Chapter 41 Knox
KNOX
My boots moved on autopilot through the gray corridors while my mind replayed every word she’d said. Every crack in her voice. Every tear she’d refused to let fall.
Father-daughter dance. Empty seat in the stands. Walking across the graduation stage alone.
“I’d check the mailbox like it was some kind of ritual.”
“You threw everything away.”
“You weren’t there to tell me it would be okay.”
“That’s not enough, Knox.”
I’d told myself I was protecting her.
I was so goddamn sure.
Years of convincing myself that my sacrifice meant something. That the absence would heal cleaner than the truth. That she’d grow up whole because she didn’t know what happened in that bedroom.
But she didn’t grow up whole.
She grew up shattered.
And I was the one holding the hammer.
First Harper. Now Gwen.
The two reasons I’d had for getting through each day in this concrete tomb. Gone. Both of them. In the span of hours, the universe had ripped away every shred of hope I’d been stupid enough to hold on to.
Harper’s face flashed through my mind. The way she’d looked at me when she ended it. Not with hatred. With something worse.
Resignation.
Like she’d always known it would end this way. Like caring about me had been a mistake she’d finally found the courage to correct.
And now my daughter. My little girl. Walking out that door without looking back, telling me that what I had bought her was a lifetime of therapy and trust issues.
What was the point?
What was the goddamn point of any of it?
I passed a window, caught my reflection in the scratched plexiglass, and stopped.
I saw the monster my daughter saw. The monster Harper had finally walked away from.
Tattooed. Hardened. A killer who told himself he was a hero when, really, he was just a coward, too afraid to face what he’d done to the people he loved most.
I was so tired.
Tired of fighting. Tired of surviving. Tired of waking up every morning in this cage and telling myself that tomorrow might be different when tomorrow was just another gray wall, another cold meal, another twenty-four hours of nothing.
I’d been running on fumes for years. Hope for parole. Hope that Gwen might forgive me someday. Hope that maybe, just maybe, I’d get a second chance at a life worth living.
Harper had been the first real thing I’d felt in fourteen years. And I’d let myself believe, like the fool I was, that she might be the beginning of something.
Now there was nothing left to run on.
The tank was empty.
The yard was half full when I walked through the doors.
Inmates scattered across the concrete, clustered in their usual groups.
I wasn’t looking for trouble. Wasn’t looking for anything.
Just moving because standing still felt too much like giving up, and I wasn’t ready to admit that’s exactly what I was doing.
I didn’t notice them until it was too late.
Doyle stepped out from behind the weight rack, flanked by five of his guys. The Southside crew. Mean bastards, every one of them. The kind who hurt people for fun and called it business.
Doyle’s face had healed since our last encounter, but the damage was still visible. Crooked nose I’d broken. Scar tissue above his left eye, where his head had met concrete. He’d spent weeks healing after I’d beaten him for threatening Harper.
Weeks to plan.
Weeks to gather enough backup that even I couldn’t fight my way out.
“Well, well.” Doyle’s smile was a knife. “Look who’s all alone.” His eyes traveled over my face, cataloging the fat lip, the black eye, the bruises I was still wearing from my last fight. His grin widened. “Looks like somebody already softened you up for me.”
I stopped walking. Assessed the situation with the detached calm of a man who’d been in plenty of fights and won most of them. Six on one. Bad odds. They’d positioned themselves to cut off my exits.
“Doyle”—I kept my voice flat—“brought your friends this time.”
“Thought it was only fair.” He cracked his knuckles. The sound echoed across the yard. “Seeing as you didn’t fight fair last time.”
“You threatened someone innocent. I put you in your place.” I cocked my head. “Seemed fair to me.”
His jaw tightened.
Doyle stepped closer. “You’re gonna pay for what you did to me. And then everyone in this yard is gonna see what happens when you fuck with me.”
I should have felt something. Fear. Anger. The familiar surge of adrenaline that preceded violence.
I felt nothing.
What was the point of fighting? What was I protecting? Harper was gone. Gwen was gone. Parole was a joke. I had eleven more years in this hellhole, and for what? To walk out with nothing?
Doyle wanted to hurt me?
Let him.
Maybe the physical pain would drown out the other kind.
“You gonna say something?” Doyle’s eyes narrowed. “Or you just gonna stand there?”
I looked at him. Saw the anticipation in his face. The hunger. He wanted me to fight back. Wanted the challenge. Wanted to prove he could take me.
I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction.
“Do what you came to do,” I said quietly.
Something flickered in his expression. Confusion maybe. He’d expected threats. Resistance. Not … this.
“The hell’s wrong with you?”
I didn’t answer.
Doyle’s confusion curdled into something uglier.
The first punch caught me in the jaw. I tasted copper.
I didn’t raise my hands.
The second hit landed in my ribs. Something cracked. Pain exploded through my side, white-hot and blinding.
Harper’s words echoed in my mind.
“You’re exactly like every other man who swore he loved me and then proved he loved something else more.”
A boot connected with my knee. I went down hard, gravel biting into my palms.
“The only difference is your version of violence comes wrapped in protection. But it’s still violence. And you’re still choosing it over me.”
Gwen’s voice joined the chorus.
“I looked into the crowd and saw an empty seat where you should have been.”
Fists rained down. My face. My stomach. My back. I curled into myself on instinct, but I didn’t fight back. Didn’t block. Just let the blows land while my daughter’s voice echoed in my skull.
“You weren’t there to tell me it would be okay.”
Blood filled my mouth.
“I’ve spent years in therapy trying to learn how to trust people. Trying to unlearn the lesson you taught me.”
My vision blurred.
Somewhere far away, I heard shouting. Guards maybe. Didn’t matter.
“Fight back!” Doyle’s boot connected with my stomach. “Goddamn you, fight back!”
I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. What was left to fight for?
The last thing I saw before the darkness swallowed me whole was Gwen’s face.
Pigtails and a gap-toothed smile. Pressing a necklace into my hands.
Metal beads she’d strung herself, clumsy and uneven, on a leather cord her preschool teacher had helped her tie.
Pink and purple and one random green one because, “Green is your favorite, Daddy.”
I’d worn it every day since.
“Will you wear it forever, Daddy?”
“Until the day I die, baby girl.”
The final kick connected with my temple.
And then, mercifully, I felt nothing at all.