life in prison had been hell. I’d witnessed many stabbings of guards and other prisoners in the maximum security prison I’d been sent to. It was full of murderesses, baby killers, rapists, brutal gang members; the worst of the worst.

It was violent and I had feared for my life every day. In a prison full of convicts with nothing left to lose- there’s really no way to punish the worst of them; what could they do to make it worse? Add on a couple of years? Segregation? No, the unspoken rule was that if you're on death row, prison might as well be a license to kill.

Gangs were prominent and it was really a case of join a gang or become the newest amusement; the chew toy, to put it mildly. I knew that gangs were bad news and I tried to stay away from them, but riots were common, and one day a large riot broke out and I was attacked; stabbed seventeen times.

I still refused to join a gang; I’d never forsake my morals, but after that I became friends with a few of the nicer women and in the hour we got outside, we trained in martial arts which taught me how to defend myself.

One thing I’d noticed was that many people only realize their talents after getting locked up; you take a bunch of women with zero college or legal work experience, lock them in a big building, and suddenly they're master engineers.

You've probably heard about prisoners being pretty good at turning stuff like spoons and pencils into deadly knives, but that stuff is easy work. A skilled prisoner can make a knife out of literally any solid substance you care to give them. Day after day I watched my cell mate wetting sheet after sheet of newspaper and compressing them together under a small stack of books. Eventually, the paper dried into a rigid cardboard brick and she sharpened this on the floor of our cell; in about a month, she had a weapon.

I could see how people went mad, why they committed suicide; decades of waiting for death, violence, the fear, with no end in sight- it would be enough to slit your own wrists or hang yourself in your cell.

Once again I was being summoned again as new evidence had surfaced concerning my case and since the technology was better, there was a real chance I would be finally be proven innocent.

The media had forgotten about me in the three years I’d been locked away. I’d have visitors at first, journalists trying to get the inside scoop, but I told them to piss off; I just wanted them to leave me alone. From what I gathered they took to publishing lies about me, degrading me further with talk of mental illness and sadistic tendencies.

It has been déjà vu as I’d been transported back and forth to numerous trials. I sat before judge and jury as they debated my case; I was sick of it.

I took an Alford Plea which allowed me to maintain my innocence and set me free, but by law I was still a murderess. I should’ve felt some relief when I saw the outside world again for the first time in years, but I didn’t; I felt numb. The search for my uncle’s murderer continued and I knew that they only cared because he’d been a very wealthy man with a very influential ranch. And now, both his wealth and his ranch were mine.

I loved the ranch but it wouldn’t be the same without him. They’d paid me huge amounts for the lost years of my life, making sure that I wouldn’t sue them. They tried to replace lost time with money. It didn’t work. It was compensation for something they could never replace.  

I flew from Alabama back to the Colorado/ Montana borderline with the clothes on my back, my license and a credit card.

I caught a bus to the nearest city and looked around for a while. Some people gave me weary glances and many women dragged their children away from me.