CHAPTER 4: SCARLETT
493 Words
Freedom didn’t feel like I thought it would.
It wasn’t sun on my skin or the sky stretching wide above me. It was noise. Too much of it. Tires screeching, people talking too fast, lights flickering like they were mocking me. Eleven years in a cage rewires your senses. Makes everything feel… louder.
The clothes they gave me didn’t fit right—some scratchy thrift-store hoodie and jeans too big at the waist. My boots were used, soles thin. They wanted me to look like someone who needed a second chance.
They had no idea I only needed a second shot.
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The first place I went wasn’t a home. It was a holding station. A government-sponsored halfway house with flickering hallway lights, a moldy mattress, and a dozen other ex-cons pretending they’d found God.
I didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t unpack. I didn’t plan to stay.
I waited two nights. Watched routines. Marked exits. Stole a prepaid phone from someone passed out high in the common room. And then I slipped out through the back at 4:12 a.m.
No one stopped me.
No one even looked up.
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Next came Shelley’s place.
She used to run with a crew that smuggled weapons across county lines. We weren’t friends—but I’d covered for her once inside. She owed me. When I showed up on her doorstep, she didn’t even blink.
“Thought you’d be dead by now,” she muttered, handing me a burner phone and the keys to a dusty studio apartment above her bar.
“Not yet,” I said. “Got something to finish first.”
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The apartment was a dump. Peeling walls, broken faucet, mattress on the floor. But it was mine—for now. I taped maps to the walls. Dug through old newspaper clippings. Started a list of everyone Harold still knew, everyone who owed him, protected him, lied for him.
Names. Numbers. Habits.
I became obsessed with tracking him, but careful not to tip any systems. I knew better than to go loud too early. That man built walls out of power, reputation, and money. He didn’t make mistakes often—but if he did, I’d be waiting.
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The first crack came from a name I hadn’t expected.
Damien Jones.
His face popped up on a social media thread linked to Harold’s wife—his new family. Tall, quiet-looking, sharp-eyed. Not much online. No criminal record. Tech background. Seemed… clean. But I knew better.
Harold didn’t raise clean.
I didn’t know if Damien was a threat yet. Or just another pawn.
But I’d find out soon enough.
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I spent the nights smoking by the window, watching the city lights blink like warnings. I didn’t sleep much. Couldn’t. Every creak in the floorboard made my body coil tight. But I didn’t mind.
Pain kept me awake.
Awake kept me alive.
And alive meant one thing:
Harold Jones was running out of time.
- Writer
