“Looks like it’s going to be a busy day,” an officer said with a smile. I didn’t know his name, and it was the first time I had seen him.

When my eyes moved from the officer to the inmate he had cuffed at his side, everything and everyone in the room disappeared.

Breathless, chest heaving, I stared at the giant who enveloped the room around us. My heart slammed against my ribs as I took in his large frame. The sheer size of him was overwhelming. His sweat-drenched uniform clung to the tapered V of his torso, displaying every curve and cave of his muscles.

He stood rigid; his six-foot-four frame and wide shoulders filling the doorway behind him. His thick chest and shoulders demanded to be released from his khaki uniform, which was stretched tightly over his tanned skin. His head was down, and I stared at his shaved head while taking in the many jailhouse tattoos that moved up his neck and down his exposed forearms.

As he raised his head, he looked up and raked me with the ice-cold stare of a sinner. His eyes were royal blue, a strange contrast to his bronzed skin. They stood out as he peered at me beneath thick, ebony brows. His shadowy eyes moved across my face, and his expression darkened.

His nose was long and arrow-shaped, his nostrils flaring angrily with each breath. With a squared jaw and thick, moist lips, he was beautiful and treacherous. Evil radiated from him, even though he had a face that was obviously chiseled by angels.

His glare blazed into me, stopping my breath and paralyzing me where I stood. He was gorgeous, he was dangerous, and I’d never been so taken aback by my hormones as they went wild through my body in thanks to my rapidly beating heart.

“Well, speak of the devil,” Dr. Giles said, taking my attention away from the dark angel who was staring me down. “What did you do this time, X?”

X.

This beautiful creature was the madman named X?

He was the slaughterer of men—the taker of life—the killer. A sinner with the body of a God and the face of a fallen angel, he was beautiful death—gorgeous hell. He was everything I was afraid of, and luckily for me, since I was new and Dr. Giles was busy, I was the one to provide him with care.

CHAPTER 2

CHRISTOPHER JACOBS

AKA-X

I SPENT TOO much time in medical. It wasn’t by choice. It was either the infirmary or the hole. Neither offered any sort of reprieve, but seeing her standing there with her bright, innocent eyes and long, red hair, I could almost forget I was stuck in hell.

Before I murdered Sarah, and Michael Welch, the guy who I later found out during my trial was a friend of hers from high school, in a psychotic rage, I had never used my fists. I was a lover, not a fighter. A nineteen-year-old momma’s boy—a rack of bones with unmarred skin and a bright, welcoming expression. Life was filled with tantalizing, exciting possibilities, and no one was more excited to embark on discovering those possibilities than me.

And then I snapped.

I went fucking crazy… mental. Apparently, I lost my mind, torturing and killing the girl I loved. I ripped their flesh apart with a kitchen knife and pulled their insides out.

My stomach rolled just thinking about it.

I could still smell them—the scent of their rotting guts on my fingers. Could still remember the look of absolute fear and death painted on their faces. All the blood that streaked the room. The memories weren’t sweet. They were catastrophic. The images broke me down every day and haunted me with terrible nightmares every night.

There was no relief. Not ever.

I wasn’t sure what caused my break. Hell, I didn’t even remember it, but since then, I’d spent the last ten years of my life fighting to survive—for balance in a place that was completely unbalanced—unhinged from reality and decent people.

There was more crime inside the walls of a penitentiary than outside. More drugs. More murder. More rape. There was more of everything, yet there was so much less. More than just your freedom was taken away. Your values were snatched from you. The ability to distinguish right from wrong was obliterated. It was all tossed into the trash with your belongings and anything you had left of the life you used to live.

Life without the chance of parole. That was what they gave me. However, not a day went by that I actually felt alive. It was if I’d been given the death penalty. My heart had stopped beating, and my brains turned to mush. I was nothing but a number in a building full them, but the minute I laid eyes on the new nurse, life filled me—bright and breathless—salvation.

She was life. I wasn’t.

The only reason I didn’t get the death penalty was because I pled guilty to all counts. My public defender pushed me to do that even though I had no memory of the murders. He said there was too much evidence against me. If I didn’t plead guilty, I’d be sentenced to death. Most days I wished I were. I wished someone would take me away from everything and everyone. I had nothing. I was nothing.