5. Jade #2
The leather seat is soft beneath me. So much softer than the hard cot I’ve been sleeping on for four years.
So much softer than anything I’ve touched in longer than I can remember.
I press my palm against it, feeling the texture, grounding myself in this small sensory detail while the rest of the world threatens to spiral out of control.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
Damian pulls away from the curb. His jaw is tight, his eyes fixed on the road ahead.
“Somewhere safe,” he says. “And then I’m going to tell you everything.”
Everything.
The word hangs in the air between us, heavy with promise, heavy with threat, heavy with four years of silence and distance and questions I’ve never been able to answer.
I want to ask him what he means. Want to demand specifics, details, explanations. But my body is shaking too hard, and my eyes keep blurring with tears I refuse to let fall, and I’m so tired. So bone-deep exhausted that I can barely keep my head upright.
So instead I lean back against the soft leather seat, and I watch the prison grow smaller in the side mirror, and I let myself feel something I haven’t felt in four years.
Hope.
***
Damian
She looks like a ghost.
That’s my first thought as she slides into the passenger seat - she looks like someone who’s been slowly erased, piece by piece, until only the outline remains. Her eyes are hollow. Her movements are mechanical. The softness I remember is gone, replaced by something hard and wary and broken.
Four years, I think. They took four years from her.
I pull away from the prison, watching her from the corner of my eye. She’s staring out the window like she’s never seen trees before. Like the world is a foreign country she doesn’t recognize.
“I don’t understand,” she says finally. Her voice is flat. Emotionless. “They just let me out. No explanation. No paperwork. Nothing.”
“That was me.”
She turns to look at me. “What?”
“I got you out, Jade.” I keep my eyes on the road, because if I look at her right now, I might lose my composure. “You’re coming to my place. You need to rest. I’ll explain everything there.”
She doesn’t argue.
She doesn’t say anything else at all.
***
The drive takes forty minutes. She spends the whole time staring out the window, watching freedom pass by like it’s a movie playing on a screen. Trees. Cars. People walking dogs. Normal life.
I wonder when she last saw normal life.
I wonder if she remembers what it looks like.
When we pull up to my house - modern, clean, the kind of place I bought because it was far from the Castillo estate and everything it represents - she doesn’t move. Just sits there, looking at the door like she’s not sure she’s allowed to go through it.
“Come on,” I say gently. “Let’s get you inside.”
She follows me like a sleepwalker. Stands in the middle of my living room, looking around with those hollow eyes, and I realize: she doesn’t know how to exist anywhere but a cell anymore.
What did they do to you?
“Sit down,” I say. “I’ll get you some water.”
She sits. Perches on the edge of the couch like she’s ready to bolt at any moment. I bring her water, set it on the table, and take the chair across from her.
Giving her space.
Giving her time.
“That night,” I begin quietly. “After you ran out of the building crying. I went upstairs. My brother’s door was still open. I saw him with Vivian.”
Her jaw tightens. A flicker of something - pain, anger, I can’t tell - crosses her face.
“I knew something was wrong,” I continue. “The way you were crying - that wasn’t a woman who was cheating or stealing. That was a woman whose world just ended. And then when the charges came out, when they arrested you...” I shake my head. “It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.”
“So what did you do?”
“I hired a private investigator. Started digging into the case. Into Vivian. Into everything.”
She stares at me. “You’ve been investigating this for four years?”
“I never stopped.” My jaw tightens with the memory of it - the dead ends, the false leads, the moments when I wanted to give up and the knowledge that I couldn’t, that she was in there counting on someone to believe her.
“It took time. Vivian was good - the documents she forged were professional, convincing enough to satisfy a jury, and your public defender never had the resources to tear them apart. The first two years, I couldn’t get anyone to reopen it.
Donald’s lawyers buried every motion. The DA’s office wouldn’t touch a conviction they’d already won.
I had to wait until a new District Attorney was elected, one who wasn’t in my family’s pocket - and then pay for the kind of forensic analysis your defense never could afford.
That’s what broke it. The transfers were routed through Vivian’s own laptop, and those IP logs were still sitting on the bank’s servers, where she couldn’t scrub them.
Under real examination, the forged signatures showed the digital manipulation.
It wasn’t that no one had looked, Jade. It’s that no one had been allowed to look properly - until now. ”
“And no one looked at it before because...”
“Because Donald’s lawyers didn’t want them to. Because everyone assumed you were guilty. Because it was easier.”
Jade is quiet for a long moment. I watch emotions flicker across her face - disbelief, hope, something that might be grief.
Then tears start rolling down her cheeks.
Silent. Steady. Like she’s forgotten how to sob.
“Why?” Her voice breaks. “Why did you do this? You barely knew me.”
I lean forward. Lock my eyes onto hers.
“Those weeks before everything happened - when we were meeting for coffee, when you were telling me about your fears, when I was falling asleep thinking about you - I got to know you, Jade. Really know you.” My voice comes out rougher than I intended.
“You were the only real thing in that family. The only honest, good person surrounded by snakes. And I couldn’t just let them destroy you. ”
She’s crying harder now. Still silent. Still those steady, terrible tears.
“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she whispers. “I don’t have anything.”
“Stay here. I have a guest room. No expectations. No pressure. Just somewhere safe.”
She should say no. She barely knows me. Four years have passed.
But she looks at me - at this man who waited, who believed, who never gave up - and I see something shift in her eyes. Something that might be trust.
“Okay,” she whispers.
“Okay.”
I stand. Offer her my hand.
“Come on. I’ll show you the room.”
She takes my hand.
Her fingers are cold.
But when they wrap around mine, something inside me unclenches for the first time in four years.
She’s here. She’s safe. She’s free.
Now we just have to figure out how to put her back together.
***
Jade
The guest room is clean. Simple. A real bed with real sheets and a real pillow and a window that looks out at actual trees.
I stand in the doorway, staring at it, trying to remember what it feels like to sleep somewhere that isn’t a concrete box.
Damian pauses behind me. I can feel the warmth of him, the solid presence, and something in my chest aches with a longing I don’t know how to name.
“There’s something else you should know,” he says quietly.
I turn to look at him.
His face is serious. Pained.
“Donald married Vivian.”
I knew that. I think I knew that. But hearing it confirmed still feels like a blow.
“And Nova...” He hesitates. “Nova calls her Mom now.”
The world tilts.
Nova. My baby. My daughter.
She doesn’t know me.
She thinks Vivian is her mother.
I grab the doorframe to steady myself. The room is spinning. Everything is spinning.
“Jade-”
“I need a minute.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “Please. I just need-”
“Of course.” He steps back. Gives me space. “I’ll be in the living room. Take all the time you need.”
He closes the door behind him.
And I sink onto the edge of the bed, staring at nothing, feeling everything I’ve buried for four years come rushing back.
Nova. My Nova.
I missed four years. I missed her first steps, her first words, her first day of school. I missed everything.
And she doesn’t even know I exist.
I don’t cry.
I think I’ve forgotten how to cry for real, the ugly, heaving sobs that actually release something. The tears that fell earlier were just leaking, overflow, not relief.
Instead, I lie back on the bed - this soft, clean, impossible bed - and stare at the ceiling.
Tomorrow, I think. Tomorrow I’ll figure out what to do.
But tonight...
Tonight I just need to remember how to breathe.