CHAPTER 3: DAMIEN
417 Words
FLASHBACK – DAMIEN, AGE 16
The sound of the belt buckle sliding through loops was louder than it should’ve been. Metallic. Final. Like a weapon being unsheathed.
Damien sat at the dinner table, jaw clenched, hands flat on his thighs. His mother was crying again—but silently. That was how she cried now. Like she’d trained herself not to be heard.
“You think I’m a joke?” Harold’s voice wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It was that low, venomous tone that told you pain was coming—one way or another.
“No, sir,” Damien muttered.
“You do. I ask you to get a C on your report card fixed, and you give me attitude. Do I look like your goddamn buddy?”
“No, sir.”
Harold dropped the belt on the table between them with a thud. “You think this is how you repay me? I brought you into my house. I gave you my name. You think I won’t take it all back?”
Damien stared at the belt, then at Harold’s face. Cold. Precise. As if he were waiting for Damien to crack—to cry or beg. That was his favorite part.
But Damien didn’t flinch.
He memorized him instead.
The twitch in Harold’s left eye. The faint scar by his jaw from something he never talked about. The way he always poured his drink at exactly 7:15 PM, like clockwork.
Damien wasn’t going to be like him.
But he would understand him.
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PRESENT DAY
Damien clicked through the notifications on the dark web forum he monitored. Prison data. Law enforcement bulletins. Most of it was noise—until a familiar name lit up the screen.
SCARLETT JONES – RELEASED ON SPECIAL BAIL CONDITIONS. STATUS: ACTIVE AS OF TOMORROW.
His fingers hovered over the keyboard.
He felt something shift in his chest. Not fear. Not even surprise.
Interest.
He leaned back, lit a cigarette he didn’t really want, and stared at her mugshot on the screen. Eleven years old. But the eyes? Still sharp. Still unbroken.
They let her out, he thought.
Harold would lose his mind.
Good.
Damien’s phone buzzed. A text from his mother:
"Dinner tomorrow. Just us three. Please come."
He didn’t reply.
Instead, he saved the report. Printed it. Folded it neatly into the inside pocket of his jacket.
The past wasn’t dead.
It was walking out of prison.
And he planned to be the first one to meet it.
- Writer
