Chapter 1
Sterling
I jolted awake as the sound of a nightstick blasted against my cell doors, the metal’s shudder reverberating through the concrete beneath my bed. “Inmate!” the guard shouted, then promptly assaulted my cell with that damn nightstick again. I growled and cracked my eyes open, glaring daggers at him through the darkness. The fucking sun wasn’t even up yet, apparently. The guards don’t usually bother us during the night since it’s the only time we aren’t causing chaos. “What?” I rasped.
“You have a visitor,” he said. My eyes opened wider, and I recognized the guard as Officer Hank. A pudgy guy in his late fifties with a receding hairline and a double mortgage, who took his job a little too seriously most of the time, but overall he was one of the more decent guards we got in this shithole. I groaned and sat up, rubbing a hand over my face.
My beard had grown out and become unkempt, but there was no one to impress in prison, so it didn’t matter if I was clean shaven or ragged like a motherfucker. Except when it came to other inmates in the yard who side-eyed me. Found out that my thick, black beard, coupled with the muscles I earned from hours of torture with the weights, made anyone who thought to challenge me deeply reconsider.
“What time is it?” I asked groggily.
“Why? You got somewhere better to be?” Hank shot back.
“Fucking sleeping is better than whoever is visiting me,” I mumbled. No one visited me. My dad killed my mom when I was twelve, then turned the gun on himself. I had no siblings, bounced from foster home to foster home until I was sixteen, where my last foster family thought I was worth the trouble and dealt with my rebellion for the paycheck.
At least I stopped getting bounced around and aged out of the foster system in one place. But they didn’t give a shit about me, either. Once I turned eighteen, they tossed my shit out on the street and wished me the best of luck. A lot of good that did me.
“I can turn him away, princess, but sending away a visit from your attorney in the middle of the night seems like a dumb fucking idea,” Hank answered. I cocked an eyebrow at him curiously, my bright blue eyes trying to pierce through the darkness to gauge the authenticity of his words. I hadn’t seen my attorney in about two months, which was both equally disturbing and relieving, since my attorney was the closest thing I had to a brother.
After I settled at my last foster home, I was enrolled in the same high school where I would meet my now attorney. He and I hit it off and became inseperable. Well, he hit it off with me. I don’t know what the fuck he saw in me other than the damaged boy who started spiraling with drugs at sixteen. But he didn’t hesitate and brought me home to meet his parents and his sister, and their home began to feel like the first real home I’d had in years, since the time mom grabbed me and taken me on a surprise trip to Disneyland without dad. As an adult, I realized that surprise trip was an escape from him, which was probably why that trip was so nice, but he always found us. He always fucking found us.
“Get your ass up, inmate,” Hank spoke. “Your attorney made a trip to come see you in the middle of the night. Unless you really don’t want to hear what prompted this surprise visit, you’re coming with me.” I simply nodded and rose to my feet, running a hand through my hair nervously. Despite my beard, I kept my hair rather tamed; the shorter the hair, the less likely it could be used against you in a fight. Our fellow barber inmate did a pretty good job leaving enough length on the top to run my fingers through, but not long enough for someone to grab it and pull.
The key to my cell clanged loudly in the lock, and that happened to be the noise that pissed off my cell mate. How the hell he slept through my interaction with Hank, I’ll never know, but the keys woke him up. “Get the fuck out, pig. The rest of us are trying to sleep,” Richard grumbled.
“Waiting on you, sweetheart,” Hank crooned, then banged the nightstick against the cell door to make a point as he opened it.
“So help me, Sterling, get the fuck out. I had a shitty day. Literally. I need sleep,” Richard barked. I smirked and exited the cell quietly.
Richard was serving fifteen years for attempted murder and was put on inmate bathroom detail earlier this month. We don’t have the luxury of janitors in here, so Richard’s job was cleaning every single toilet in every single cell in prison. I got the other half of the janitor detail, the showers, and neither us actually knew which one was worse. You would think scrubbing a shit-stained toilet shared by two people who didn’t give two fucks if it was clean was bad, but the amount of blood and caked semen I had to scrub out of the showers was just as bad.
We were paired as cellmates about two years ago and received our new work assignments shortly afterwards. We weren’t sure if it was intentional for bunkmates to have the same line of work, but considering it created something of a bond between us, I’d like to think it was. In prison, a bond with another person was as rare as a cell phone, so once you had it, you never let it go.
I followed Hank quietly past the other cells, doing my damndest to keep my feet from scuffing along the floor. Richard tolerated me, but if I managed to wake up another inmate en route, I’d have to break someone’s nose tomorrow, and I really didn’t want to think about that right now. The only thoughts I allowed into my mind were trying to figure out why my attorney showed up out of the blue in the middle of the night.
I wasn’t eligible for parole, that much was obvious during sentencing. Ten years ago, I got myself so plastered that I couldn’t see straight and drove my poor excuse of a car straight into a tree at the top speed it offered me, ninety-five. No skid marks on the scene, no indication I even tried to stop. I was charged with driving while intoxicated well above the legal limit and reckless endangerment because they said it was a miracle I didn’t kill someone. How fucking wrong they were.
It wasn’t a miracle that I walked away from that tree; it was piss-poor aim. My tires slid on a puddle at the last second and wrapped the passenger side of the car around the tree. I had some broken ribs, shattered my right femur, and multiple gashes across my throat and chest from where the windshield exploded. Spent months in the hospital recovering because I’d also managed to knock myself into a coma. But that was never the plan. The plan was to never wake up, and everyone saw it as a miracle that I hadn’t killed myself. I saw it as just another thing in my life I failed at.
Hank opened the door to the visitation room, the washed-out fluorescent lights casting a sickly, ghostly glow against tables. Seven circular tables were spread-out in this small room, no more than three chairs per table, the circular configuration preventing inmates from sitting directly next to anyone. Even though the only people who visited us actually wanted to be here and weren’t afraid of us, the prison still perceived us as a threat during visitation. For most of us, the only people who came to visitation were those helping us survive this hellhole. For me, however, my visitor was half the reminder of my failed suicide, and the other half hasn’t seen me since I crashed.
Maximus rose to his feet from the table furthest from the door, the fluorescent lights making the thick manilla envelope on the table glow. Max wore a pressed black suit with a black tie, his hair slicked back so perfectly that there wasn’t a stray hair out of place. Contrary to my rugged beard, Max kept himself clean-shaven, his green eyes hard as he studied the guard beside me. Max was only a few inches shorter than me, but the essence of a criminal defense attorney filled the room so much that Hank coughed nervously beside me.
I had been pretty damn resistant when Max approached me a few years ago, after he had passed the bar, and offered representation; the whole reason I crashed my car was to get away from him and his family before my black heart could break anymore, but there he was. Fresh out of law school, degree in hand, partner at one of the most prestigious criminal defense firms in the state. Max had been working on my case diligently for months, most of the time off the clock, trying to find a way to get me out sooner, but the months blurred into years and we both realized I wasn’t getting out a minute sooner than the end of my sentence. Even after that, Max planned visits to see me as often as he could, which was why today was surprising; we hadn’t talked in months, let alone planned a visit.
“I’ll take it from here,” Max spoke to Hank, his green eyes locked on the guard.
“Protocol dictates that I remain present.”
“So that he is not a threat to anyone else, I am aware,” Max said, crossing his arms over his chest. “And when you leave, there will be no imminent threat that I need to be aware of.”
“Mr. Turner --”
“Does attorney-client privilege mean so little to you that you’d lose this piss-poor excuse of a job over it?” Max snarled, and I cocked my head slightly out of curiosity. “It’s three in the morning. Get the fuck out.”
“I swear, you two are related,” Hank grumbled. “I’ll be right outside that door if you need anything.”
As soon as the door closed behind Hank, I raised an eyebrow at Max. “You know, this could have waited until normal human hours so you could maintain some civility in your attorney status.”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Max shrugged, his unpleasant demeanor suddenly dissipated. I grinned despite myself and simply shook my head. Ten years hadn’t changed a goddamn thing between us. Even in high school, we were each other’s solace and immediate grounding to the real world; neither of us could stay upset when in the other’s presence.
“So, to what do I owe the surprise?” I asked.
“You really don’t know what week it is, do you?” Max asked as he sat in his chair, motioning for me to sit in the one opposite him.
“Today is Tuesday, July ninth. What about it?”
“You really don’t know,” Max said softly, a faint sadness in his voice. “You stopped counting.”
“A few years ago, yeah,” I shrugged. “Didn’t see the point of counting down my release. It just depressed me even more.” And I couldn’t kill myself in here. I could get another inmate to do it, sure, but all the current death row and life sentences were in a different ward of the prison, and I would be damned if I cursed someone with eternity in here just to escape my own hell.
“July sixteenth was when you were sentenced.”
“Pretty aware of that detail, thanks. My anniversary is coming up.”
“Your release date.”
“My what now?”
“July sixteenth, as in next week’s July sixteenth, is the end of your ten-year sentence.”
I gripped the table as a ringing deafened my ears. No, that wasn’t right. I’d only stopped counting about three years after I was incarcerated. Had the time bled together so much that I hadn’t known seven more years had passed? Sure, Max grew up and filled out and easily gave women a run for their money, but he had always been like that. It had been ten years?
I slowly fixated my blue gaze on Max’s face, and it was like I was truly seeing him for the first time. The years creased his face, dark circles rimmed beneath his eyes from hours spent compiling research for cases. He was still a handsome son of a bitch, but sure enough it was there; ten years of life had taken a toll on him.
“Ten years,” I whispered in disbelief.
“You really didn’t know why I was here?” Max asked gently. “At three in the morning, a week before your release?”
“I stopped counting,” I repeated numbly. “Max...what the hell am I going to do?”
I have no family. None. Max and his family were my family before I fucked it all up. His mom and dad, who forced me to call them the same, hadn’t visited once, and neither had his sister. Just Max. He assured me it was nothing personal, that everyone was just so busy they couldn’t make the five hour commute one way to come see me. Which I guess makes sense, but it pisses me off even more. I’m not worth a one day trip for a one hour visit?
“We’ll figure it out, Silver,” Max said, and a pang shot through my chest so fast I gasped. I hadn’t heard that name in years. After I was incarcerated, I made Max swear to never call me that again. Silver was gone, dead behind these bars where the tree and the car failed, but hearing that name bloomed something new, and all the positive memories came flooding back. Christmas with his family, teasing his little sister about her crushes in school, bullshitting with my best friend on the couch while we played video games. I felt all of it for the first time in ten years, and fuck if my black heart colored red just a little bit.
“I have nothing, Max,” I continued. “I have no money, nowhere to go, no one to help me—”
“You have me,” Max interjected. “And Mom and Dad and Mack.”
“They don’t give a shit about me,” I spat.
“We’ve been over this,” Max said, exasperated. “They’ve been busy with life, man. Shit happens.”
“For ten years?” I snapped, rage flowing through me. “They’ve been too busy for ten fucking years to see me? To call me? Why has it only been you? Because you’re my attorney?”
“Silver, calm the fuck down,” Max warned. “I am not here purely out of obligation. You’re my brother, and you’re getting out in a week. I want to help you.”
“You shouldn’t help me,” I grumbled, rage dissipating back into self-despair. “You know how much money the government would have saved if someone had just done an air bubble in my IV or smothered me with a fucking pillow? Not to mention how much it would have benefited you. You gave up so much of your life for me and didn’t receive a fucking dime.”
“I never became your attorney for the payout,” Max snapped. “I became your attorney because there was no one better suited for your case and release.”
“And you’re not getting paid.”
“Silver, forget the pay. We miss you,” Max stressed the last word. “Me and Mom and Dad, and even Mack. We will figure this out. I need to move some things around for you, but I’ll be back in a few days, and when I come back, we’ll have a solid plan. You’ll have a support system to help you adjust back into society.”
I nodded numbly but cast my eyes on the thick manilla folder beneath Max’s hands. My case file. Pages and pages of my depressive episodes, countless trips to the prison nurse within the first two years, and trips to solitary to prevent me from being a danger to myself. Even after incarceration, before I realized the lifers and death row guys weren’t on my ward, I started fights. I got people worked up, and they’d beat the shit out of me. Broken arms, broken nose, fractured cheekbones; anything to not feel anymore, and hopefully that one beating would be the one that killed me, but it never did. I woke up. Every fucking time.
An image of Mack flashed before my eyes, and I squeezed them shut, desperate to make it go away. I put my family through more hardship than they ever deserved by surviving and being incarcerated, and now I’m going to be a burden when I get out of here. Not a day has gone by that I wish that tree and my car had merged into one and killed me, because facing Mack after all this time hurts worse than everything that’s happened since.
