Chapter 38 Harper
HARPER
Silas unlocked Knox’s cuffed hands and chain and jerked his chin toward the door. “Lockdown’s lifted. Full head count. Back to your cell, Blackwood.”
Knox wouldn’t even look at me. The man who had entered this room, ready to burn down the world for me, had retreated somewhere I couldn’t reach. He wasn’t angry anymore. He wasn’t dangerous.
I followed them. “Wait. Knox, I need to—”
“Lockdown’s over.” His voice was flat. Hollow. Nothing like the man who’d been whispering promises against my skin minutes ago. “I need to get back for head count.”
It killed me, how gutted he sounded.
Silas paused at Knox’s tone. Standing in front of the infirmary, Silas looked between us, clearly trying to calculate what had happened. His eyes swept over my tear-filled eyes.
I could practically see the conclusions forming behind his eyes—Silas assuming Knox had pulled something. Had made me upset.
Good little Silas, ready to play the hero.
He puffed up his chest and stepped in front of Knox’s path. Toe to toe. Close enough that I could see the vein pulsing in Silas’s temple.
Knox stopped. And in the half second before Silas spoke, Knox’s eyes lifted—just once—to the camera mounted at the front. My stomach dropped. We were squarely in its range.
Every single thing Knox did from this moment forward would be caught on film. I needed to stop this. I needed to say something, do something, because whatever Knox was about to do, there would be no denying it, no gray area, no he-said-she-said. It would all be right there on tape.
I opened my mouth.
“What did you do to her?” Silas snarled.
“What did I do?” Knox didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Just stood there with his hands loose at his sides and looked at Silas like he was examining something stuck to the bottom of his shoe.
“Knox …”
If he started punching, what could I realistically do? I wasn’t physically strong enough to pry them apart.
“You know what I’ve noticed?” Knox’s voice was conversational. Almost bored. “Some men are so weak, so pathetic, they never pick a fight with someone their own size.”
Silas’s eyes narrowed.
“They’re little cowards who put their hands on women because it’s the only way they can feel like men.”
The words landed like a match on gasoline.
I saw it happen in slow motion. The way Silas’s nostrils flared. The way his hands curled into fists at his sides. The way his face flushed a deep, dangerous red.
And I understood, with sudden, horrifying clarity, exactly what Knox was doing.
He hadn’t said anything directly offensive to a guard. Hadn’t threatened anyone. Hadn’t broken a single rule. The words were vague enough to be about anyone, any hypothetical abuser, any weak man in the world.
But Silas knew.
Silas knew Knox was talking about him.
And men like Silas couldn’t let that slide.
Men like Silas had spent their whole lives being overlooked, underestimated, disrespected.
That’s why they became abusers in the first place.
That’s why they took jobs that gave them power over people who couldn’t fight back.
Their egos were so fragile, so desperately hungry for validation, that even the slightest challenge felt like an existential threat.
Knox had probably met a hundred men like Silas in prison. He’d know exactly which buttons to push. Exactly how to light the fuse and step back to watch the explosion.
He was laying a trap.
And Silas walked right into it. He drew his arm back and slammed his fist into Knox’s face before I could even scream.
The crack of knuckles against bone echoed through the infirmary like a gunshot. Knox’s head snapped to the side. Blood sprayed from his lip, droplets splattering against the white linoleum floor.
Another punch. This one to the ribs. Knox doubled over, but didn’t go down. Didn’t fight back. Just took it.
His hands stayed at his sides. Open. Unthreatening. Even as Silas rained blows down on him, Knox kept his palms visible, his posture submissive. Making damn sure there would be no question about who the aggressor was.
“Stop!” I screamed. “Somebody, help!”
Silas was wild now, feral, all the rage he’d been carrying since he walked into this prison finally finding an outlet. He wasn’t thinking about consequences. Wasn’t thinking about witnesses. Wasn’t thinking at all.
He was just a small, pathetic man who’d finally been seen for what he was, and he couldn’t stand it.
I launched myself between them, shoving at Silas’s chest with both hands. “Get off him! Get off!”
The commotion must have finally reached the hallway because, suddenly, there were boots pounding against tile. Voices shouting. Hands grabbing Silas’s arms and wrenching him backward.
“Whitmore! What the fuck?”
Two correctional officers had Silas pinned against the wall. A third was checking on Knox, who stood there with blood dripping from his split lip. An eye already starting to swell and darken.
He caught my gaze for just a moment.
And in that moment, I understood everything.
Knox hadn’t planned this when he walked into my infirmary today.
He’d come in here ready to tear Silas apart with his bare hands.
I was the one who’d talked him out of it.
I was the one who’d laid the math out in front of him: “So, you’re just going to throw it all away?
Everything you’ve worked for? Everything we could have? ”
He’d heard me. He’d actually heard me.
And then he’d taken the information, turned it over in that quiet, calculating mind, and found a different path.
If throwing the first punch would make Silas the victim, then Knox would make damn sure Silas threw the first punch instead.
He’d flipped my own logic into a weapon.
Used it not to protect himself, but to take Silas off the board entirely.
He’d done it for me. Even after everything I’d said. Even after I’d grouped him with my father and Silas. Even after I’d thrown his past in his face and broken things off with him, he’d still found a way to protect me.
In a way that would guarantee Silas was painted the villain in the prison’s eyes. So, Silas would, in theory, be punished for it. Hopefully fired, so I wouldn’t have to endure him being here.
It was brilliant.
“Did Blackwood attack you?” One of the officers was demanding answers from Silas. “Did he throw the first punch?”
“He was running his mouth!” Silas strained against the hands holding him.
The officer turned to me. “Nurse? What happened here?”
I straightened my spine. Met Silas’s eyes. And for the first time since I’d fled our apartment in the middle of the night, I wasn’t afraid of him.
“Officer Whitmore attacked Inmate Blackwood,” I said, my voice steady. “Blackwood never raised a hand. He kept his palms open and visible the entire time. He made no threatening movements. He was simply waiting to be escorted back to his cell for head count.”
I turned and pointed to the camera.
“And every second of it is right there on that footage.”
Silas looked up toward the camera he’d clearly forgotten about before lowering his fuming gaze back to me.
“I’d also like to formally report that Officer Whitmore has a documented history of violence.
” I kept my eyes locked on the senior officer.
“There are active police reports on file in Cook County. He’s my ex-boyfriend, and he assaulted me multiple times before I fled the state.
I tried to report my concerns to the warden, but—”
“That’s bullshit! She’s making it up!”
The senior officer’s expression had gone very cold.
He looked at Knox, standing there with blood running down his chin, an eye swelling, other bruises forming and not a single mark on his knuckles.
He looked at Silas, wild-eyed and thrashing, without a scratch on him.
He looked at me, the nurse who had worked here without a single complaint and no reason to lie. And the slight bruise on my cheek.
“You can verify everything I’m saying,” I continued. “Pull the records from Cook County. And from Indiana. Check his background. I have photos of what he did to me.”
Silas was breathing like a caged animal. He’d just assaulted an inmate who hadn’t fought back—in front of witnesses and a camera. An inmate who now had documented injuries while Silas had none.
And his ex-girlfriend was standing right there, ready to bury him.
“Come on, Whitmore.” The senior officer’s voice was ice. “We’re going to see the warden.”
“This is bullshit,” Silas spat, but his voice had lost its edge. “This is fucking bullshit. That inmate was—”
“Save it.”
They hauled him toward the door. As he passed me, Silas’s eyes burned with a hatred so pure, it should have scared me.
It didn’t.
Because standing behind me, even now, even after everything I’d said to him, was Knox Blackwood. Bleeding. Battered. And still somehow, impossibly, protecting me.
The hallway filled with chaos. More officers arriving. Questions being asked. Someone calling for medical attention for Knox’s injuries.
“Bring him back in so I can treat him.” I motioned to the exam room.
“No,” Knox said. He wouldn’t even look at me. “I’m fine. I decline all medical treatment. I need to get back for head count.”
“Knox …”
“Now.”
The CO looked like he didn’t know what to make of Knox’s behavior, but after a few seconds, he took his position and started to guide Knox away.
I wanted to run to him. To tell him that I shouldn’t have judged him, that I was sorry. That he was the best man I’d ever known and that I took it all back.
But the hallway was crowded. Eyes everywhere. And Knox …
Knox wouldn’t make eye contact with me. He moved like a man operating on autopilot. Like someone who had accomplished what he needed to accomplish and had nothing left to stay present for.
“Knox”—I grabbed his arm as he passed—“I’m sorry—”
He finally looked at me. And the emptiness in his silver-blue eyes was worse than any anger could have been. Worse than hatred. Worse than anything.
For one heartbeat, I saw something flicker beneath the ice. Something raw and wounded.
“Take care of yourself, Nurse Harper.” His voice was ice. Like I was a stranger. Like the last hour hadn’t happened at all.
He didn’t say Princess.
He didn’t forgive me for the horrible thing I’d said.
He just walked away, shoulders curved inward, blood dripping from his split lip, and didn’t look back.
I stood frozen in the hallway, watching him go. Watching the distance between us grow with every step until he rounded the corner and disappeared.
And then my knees buckled.
I caught myself against the wall, gasping for air that wouldn’t come. My chest was too tight. My throat was closing. My vision was starting to blur at the edges.
I’d looked into the face of the only man who’d ever made me feel safe, and I’d put him in a lineup with the men who destroyed me.
“Did you ever stop to wonder if you’d let the police handle it, maybe you’d actually be there for her right now?”
I’d taken the thing Knox was most afraid of—the possibility that his violence made him no different from the monsters—and I’d confirmed it. Not as an insult. As a diagnosis. And that was so much worse.
I’d taken my real fears, my real wounds, my real history, and I’d aimed them with surgical precision at the one man who would have walked through fire to make sure I never felt them again.
I hadn’t meant to destroy him.
But I could still see the exact moment his expression went blank. The exact moment he stopped being the man who called me Princess and became the man who survived this place by feeling nothing at all.
A sob tore out of my throat. Then another.
What had I done?