Chapter Twenty
In the days that followed Levi’s confession, his promise, Roman did his best to sort his feelings on the matter. Too much of his bandwidth stretched to worry for Levi and Ezra in equal measure. Even as Ezra continued being cold to him since the night Roman spent with Jake…with Jake and the other men. Roman twisted in his bed, ignoring the faint smell of sex that still lingered in the cell. Not sex with Ezra, no, he’d tired of Roman by this point. Roman could smell Jake, the other men, and himself. The perfume of lust and deceit made each breath excruciating.
Roman couldn’t outrun his memories of what he’d done, his thoughts of Levi’s promise, or his concerns for what would happen to Ezra. Worse, what would happen to Levi if he lost?
Roman snapped open his eyes. Was that worse? Was his worry for Levi stronger than Ezra’s? That gnawed and clawed at Roman’s insides. He buried the thoughts, the hope and desire he held for Levi, the happiness it filled him with, the curiosity that bubbled every time Levi approached. Roman wasn’t allowed to think such things. It wasn’t good for him, it wouldn’t be condoned by Ezra, and it wasn’t fair to Levi.
“Hey,” Ezra said, slipping off his top bunk and finally breaking the silence.
Roman sat up, eagerly awaiting more words, desperate to fill the silence from Ezra’s pause but worried he’d overstep and end the conversation prematurely. Roman didn’t want to overstep.
“Come suck my dick.” Ezra fished his cock out of his pants, expectingly.
“Sure.” Roman slipped off the bed quickly and crawled over on his knees to where Ezra stood.
It’d been so long since Roman and Ezra had been intimate. Intimate. That was a word Roman clung to about the arrangement. It helped sort his feelings, helped him accept his situation, and helped him come to terms with his sexuality.
There had been harsh words, ugly words, and Roman thought he’d lost their connection, their friendship, but as he went to work stroking and sucking Ezra hard, he believed this bond could be salvaged.
Roman would do better. He’d try harder. He’d make Ezra happy again. Everything would be okay.
As Roman’s head bobbed, Ezra got a firm grip and rammed his cock down Roman’s throat.
“You think you’ll choke on Levi’s dick this much?” Ezra looked down at Roman, watching him struggle, watching Roman desperately swallow and hold all of Ezra.
He’d done this to Roman a hundred times over. He could handle it, could resist the gag reflex and let the tears roll down his cheeks. But Roman couldn’t handle the accusation, the question that hit harder than Ezra’s entire shaft down his throat.
“I didn’t realize there was any fight left in ya.” Ezra bucked his hips, choking Roman with his cock, demanding Roman take every inch, not with words but the rough thrust again and again. Ezra hadn’t been this brutal in a long time. He wanted to break Roman down all over again, it seemed, shatter his willpower, and remind him of his place in life. But Roman already knew his place and accepted Ezra for everything he craved. Roman would give the man anything and more if possible. He just needed to understand why Ezra was angry, why Ezra suddenly rejected him, why Ezra allowed—no, arranged—the night with Jake Finnegan and his crew.
As Roman gagged, Ezra spit onto his face, holding Roman to the base of his dick and rocking his head forward. Roman worked to keep up, to fix this.
Roman didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to react. What did Ezra know? This was some new trick. Ezra always managed to trick Roman, but he could never see the trap until after the fact.
“Bet you thought you were pretty clever, huh?” Ezra controlled the motion, as he often did, moving Roman’s head, making him obediently compliant to servicing the man.
Ezra’s dick became easier to hold in Roman’s mouth as his erection lessened. It seemed Ezra struggled with this information almost as much as Roman.
“I can’t even keep it up—that’s how much you make me sick.” Ezra tucked his slick dick into his pants and shot Roman a look of absolute disgust. “Bet you’re just dreaming of the day Levi becomes champion. Bet you’re hoping that’ll save your cheap ass, keep you from getting passed around.”
Roman trembled.
“But he’ll get bored with you just like I got bored with you, just like everyone who takes a turn on you gets bored.” Ezra ran his hands through Roman’s ruffled pink hair and dragged him to his feet.
“Levi’s not going to do anything,” Roman said weakly, regretting the lie the second it left his mouth.
“You really think anything happens in this place without my knowledge?” Ezra leaned in close, invading Roman’s space in a way he’d grown so accustomed to, yet for the first time in a long time, it sent a shiver through Roman’s body. “Your little no-nothing friend thinks he can make a move for my power. He thinks he can step up to the rank of champion because he got lucky against a few nobodies.”
“No.” Roman held his head low, unable to look into Ezra’s angry green eyes.
“For too long, I’ve dragged out this slow death of yours.” Ezra slapped his hands on Roman’s face, forcing him to meet his gaze. “You know I hate you, right. You know I’ve hated you. I’ve hated you since the first day I saw you.”
These weren’t questions; they were facts, truths that Roman had learned to ignore over the long, brutal months. He gave way to Ezra’s carnal desires as a way of mutual pleasure, not subservient torment. He focused on Ezra’s charming smile, not his hateful eyes. He accepted his feelings would always need to be second in order for them both to be happy.
“In the arena…” Roman hadn’t seen Ezra’s hatred during their first match, but he’d seen it nearly every day since. When Ezra talked to him, laughed with him, kissed him, fucked him, Roman always saw the hate and malice and rage in Ezra’s eyes, but he tried so very hard to focus on the smiles and kind words.
“Not the arena.” Ezra shook Roman’s head with a no. “I’ve hated you so much longer than that.”
“W-what?” Roman looked at him pleadingly. “Why?”
“The name Stacy Anderson mean anything to you?”
Hearing Stacy’s name come from Ezra’s mouth hit Roman like a fucking sledgehammer. If there were any shreds of calm, collected stability left inside his psyche, it’d surely been shattered at this point.
Roman stared wide-eyed and bewildered.
“I loved her with everything I had,” Ezra spoke calmly but was unable to hide the hate in his glare. “You took her away and then had the audacity to live your life.”
Roman withered a bit with each word, listening intently to Ezra, though his confession struck harder than any fist.
“When you got locked up, I tried to move on, tried to see the justice in you losing a few years of your life after you took all of Stacy’s years away. Everything.” Ezra’s words held a venomous heat that hit Roman’s cheek with breathy rage. “But then I found out you were just living it up! When I heard you were some hotshot champion, swinging your dick around and acting like you owned this place, it made my skin seethe.”
Roman never considered himself that lucky as the champion. It always felt one misstep away from falling apart. And it had. Ezra had ensured that much, taken it from Roman. He didn’t need a further explanation. He’d pieced it together. Ezra wanted Roman to suffer, so he took away his title.
“Stripping you of your title, that took so much training and preparation,” Ezra said. “And I really just wanted your ranking so I could make you a target, make your death quick and easy and satisfying.”
Roman listened obediently, having months of training to not flinch at Ezra’s words, Ezra’s actions, Ezra’s wants and needs and desires. Roman let Ezra satisfy himself with a confession meant to cut Roman down—if there was anything left in the man to break.
“When I first arrived, I wanted you dead,” Ezra said plainly, no hidden malice, just a fact of life. A fact Roman accepted. “After what you did, you thought you could live your best life, riding on top of the world as some fucking wasteland champion to a tiny prison that you carved into your image.”
That made sense. Roman didn’t deserve to keep his head above water, to swim against the brutal currents. No, Ezra had arrived so he could shove Roman’s head underwater and let the undertow drag him to the depths where he belonged.
“But then I realized with what you did to Stacy, you deserved so much worse,” Ezra continued. “I wanted to break you the same way you broke me. You hollowed out my soul and left me with nothing. A vacuum of a man. I decided to hollow you out, break you, own you, make your every waking thought a service to me.”
Roman hated looking back on the night Stacy died. The blood that covered Roman’s fists. The man gasping on the ground. The way one angry shove knocked Stacy into traffic. The way one moment, one action, had changed the entire course of Roman’s life.
There were so many things Roman hated to look back on. He hated thinking about the night he spent with Jake and his crew. He hated thinking about all the ways he willingly insisted on Ezra debasing him, encouraging it even. He hated thinking about all the looks he got from everyone in Marlow Penitentiary. More than anything, Roman hated himself and wished to forget all the ways he deserved this.
But maybe he did deserve this, mind flitting to Stacy’s broken body. Corpse. Flesh barely held together in the wake of a semi-truck. Maybe Roman could finally accept his place, his punishment. This was why the universe let him fall; this was why the universe laughed as he plummeted, as he crashed, as he shattered into a million pieces of desperation and insecurity. Roman finally accepted his fate.
“So, all of this…” Roman gestured to the cell, the champion’s suite, the life he now lived under Ezra’s thumb. “This was because of what happened to Stacy.”
“Because of what you did to Stacy,” Ezra corrected.
“I’m s-s-sorry.” Roman shivered, the word colder than any blizzard and a useless waste based on the scowl that burned through Roman’s flesh.
He didn’t want to apologize. He wanted to fall back to his knees. He wanted to tell Ezra he understood that he’d accept this. Part of him wondered if that would finally free him from the guilt he harbored, from the resistance of secretly wanting more in life. Roman never deserved more from life. And he certainly didn’t after taking a life.
“I don’t need or want your apologies.” Ezra playfully smirked. “I just need you to suffer, which you have and will continue to do. It was so easy to make you compliant, like you knew you deserved this.”
Maybe Roman did know that on some level, some warped perception of guilt for his actions. But did he really deserve all of this? Did his cruelty truly warrant complete and utter destruction? How much suffering would he need to continue enduring until the scales were balanced?
“Once I decided I could break down your mind and ego, make you serve me completely, make you love me, need me, I knew I could lead you where you belonged.”
“Belonged?”
“You don’t think Jake was a mistake, do you?” Ezra laughed. “It took some time to get you there, to make it your choice, always making it your choice.”
Ezra had arranged it. He’d sent Roman to the showers knowing Jake would fake an attack, knowing Roman would run to Ezra, knowing Ezra would then bring Jake back and make things right, and Roman—being the desperate, broken man he was—did whatever he could to see Ezra smile, even if he died a little inside every time Jake or one of his men raked their hands over Roman’s body, every time he served them, every time they broke him in a little more.
“The long-term goal was always to send you to Jake and his crew, let you choose it even.” Ezra wrapped his hands over Roman’s face, still smiling, still laughing. “I was so excited to watch them slowly decimate what I’d already shattered.”
Roman trembled in Ezra’s grasp, trying to free himself from the hands slapped on the sides of his face, but he was too reserved, too well-trained to properly defy the unwanted grip.
“Then Jake the psychotic Snake went and got himself killed in some gang feud bullshit,” Ezra spat the words more annoyed than angry.
Ezra hadn’t pieced together what Levi had done. He didn’t know Levi’s involvement in Jake’s death, in burning down his crew.
“No matter. Plans change.” Ezra smacked Roman’s face, then released his hold on him. “You took away the most important person in my life. You killed my best friend. Maybe when I kill yours, you’ll understand how I feel.”
Ezra left the room. Roman collapsed to the floor, each breath a wispy struggle as the walls spun and his thoughts twisted into gnarled nightmares. Everything that had happened. Everything that would happen. It was his fault. Ezra had come to destroy him. Ezra had warped his understanding of friendship. Broken Roman until he could no longer recognize himself. Now, Levi would die. The last person who actually seemed to give a damn about what happened to Roman. He didn’t deserve someone so kind, so caring, so brave. And Levi certainly didn’t deserve to die for someone as weak, as lost, and as useless as Roman.
He crumbled into himself, crying over the last year of his life, the lengths he’d gone to live just one more day. To survive. This no longer felt like surviving. It was a chore, a waste, and Roman didn’t know what to do.