Chapter 2 #2
That’s how long I stared at the same walls.
Eight years of being watched, counted, processed, and expected to behave.
That cage didn’t starve me or keep me awake until I broke.
I was fed. I was allowed to shower. I was given a bed.
My body was permitted to continue even though my life didn’t.
Time still happened to me. I aged whether I wanted to or not.
I noticed it in small, unavoidable ways, bringing a fresh wave of sadness when I did.
I didn’t miss my twenties the way people talk about missing them.
I just understood, very clearly, that they were gone.
Another thing stripped from me before I ever got to find out what it was supposed to be.
But all the while, I was building my way out.
I learned my cell the same way I learned my bedroom at Viktor's, and I created a world of hiding within my cage that no one could perceive besides me. The weak mortar near the sink. The hairline crack behind the bed frame that widened if I worried it long enough with a spoon. I learned how long it took for someone to respond to noise, and how little attention was paid to a woman who stayed quiet and followed instructions. Meals. Cleaning supplies. Paper. Pens. Hygiene kits. Medical packets. I saved what didn’t dissolve or register as missing, swiping items from passing guards or other inmates on the rotations I was escorted to shower.
I hid pieces inside the bed frame, behind loosened brick, wrapped in toilet paper and pushed into gaps I expanded a millimeter at a time.
Some months I got one usable part through bribing my guard.
Some years I had to dismantle what I built, realizing I got the pressure or proper wiring wrong and have to start again.
I was twenty-nine when it was done, prying a brick out of the wall to shove the bomb inside. Twenty-nine when I pressed against my cell door and let the outer wall blast.
The force of the blast crushed into my chest and slammed me to the floor, the wall rupturing outward as concrete and dust tore through the space.
The air was ripped from my lungs, my body stunned into stillness as debris fell over me, weight pinning my legs and shoulder.
For a moment, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe.
I laid there with my vision swimming and my good ear screaming with pressure, forcing myself not to panic.
I was so close. I just had to drag myself out of rubble, and that was exactly what I did—limping and bloodied—but I laughed when the sun hit me.
The crumpled wall was a gaping, screaming mouth, daylight pouring in where there had only ever been gray.
The light was blinding, sharp enough to make my eyes water, my breath hitching.
Still, I ran, shoes slipping on loose dirt, lungs burning.
I hobbled between sprints, darting into the woods and scraping myself on branches.
Bark tore at my arms and face, thorns catching in my standard issue orange jumpsuit before I tripped and went down hard, copper filling my mouth.
But I got up. I will always get the fuck back up.
A superpower, maybe. A death wish, more like it.
Love? God, definitely. Rafe. Kane. Thorne.
Leah. Alex. Mickey. Heath. Fuck, even Monty and her bad attitude.
I didn’t know Matthias, Florence, or Grace well, but I knew they too would burrow inside my name with the others.
How—how did that happen? How did I keep collecting people into what remained to be a highly destructive orbit?
Love seemed to be a lesson I could only learn the hard way, but I didn't care if I had to sell myself a thousand times to feel it again.
My heart pleaded to be resurrected from the ash prison left me in as sirens split through the trees, red and blue bleeding through the leaves, the sound chasing me, hunting me, reminding me that freedom was still something I had to earn with pain.
The air shifted. The sound followed, chopping through the sky in a way that made my stomach drop.
A helicopter. I ran harder, panic crawling up my throat, already bracing for hands on my back, a gun to my head, the sharp correction of believing for even a second that I could slip the leash.
I didn’t look up. I didn’t want to see whose authority was about to claim me.
I just kept moving, teeth clenched, heart hammering.
I burst through the trees and barely managed to stop myself from face-planting as the clearing opened up in front of me, the helicopter dropping fast, wind tearing at my clothes, dirt and leaves whipping up around my legs.
I staggered back on instinct, my gaze darting back to the trees.
Then the chopper landed, the machine settling just long enough for the door to slide open, and a man in black combat gear jumped down.
Balaclava pulled tight over his face, familiar, warm brown eyes found mine.
"Mickey?" I breathed. He grabbed my wrist and hauled me forward, his glove rough and real around my skin.
I laughed, breathless and wild, smiling fully for the first time in years as he pulled me into the chopper and lifted us away from the prison, half of it still burning below. I was, at the very least, consistent.
"When the fuck did the Ravens get a helicopter?" I called, wide-eyed.
“A lot can change in eight years. Welcome back, bella,” Mickey called over the bash of the wind, my curls whipping around as he flew us.
“Took every connection the Ravens had to get it from evidence but I couldn’t think of a better prison break gift.
” He yanked something from his pocket and dropped it in my lap.
“Your jacket and some spare clothes are waiting with the Ravens.”
I stared down, my fingers trembling as I plucked the silver casing into my hands.
“I filled it up,” he promised.
“So have I,” I murmured, and my thumb frantically clicked down. Tink, tink—ignite. The little flame danced in hello, V.S. shining across the lighter.
“This too.” He sat a Glock on my thigh.
I clutched the grip firmly. “They’re not out?”
“Kane is,” he said. “Within seconds of you both breaking out, the feds rerouted all efforts to Rafe.”
I gritted my teeth. “Do you have another bomb?”
“Better.” He jutted his chin toward the incoming tarmac, familiar figures dressed in black with their faces hidden just like Mickey. I caught sight of buzzed blond, my heart faltering as Kane stripped out of his orange jumpsuit.
He was still massive and unmistakably Kane Creed.
Prison hadn’t shrunk him or dulled him; it had compressed him like all his violence had been forced inward, directed completely at himself, and I knew that he'd done exactly that. He stood with the same intimidating breadth, the same lethal calm I remembered, but the cocky edge was gone. That signature, inappropriate but always appreciated charm that used to flicker even when he was being a bastard had burned out. It only took one look from a distance for me to see that, to know it, and I swallowed, Thorne’s bleeding chest flashing through my head.
Mickey’s hand came down on my knee as he landed the helicopter, and he squeezed it once. “We’re at your command, Creed.”
I tugged from his touch and hopped out, no one bothering with hellos or hugs.
We had very little time to act if we were getting Rafe, and everyone knew it.
I changed quickly before I slid into the back of an unmarked cargo van.
My shoulder pressed against someone else’s, and my stomach dipped when a scarred, tattooed pinky brushed against mine.
Kane. Still neither of us said anything, the van eerily quiet as the eight of us all held our guns…
All of us except him. Kane refused one, wrapping his fists instead as the van bumped across pot holes, his green eyes like seeing a ghost. They looked as dead as Thorne’s had, as dead as I imagined mine were.
We were corpses. Again. Monsters. Again.
And we weren’t ending the day without Rafe Creed.
FBI vehicles clogged the access roads, black SUVs and armored vans idling nose to tail, agents moving in tight lines with rifles cradled.
Portable floodlights had been dragged in and thrown up wherever there was space, bleaching the grounds of Rafe’s prison and erasing the night.
Radios crackled nonstop as we crouched at the edge of the trees, overlapping voices barking orders that contradicted one another, the whole perimeter vibrating with urgency.
Beyond the barricades, the world had gathered.
News vans lined the outer fence, satellite dishes tilted skyward, cameras trained on the prison.
A crowd pressed behind temporary barriers, signs lifted, voices rising and falling in waves.
Some shouted Rafe’s name, outrage colliding with voyeurism, everyone desperate to witness the aftermath of a system that had failed publicly and violently.
Somewhere inside all of it, buried beneath concrete and guns and federal panic, was the last Creed still in a cage.
“How the fuck are we meant to penetrate this?” Matthias asked. He was crouched next to his brother, their hulking frames shifting as Mickey directed us all to huddle closer. “We can’t just shoot our way through,” he continued. “We’re severely outnumbered.”