“I love you so much, Christopher,” she panted.

“I love you, too.”

And then the room around me shifted, and I wasn’t having sex with Sarah anymore. Instead, I was sitting in a chair across from her father, Mr. Rizzuto. He was sitting on the plush white couching and looking back at me with a smile. He held out an envelope and pushed it into my chest. I took it.

“Look inside,” he said, taking a drag from his cigar.

I opened the envelope, and my jaw hit the floor. It was full of money. I pulled it out and counted a thousand dollars.

“This is too much,” I said, confused.

He stood and came to me, patting me on the back like a proud father. “You deserve it. You’ve been doing an amazing job around here. Christmas is right around the corner. Go buy your mother something nice.”

I looked down at the money in my hand, and when I looked up again, the room was different. I stood, my eyes taking in the blood-covered scene around me. My heartbeat quickened and panic filled my gut.

My eyes shifted around the room, landing on a dark figure. He carried Sarah’s lifeless body in his arms. Rage consumed me and I tackled him to the ground, my stomach spinning when one of Sarah’s arms fell to the floor before the rest of her.

I clawed at his dark face, kicking and punching with everything I had. Suddenly, the room began to spin and blur, and my arms felt too heavy to move. I felt drunk, but I never drank.

The faceless man fought back, and then he spun me, his heavy frame pushing me into the hardwood floor. I reached desperately for his face once more, but I only reached his neck. I dug my claws in, ripping at his skin and making him yell out.

I’d gotten a piece of that son of bitch.

The blur thickened, and the sounds around me became muffled. Darkness moved over me, but before I passed out, the last thing I saw was Sarah’s decapitated head and her lifeless eyes staring back at me.

I sat up with a jolt, shaking, my body covered with beads of sweat. Cold seeped into my veins, and I glanced around, terrified. The dark prison walls stared back at me, bringing me back to reality. I grabbed my chest, expecting my heart to pound a hole right through it. As I breathed, I could hear Scoop from my cell door.

“X? You okay?” he asked, leaning against the bars.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Once again, I’d missed the call for chow line up and the sounds of my cell opening. It was breakfast time, and I never slept past it. Officer Reeves was going to have my ass if I didn’t quit fucking up.

“I’ve been calling your name since they started to run the line, man. Are you sure you’re okay?”

I wasn’t okay. I’d had nightmares about that night for the past ten years, but never had there been another person, never had there been a faceless man that I had to fight. I was almost positive it was more than a nightmare. It was a memory.

After ten years, things were coming to light. I hadn’t done it. Someone else was there. He’d killed them, my girlfriend and her friend.

The shocking reality hit me like an anvil and I sat back, straining to remember more, but nothing else came to me. One thing was for sure, I’d been drugged. It was the reason I couldn’t’ remember much about the night of the murders. I was framed.

The pieces were slowly falling into place. Things I’d never thought about before moved into my brain. Things like the fact I would’ve never been able to cut someone into pieces with a dull knife. Lyla was right. I used to be so weak. Why hadn’t I realized that before?

Excitement rushed through me. For the first time in ten long years, I wasn’t being choked by guilt. It was sad that Sarah and her friend were dead. It was a sadness I was sure to carry around for the rest of my life, but I hadn’t done it. Lyla was right. I was innocent.

CHAPTER 16

x

THE NEXT DAY, I went looking for a fight every chance I had. Shouldering past the men on the block, I hoped to piss them off enough for them to swing at me. I practically seethed at the inmates during chow time, wishing a motherfucker would come at me. I was a like a rabid racehorse, foaming at the mouth and chomping at the bit.

I knew Lyla was back at work, and I wanted to see her. If things had changed since our kiss, I wanted to know before I let myself get too involved. Hell, I was already fucking involved. Maybe she would come in and act completely different toward me. If she were a smart girl, that was exactly what she’d do. I knew having anything to do with me was a bad idea; she should know it, too. Even if I was innocent.

The dynamics of being in prison had changed for me, though. No matter how much I pushed, no one would fight me. Also, I wasn’t being watching constantly, and it seemed as though people were going out of their way to avoid me. I meant to the point where they were walking on the other side of the hall in avoidance. It was just my luck. The moment I needed the inmates out for my blood, they wanted nothing to do with me. Maybe my beating the hell out of the COs was enough to deter them.