SEVEN MONTHS TO HATE YOU

CHAPTER 8_The Unforgotten Debt

~~BLACKWOOD PENITENTIARY~~

The gates of Blackwood Penitentiary groaned open with a metallic shriek that seemed to tear at the very fabric of the humid afternoon. For a moment, Ethan Shawn stood frozen on the threshold, the weight of five years pressing down on his shoulders like a physical yoke. The world beyond the high, razor-wire fences was too bright, too loud, too much. Sunlight, unfiltered by barred windows or the perpetual gloom of the exercise yard, stabbed at his eyes. He raised a hand, calloused and scarred, to shield his face, and felt the unfamiliar slide of cheap cotton against his skin—the state-issued shirt and trousers that hung loose on his frame, a stark contrast to the prison-issue scrubs that had been his uniform for half a decade.

His hair, a dark, unruly tangle that fell past his ears, was pushed back by a gust of wind that carried the distant scent of rain and diesel. Messy hair. The parole officer had muttered something about a haircut, but Ethan had ignored him. The mess was a testament, a crown of neglect. It was the hair of a man who had stopped caring about mirrors, about order, about anything but the slow burn of memory that had kept him company in a six-by-nine cell.

He took a step forward, then another, his boots—too new, the soles not yet broken in—crunching on the gravel of the access road. The gate clanged shut behind him with a finality that should have felt like freedom. Instead, it felt like expulsion. He was cast out, adrift in a current of time that had flowed on without him. Five years. Stolen. And it was all because of her.

Arielle.

The name was a litany in his mind, a curse and a prayer twisted into one. Even now, after all this time, the mere thought of her could make his breath hitch. He leaned against a rusted signpost, the metal warm from the sun, and closed his eyes. The present—the empty road, the distant hum of traffic, the oppressive Nigerian heat of a late May afternoon—dissolved. He was pulled back, violently, to a different heat: the sticky, reckless heat of a teenage summer, five years gone.

They were all young and stupid. He could almost smell it: the sour tang of stolen beer, the cloying sweetness of ripening mangoes from the orchard behind the abandoned community hall, the electric scent of a coming storm. They were a pack of kids, high on boredom and the fragile immortality of youth. And there, in the center of it all, was Arielle.

Even then, at sixteen, she was a vision that seemed to warp the air around her. It wasn’t just beauty; it was a kind of luminous magnetism. Her laughter was a clear bell in the dusk, her eyes holding a light that promised secrets. She wore her innocence like a sheer garment, unaware of how transparent it was, how it tempted the shadows in boys like him. Ethan, at seventeen, was all coiled anger and desperate want. His home was a shouting match, his future a blank wall. Arielle was the only color in his monochrome world.

That night, the party had spilled out from the hall into the overgrown field. Music pulsed from a crackling speaker. Fireflies flickered like lost stars. He’d watched her all evening, a knot of desire tightening in his gut. She was dancing with some other guy, her head thrown back, the column of her throat pale in the moonlight. Something in him had snapped. A primitive, possessive switch flipped.

He remembered cornering her near the old well, its stone rim cool under his palms. The music was distant here, muffled by the thick foliage. "Arielle," he'd said, his voice rough.

She’d turned, a smile still playing on her lips. "Ethan? What's up?" The smile faded as she saw his expression. He saw the first flicker of alarm in her eyes, and it excited him.

"Just wanted to talk. Away from everyone." He took a step closer. She took a step back, her heel hitting the well's stone base.

"Talk about what?" Her voice had a tremor now.

"About you. About this." He reached out, his fingers brushing her arm. She flinched as if scalded.

"Don't, Ethan. I'm going back." She tried to sidestep him, but he moved, blocking her path. The playful light in her eyes was gone, replaced by a dawning fear that made his pulse hammer. He grabbed her wrist. It was so small, so fragile in his grip.

"Let me go!" Her struggle was immediate, fierce but futile. She was all delicate bones and soft strength. He pushed her against the rough stone, the momentum jolting through both of them. He could smell the floral scent of her shampoo, feel the frantic bird-beat of her heart where his body pressed against hers. It was intoxicating. Her hands came up, pushing against his chest, nails scraping. He caught them, pinning them above her head. A low sound escaped her—a whimper of pure terror.

"Stop fighting," he growled, his face close to hers. He was lost in a red haze of want. The marks were beginning to form on her wrists, angry red lines against her skin. A bruise was blooming on her shoulder where it had slammed into the stone. Her eyes were wide, glistening with unshed tears, her breath coming in ragged gasps. She was weakening, the struggle draining her. In another minute, he would have had his way. The thought was a fire in his veins.

Then, a shadow detached itself from the deeper darkness of the mango trees.

Lucien.

He moved with a quiet, deadly grace that even then, in Ethan's fevered state, registered as a threat. Ethan didn't hear him approach; he just felt a change in the air, a new presence that crackled with cold intent. He turned his head, still gripping Arielle.

What he saw in Lucien's face was not the hot anger of a rival, but something far more terrifying: a calm, absolute fury. Lucien’s eyes, usually so guarded, were like chips of flint. He took in the scene—Arielle, pinned and shaking, the marks on her skin, the terror in her eyes—in a single, comprehensive glance. No words were exchanged. None were needed.

The first blow was a shock of white-hot pain that exploded across Ethan's jaw. He stumbled back, releasing Arielle. She slumped against the well, clutching her wrists, her sobs now audible. Ethan barely had time to register the pain before Lucien was on him. The fight was brutal, efficient, and utterly one-sided. Lucien fought with a controlled violence that spoke of training Ethan didn't possess. Punches landed with surgical precision—ribs, kidney, solar plexus. The world narrowed to pain and the sound of his own grunts. The last thing he saw before darkness swallowed him was Arielle, her face pale and streaked with tears, looking at Lucien not with fear, but with a desperate, dawning relief.

He woke up in police custody. Arielle’s testimony, the physical evidence on her body, and Lucien’s cold, unwavering account sealed his fate. "Attempted s****l assault," they called it. The judge, looking down at him with disdain, spoke of "a dangerous predator" and "the safety of the community." Five years. For a moment of madness. For a girl who had tempted him beyond reason. For the boy who played hero.

A horn blared, jerking Ethan back to the present. A battered taxi had pulled up, the driver eyeing him suspiciously through the open window. "You need a ride or you just gonna stand there all day?"

Ethan pushed off from the signpost, his body aching with the phantom pains of that long-ago beating and the very real stiffness of years in a cramped cell. He slid into the back seat, the vinyl hot against his legs. "Town," he grunted.

As the taxi pulled away, Blackwood shrinking in the dusty rear window, Ethan’s mind began to clear, the fog of memory sharpening into a single, razor-edged point of purpose. Five years. He had paid his debt to the state. But another debt remained outstanding. A debt of ruin. Arielle had taken his youth, his freedom, with her tears and her testimony. And Lucien… Lucien had been the instrument.

The world had moved on. He knew that. Arielle would be twenty-one now. No longer a trembling girl by a well. But in his mind, she was frozen forever in that moment of vulnerability—a symbol of everything taken from him. She thought it was over. She thought the monster was locked away.

A slow, grim smile touched Ethan’s lips, a foreign sensation on his face. He watched the shantytowns and then the more solid buildings of the city outskirts blur past. The sun was beginning its descent, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple.

You have a new enemy, Arielle, he thought, the words a silent vow in the confines of the taxi. You just don't know it yet.

The prison had taught him many things. Patience. Resilience. How to harness hatred and let it ferment into a cold, durable fuel. He was no longer the impulsive, hot-blooded boy who had acted on raw desire. He was something harder, sharper, more calculating. The messy-haired man in the back of the taxi was a ghost from her past, yes, but one remade in darkness. He would find his way back into the tapestry of her life, not as a brute force, but as a shadow, a subtle poison. He would learn everything about her new life, her joys, her fears. He would find her weaknesses—everyone had them.

And Lucien? Ethan’s hands clenched into fists. The hero would get his due, too. But first, the prize. First, he would make Arielle understand the cost of what she had done. The fear she had felt by the well would be a pale shadow compared to what was coming. It wouldn’t be a quick, violent grab in the dark this time. It would be a slow unraveling. A psychological siege. He would take everything from her, piece by piece, until she was as hollow and broken as he had been in his cell.

The taxi entered the bustling heart of the city, a cacophony of noise and life that felt alien to him. He paid the driver with the meager stipend from his release, stepping out onto a crowded sidewalk. People flowed around him, avoiding his eyes, sensing the ex-con aura that clung to him like a scent. He didn’t care. He stood there, a still point in the moving crowd, and lifted his face to the setting sun.

The game, as he thought of it, had been paused for five long years. The players had scattered, perhaps believing it was over. Arielle, likely living her life, maybe even laughing in the sunlight, the memory of him faded to a bad dream. Lucien, perhaps still playing the protector, unaware that the threat he thought he’d neutralized was back, evolved.

Ethan Shawn took a deep, shuddering breath, filling his lungs with the free, polluted air. A fierce, dark joy surged through him. It was a feeling more potent than any he’d known behind bars.

Let’s start, he whispered to himself, the words lost in the city’s roar. Round two.

He melted into the crowd, a phantom with a purpose, his messy hair a flag of his defiance, his heart a vault of cold, meticulously planned vengeance. The first chapter of his freedom was closed. The next—a story of reckoning—was just beginning to be written, and he held the pen. The hunt for Arielle, and the ruin of all she held dear, was now officially, irrevocably, underway.

TBC 🌺🌺🌺