The Prison (Book 1)

Looming Calamity

Looming Calamity

"What?" he gaped, startled.

"I don't want the money and I don't want to leave this prison."

Mr. Julian was silent a good two minutes. I had made the poor man speechless, it seemed. He stared at me if I were mentally unstable.

I probably was.

But there was no helping it. I couldn't leave. I loved Schneizel with all my heart. Being away from him for more than a day would break my heart. I didn't realize that my heartstrings had tangled with Schneizel's until it had become impossible for us to live apart. We lived with the same heartbeat. I would simply unravel and die without him.

"Are you under threat? It's okay, you can tell me."

"No."

"I realize this is all overwhelming for you and scary but you mustn't—"

"I'm not scared."

He paused a moment, then his eyes narrowed ever so slightly and he asked, "Are you under the influence? Have been taking drugs?"

"No."

"Then why the fuck are you doing this?!" he cried, clearly distraught. He raked a hand through his once slicked-back, blonde hair, ruffling it.

Julian Evers was a good man. He genuinely cared for me and for my case, but I was going to have to disappoint him.

"I can't leave." When I saw that that answer wouldn't be enough for the eagle-eyed, driven lawyer, I decided to confide in him. "I... have someone here."

Understanding flashed through his eyes, followed by sympathy. "I'm afraid staying isn't an option. You've been exonerated. They don't keep innocent men in prison. They won't. There's nothing to punish you for. If anything, you should be rewarded. And you will, I'll make sure of it."

"You mean... I can't stay even if I want to?" I immediately felt tears pricking my eyes. My chest tightened unbearably to the point where I thought my ribcage would break and pierce my lungs. Everything hurt.

Julian sighed and said sympathetically, "No, you can't."

****

I listened to every word being said inside the visitation room with a sense of looming calamity. At the mention of a pardon, my heart seized.

The lawyer, Julian, said, "Ms. Williams felt that she had done you wrong by not standing up to her deceased husband's family, and allowing them to imprison you falsely. She wishes to make amends. She doesn't dare ask for your forgiveness, but she wants to make things right before it's too late. She's been living with the guilt for weeks, you see, and it's driven her half mad." A pause, and then, "Naturally, Ms. Williams wishes to reimburse you for all the financial loss that you have suffered, among other things."

I exhaled a long puff of air and closed my eyes. What was this I was feeling? Dread? Fear?

How ridiculous. How could I be afraid of something that I'd orchestrated, that I'd known would eventually happen? After all, I was the one who 'persuaded' Ms. Williams to hire a lawyer and have him come clean up her mistakes. Heck, I was the one paying for it all, and yet...

Now that it loomed over me like the hanging axe of a guillotine, I was hesitating, dreading our inevitable parting.

I wanted him to stay more than anything. I'd sell my soul to the devil in a heartbeat if we could safely be together.

When Aiden refused to leave and chose to stay with me, my heart knocked against my breastbone so painfully, I thought I'd actually die of happiness -ha! To have Aiden willingly choose me -me!- over the outside world, over having a normal life, over his freedom was the strongest declaration of love my childhood love could have ever given me.

But I did not deserve it, this happiness. Not in the least. Not when it meant tying my beloved to a life without a future, a life fraught with peril at every stinking corner.

Aiden's recent kidnapping from right under my nose had shown me something I didn't want to admit to myself- that my protection was lacking. That, despite my initial arrogant claims and posturing, I'd failed to keep Aiden out of harm's way. I'd gone to such lengths to show him that my protection was what he needed, what he should pay his dignity for, when in fact what he needed was to get out of his hellish prison, and as far away from me.

Oh, I'd known that this was coming even as I drove me cock deep inside him and filled him with my essence in a futile effort to mark him, to make his body remember me even if his mind forgot me yet again.

And I was selfish a second time, asking him to declare himself mine and mine alone, over and over again, all the while aware that a lawyer was on his way to set him free and render all that had transpired between us in my playroom ultimately pointless.

But I couldn't help himself. I had to claim Aiden! I'd shot my first load of jizz into a sock imagining Aiden's face, had spent my teens picturing meeting him again, and from then on I'd held him in my blackened heart as a fond memory up until the day I got wind of his crime and had him sent here, to The Prison from Hell where I'd foolishly and arrogantly thought that he'd stand a better chance of survival by my side -and under me.

Honestly, I deserved this miserable feeling that was rotting my chest like a poison. I certainly didn't deserve him.

It was time for me to let him go.

Or rather, I had to make sure that Aiden would let me go.