Chapter 102 – Daniel’s POV (Last Play)
Chapter 102 – Daniel’s POV (Last Play)
Daniel’s POV (Last Play)
The cell was small, but I’d learned to make space out of less. Four steps from bunk to bars, four back. The rhythm kept me sharp, even as the walls pressed in.
They thought the shackles and bars meant I was contained. They didn’t understand—steel didn’t hold me. Obsession did.
Eden.
Even now, I could picture her in that courtroom. She’d tried to stand tall, chin up like she wasn’t still mine. She’d repeated lies someone else had drilled into her. But I saw it in her eyes. Fear. The way it trembled just under the surface. The part of her that knew she belonged to me, even if she wouldn’t admit it.
She was marked. My showers had cleansed her. My hands had shaped her silence. She could walk out with them, play house with the brothers, but when she closed her eyes—she would hear me. Feel me.
The papers said remand without bail. That meant nothing. I’d seen too many cracks in the system not to know where to pry. The badge I’d worn might be stripped, but the favors I’d banked? Those didn’t vanish overnight.
I leaned against the bars, eyeing the deputy posted at the end of the row. Younger. New to the uniform. His gaze slid nervously each time he caught me watching. A weak one, eager to please the wrong man if he thought it meant approval.
“Hey,” I called low, casual. “You look tired. Long shift?”
He stiffened. Didn’t answer. But the twitch in his jaw was enough. I smiled. All it took was patience. Weak men cracked faster than doors.
Back on the bunk, I traced invisible letters into the mattress. She’ll come back. Over and over, the promise etched into fabric. My voice whispered it at night until the other inmates told me to shut up. They didn’t understand, either.
A man in the next cell leaned closer through the bars. He’d been watching for days. “You’re the cop who took the girl,” he said. Not accusing. Curious.
I smirked. “Not took. Kept. They all want to be kept, deep down.”
He laughed, a rough, broken sound. “You want something out, I know people. Price is steep, though.”
My pulse quickened. “Information is enough.”
He tilted his head. “Information?”
“I need her to remember.” My voice dropped, nearly reverent. “Need her to feel me breathing down her neck even when I’m locked in here.”
He grinned with a few missing teeth. “That, I can do.”
I slipped him the name of a guard I knew from my years on the force. Not a friend, but someone who owed me. Every cop had skeletons. I’d kept some buried for him. Men like that paid back debts.
The inmate shuffled back into shadow, muttering about timing.
Later, when lights dimmed, I lay awake, the hum of fluorescent bulbs in my skull. I thought about her hair damp against my hands, the sound of her breath when she obeyed, the look in her eyes when she realized she couldn’t escape. People called it cruelty. They were wrong. It was devotion.
She’d given herself away to them. That cut deep, but forgiveness was possible. She just needed to be reminded that I was the constant. That everything else was noise.
They thought the next court date would bury me. They thought the ribbons and vows I’d overheard whispers of would erase me. But no vow could bind her stronger than the one I’d already carved into her skin, into her mind.
I closed my eyes and repeated it like prayer. If I can’t have her, no one will.
The guard at the end of the row yawned, rubbing his eyes. I smiled again, slow and patient. Favors would move. Doors would creak. A message would slip through.
It didn’t matter how.
She’d know.
And when she did, she’d remember: Eden Hayes belonged to me first.
Always would.