PROLOGUE
With fierce, steely eyes, the man stood stoically as the judge read his sentence.
“The defendant is sentenced to life in prison.”
The bystanders in the courtroom erupted behind him, but he didn’t turn around.
He knew what he’d see and he didn’t want to see it.
Joy. From the ones he’d hurt.
Pain. From the ones he loved.
Anger. From the ones he’d betrayed.
A family ripped apart, a brotherhood destroyed…
He didn’t want to see any of that. Never again did he want to witness the deep misery in the eyes of his two son’s, but if he allowed even one quick glance over his shoulder, he knew that’s what he would find.
He did it anyway.
Self-sabotage. One of his most well-practiced skills.
Like all the times he’d consumed two bottles of whiskey, instead of just one. Like each time he’d agreed to take on a dirty job, when he knew he’d never get out clean…
Or when he pulled the trigger, sending a bullet directly into his own brother, knowing the damage could never be undone once he committed his bullets to flesh.
He couldn’t even think about what he’d done to his beautiful love in the process. It was too much.
Knowing he shouldn’t do something and doing it anyway was a habit by now. The ability to abandon all sense of morality and ‘doing it anyway’ is what brought them all here today.
Here, to the courtroom of the Honorable Judge Horace S. McCormick and the defendant’s newly acquired life sentence.
Here, to the pain and misery swimming in his boy’s eyes.
He looked because he owed it to them.
He’d left them with nothing, their entire identities ripped away, their lives shattered.
The least he could do was respect them enough to allow them the satisfaction of slinging their raging anger his way.
And just as he expected, there it was, four identical blue eyes turned his way, full of rage and pain and misery.
It was his duty to absorb it. To take it. Just like he had to take the sentence the judge and jury doled out.
He had to pay for what he’d done.
He was happy to do it.
That his sons had to pay their own price for his sins? Well, that fact was the hardest part to swallow…
They’d make it, though. If there was one thing he’d instilled in them, besides insipid hatred and a penchant for unnecessary violence — it was an unrelenting toughness. They’d fallen off their bikes so many times, broken so many bones, bruised every inch of skin, and yet they still kept going like nothing ever happened to them.
They were survivors. He was proud of them both.
Even though he’d failed to ever give them a reason to be proud of him…
“Please transport the prisoner back to his cell,” the judge said, slamming the gavel down on his desk like it was a nail in the man’s coffin.
Might as well be.
He nodded to his boys, taking the angry glares they flashed him with a raised chin, knowing he’d never see them again. He’d never allow them to visit him in prison, see him like that, locked up like a goddamned animal. He had too much pride for that.
He turned away from their eyes for the last time. The guards grasped his arms, guiding him away silently, leading him to his new life behind bars — his life in a cage, his life without his club, without his cut, without his beloved hog.
A life without everything he’d ever known.
Half an hour later, when he was led back into his cell and the door closed behind him, the wrenching sound of metal scraping against metal ripped through him like a bullet.
He sat down on the bare cot, only half-seeing his surroundings.
Before he let them all go, before he erased everything he could erase in his twisted head, he laid down on his back and closed his eyes — letting the memories flow over him one last time like a river of pain.
Each one floated by like a dead leaf, its life lived, its peak reached long, long ago, the only remaining remnants flickering in his mind for a half-second of acknowledgement before floating away to decompose on the bottom of life’s river bed.
He drank them in, one by one…
The birth of his twin boys, dramatic and violent as it was…
Getting patched in at the age of twenty, his eyes wide with naive wonder…
The feel of the knife, sliding into his own twin brother’s side…
Everything since then had been a blur. Nothing worth thinking twice about.
With a deep sigh, he let the memories slide away.
Everything in the beginning, everything in the end, and all the bullshit in between.
He let it all go.
It was the only way to survive…
Hanging on to memories like that would kill a man behind bars. And now that he was going to be that man, locked up for the rest of his life, he had to forget everything that came before.
He had to forget who he was.
He had to forget where he’d been.
This was a new chapter now.
The beginning of the end.
The end of everything.
The best he could hope for was survival, for as long as he could hold onto it.
He fell to his knees beside the cot, his palms pressed together, his eyes raised toward the dirty ceiling of his cell. He’d never been much for praying. He’d figured that even if there was a God, that God had given up on him long ago.
There ain’t much sense in talking to someone who’d deserted you…
But now? Well, everything’s changed, hasn’t it?
When a man is isolated from everything and everyone he’s ever known, he tends to turn to whatever he has access to.
When the only thing he has access to is his imagination, God doesn’t seem so far away after all…