Sentencing Sapphire (Sapphire Dubois: Book 3)

Chapter 4

"Get your asses out of bed, ladies!" the guard shouted. "There isn't enough beauty sleep to save most of you. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Jones."

The burly voice jerked Sapphire out of her dream and threw her back into her nightmare. She opened her eyes to the gray mattress above, tight suffocating walls, and the sound of her cellmate, Lady X, scrambling to get down above her.

She wondered if the serial killers she'd locked away felt like she did every time she awoke; like a wild animal at the zoo pacing its pen, longing to be back in the jungle.

Sapphire closed her eyes, wanting to fall back into oblivion. Sleep didn't come easy here. Partly because she relived the airport and the bloody country club scene every time she closed her eyes. Partly because Lady X, who was lactose intolerant, couldn't lay off the milk, and spent her nights farting with Olympic vigor.

"Are you deaf, Your Highness?" Lady X shout-whispered, standing at attention by the cell door. "Get out of bed or you'll get us both in trouble."

Sapphire pushed herself up and toward the bars next to Lady X—a strong-armed pimp who'd gotten too rough with a John refusing to pay. Surely, he regretted not having forked over the fifty bucks now, being dead and all.

Nearly a month had passed since the cell doors closed on Sapphire that first terrible night at Lynwood, but she still felt it all—betrayal, sorrow, confusion, panic, and anger. The emotions festered inside Sapphire. Her life was over. Aston knew she was the Serial Catcher. Her friends, family, the whole world knew. It was her worst fear come to life. All the years she spent pretending, lying, and upholding her heiress persona, had blown up in her face.

Aston was a cop, and she got that. But the way he'd done it was worse than anything any killer could've done to her; Aston had made Sapphire trust him.

The cell doors opened at a sharp buzz, allowing Sapphire and the rest of the inmates to shuffle toward the dining hall in line like well-trained zombies in matching orange.

"Princeeeess." A series of kissing sounds came from behind her.

Sapphire kept her head down, trying to ignore the woman with the sharpened teeth.

"How was your sleep, Princess? Must be hard to be like us regular folk. No butler to kiss you goodnight. None of them fancy Beverly Hills satin sheets to sleep in."

Please. No one in Beverly Hills had used satin sheets since the nineties.

The lunch-lady inmate picked her nose then tossed three blobs of brown, gray, and green on her tray, and Sapphire found a table as far away from the crowd as she could.

She'd been a hot topic in the local papers while she was in Paris, and got harassed by the other inmates the second she arrived. They hated her for being an heiress. Her nicknames included, but weren't limited to: Princess, Your Highness, and Skinny Rich Bitch. Not the most creative people.

During her short stay at Lynwood, Sapphire had learned to fear two things. One: An undisclosed location called the Doom Room, where inmates went in with guards then came back out beaten bloody, and sometimes, not at all. Two: the showers that lacked protective security cameras. The other inmates saw this as a free for all and Sapphire could not fight back.

To prove to the upcoming jury that she was neither a murderer nor the Serial Catcher and just a delicate heiress, Sapphire had to pretend she wasn't a trained MMA fighter. It was hard not to take a swing when five naked women shoved you into a corner and told you they were going to string you up like a piñata, smack you until your insides fell out, then eat it like candy. Most of them were full of empty threats though.