Kaia’s POV
The air inside the prison was always dry.
A recycled kind of dead—too clean, too sterile. It clung to your throat, clashed with memory, and stripped even the fiercest anger down to silence over time.
But today, silence wasn’t an option.
Not after he walked out.
Brian.
With that smug, righteous look on his face. As if telling the truth earned him a redemption arc. As if he hadn’t once been just as greedy, just as complicit.
He thought walking away with clean hands now could erase the stains I knew he still wore under his shirt.
It was laughable.
Pitiful.
And dangerous.
Because Kaia Whitmore had never been made for a cage.
And she wasn’t going to rot in one while the men who used her stories as stepping stones moved on like she was a page they had turned.
⸻
I paced t
