Epilogue One
Peter
This prison never really sleeps. It only pretends to.
The lights dim. The noise drops to a murmur. Men like me scroll through lives we’re no longer allowed to touch.
Everyone’s cell phones are hidden. Everything about having one is wrong.
That’s why we keep it. That’s why we all have one.
I swipe through TikTok without thinking—noise, chaos, people pretending they’re fine—until flashing red and blue stops my thumb.
Police. EMTs. A woman across the street from a storefront, taking video of something happening outside.
Enchanted Nook, the caption says.
I don’t recognize the place. I turn the volume up only enough to hear the sound beneath the cover of my blanket.
Someone’s narrating from too far away. The camera shakes—and then it lands on her.
She sits on the curb while a paramedic kneels in front of her, gently cleaning the scrapes on her hands. Angry red marks streak her skin, but nothing looks life-threatening. Even so, she holds herself rigid, every muscle braced, accepting the treatment without ever relaxing into it.
My gaze catches on her face.
No.
My body surges upright before I realize I’ve moved.
It can’t be.
Black hair. The same eyes. The same stubborn tilt of her chin I always hated.
Lina. My half-sister.
A disbelieving laugh escapes me.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Typical. Always in the middle of something—pulling attention without trying.
She did that when we were kids too—standing between things. Inserting herself where she didn’t belong.
I watch the video again.
She doesn’t seem scared.
The caption updates: Looks like self-defense. She’s okay.
“Self-defense.” I snort.
Lina always did have a flair for dramatics.
I lean back against my pillow, irritation rising.
We were never close. People like to rewrite the past, but I remember it clearly—we fought like siblings do. She cried a lot and blamed me for everything.
She was always in the way.
Acting as if she knew better. Like she was in charge.
She never understood respect.
She especially never understood when to stay out of things between our brother and me.
My jaw tightens at the memory—fragmented, blurry, inconvenient.
She hovered—always stepping in—always grabbing him, pulling him behind her like she was something solid enough to stop me.
She only made things worse.
That’s how I remember it.
People forget how exhausting it is to live with someone who’s always crying and intervening, always acting like they’re the victim.
She called it protection.
I called it interference.
She came to see me once after I was locked up. After she turned eighteen. Already grown. Already distant. Sitting across from me in that visiting room like she was studying something broken and deciding whether it was worth keeping.
She finally had the nerve to face me because there was glass between us.
She asked me what I did. So I told her.
I didn’t soften it. Didn’t lie. I told her what happened on the street. About the guns. About the idiot bystander who inserted himself and got himself killed. That I killed him.
I told her about the rage too. About how it came on so fast everything went dark around the edges. How I’d lost time. How I’d come back to myself with my hands shaking and people staring at me with the gun in my hand.
I admitted that much.
What I didn’t admit—were the things she claimed I did to her and Sam.
The way she tells it, I was some kind of monster.
She leaned forward in that plastic chair and told me what a terrible brother I was. Told me I hurt her. Hurt Sam. Told me she’d never forget it.
Never forgive it.
Like she’d been rehearsing the speech for years.
I remember staring at her through the glass, listening to her describe things I don’t remember happening the way she says they did.
That’s the part that still pisses me off.
Because I pointed out the obvious.
Anna.
I told her Anna never accused me of anything. Never cried about me. Never looked at me like she was scared. I told her if I was really the monster she made me out to be, wouldn’t Anna have something to say too?
That’s when Lina stared at me like I’d proved her point without realizing it.
She told me she protected Anna from seeing it.
Kept her out of the room. Took her by the hand and led her away before things escalated.
She told me Anna was spared because she made sure of it, and if I ever touched Anna, our mother would make sure I paid for it.
She was right about one thing. I knew better than to lay hands on Anna.
She was our mother’s baby. The one she hovered over. The one she shielded more than the rest of us.
If I had laid a hand on her, I would have our mother to answer to. And that would’ve been worse than anything I ever endured.
I remember thinking that didn’t count as abuse. That knowing where the line was, meant I hadn’t crossed it.
So yeah—maybe I had a temper. Maybe I got angry. Maybe I said things I shouldn’t have.
But the way Lina tells it? Like none of that mattered. Like restraint didn’t count. Like only what she remembered was real.
That’s not how it was.
At least, not the way I remember it.
Her memories don’t match mine, and somehow I’m supposed to believe hers are the real ones?
She exaggerated. She twisted things. Made herself the hero and me the villain.
That’s what she always did.
When the guard called time, she stood up and stared at me with disgust, like she’d already made her decision.
“I don’t know who you are,” she said. “But you’re not my brother.”
She never came back.
She cut me off like I was nothing. They all did.
Visits stopped. Calls stopped, like blood meant nothing once it became inconvenient.
They let me rot in here with nothing. No family. No second chances.
I haven’t forgotten that.
The video loops again.
She shifts as the EMT finishes, pulling her hands back into her lap. Her shoulders stay tight. Defensive. Like she’s bracing for something that already happened.
For a moment—something crawls up my spine.
A flash…
Her hand raised. A knife. My brother crying, scared behind her. Her voice shaking, yelling my name like it was a warning.
I shove the memory away.
That’s not how it was.
She remembers it wrong. She always did.
The guards’ footsteps echo down the tier. I lock the phone and slide it back into hiding.
Tomorrow, I’ll forget I ever saw her. That’s easier.
Because if I don’t—I might have to ask myself why she learned how to protect herself at all.
I stare at the ceiling long after lights-out, counting days instead of hours.
My next parole hearing is only a few months away now.
And when I get out—and I will—I’m not keeping quiet.
I’m going to confront them. All of them. And tell them how wrong they were. How fucked up it was to abandon me. To believe her version of our past over mine.
They don’t get to erase me and pretend they’re the good ones. They don’t get to rewrite history and leave me buried behind it.
I remember who turned their backs. Time hasn’t dulled a single face.