His Favourite Betrayal

Prison Built for Two

Mia sat in her car for a long time after she left the building. Engine off. Hands finally still. The same five words kept looping through her head like they'd gotten stuck there on purpose.

*I don't regret any of it.*

She wanted to feel angry about that. Disgusted, maybe, that a man could throw away his freedom over a woman who'd left without giving him her name and call it nothing worth regretting. Instead there was a small, stubborn warmth in her chest that she filed under things to deal with later, the same way she used to file evidence she didn't have a use for yet.

She didn't sleep well. She'd stopped expecting to.

By morning she'd decided none of it mattered. He was an inmate. She was a guard. Whatever he'd sacrificed to end up in her prison didn't owe her anything except professional contempt, and she intended to treat him exactly like the file said he was: a subject, not a man she'd once let take his time with her.

That lasted about four hours.

It fell apart the second she clocked in and pulled the overnight housing log, because something in it didn't match what she'd been told at briefing.

"He's been moved to B-block, unit six," she said to Cole at the guard station, tapping the log. "Briefing said cell fourteen was permanent."

Cole didn't look up from his coffee. "Warden signed off on it last night. Something about classification review."

"Classification review usually takes a week, not a night."

"Not my paperwork, not my problem." He shrugged. "Above my pay grade, and honestly, above yours too. Just log it and move on."

She didn't move on, not internally. She'd built four years of a career on the difference between paperwork that happened because policy required it and paperwork that happened because someone wanted a particular outcome and worked backward to justify it. This read like the second kind. There was a form for expedited classification review, and it required two signatures, not one. The log showed one.

She made a note in the cheap notebook from her locker and kept walking.

"He's outside his zone again," Cole said an hour later, radio crackling. "Common room. Didn't say anything to him."

"Why not?"

"Would you? Guy's got a medical flag on his file that puts him in a different security tier than the rest of B-block. Means he gets more supervised movement than a standard inmate, less than full lockdown. I don't know the specifics and I'm not about to argue with the tier assignment on my own authority."

"That's not a reason to let him wander into a common room unescorted."

"No," Cole agreed, "it isn't. Write it up if you want. I already did."

That, at least, told her something. Cole wasn't the problem. Cole had done exactly what procedure asked of him, flagged it, and moved on with the same irritation she felt. Whoever had signed off on Dante's tier assignment sat somewhere above both of them, and that was a very different problem than a lazy guard looking the other way.

She grabbed her radio off the charger and went to find him herself.

He was exactly where Cole said, arms crossed, watching two inmates play cards like their strategy amused him. Nobody else in the room had said a word to him.

"Moretti. You're outside your zone."

"Tell that to whoever wrote my classification."

"I plan to. Until then, back to your cell."

"You could walk me there."

"I don't need to babysit you."

"No," he said, "but you want to."

"Move."

He moved, close enough passing her that she caught the same clean scent from three weeks ago and filed that away too, useless as it was. "You're the only one in this building who talks to me like that."

"Get used to disappointment."

"I don't think I will."

She walked him back and logged the escort herself, because she wanted her own name on the record instead of trusting someone else's account of it. When she looked up he was watching her write, and there was nothing warm in his expression at all.

"Keeping notes on me, Kitty?"

"I keep notes on everyone."

"Not like that." His head tilted slightly. "You write like someone building a file."

She didn't answer that, mostly because he wasn't wrong, and she wasn't in the habit of confirming things for people she was investigating.

She was still turning the classification form over in her head when Jenna found her at lunch.

"Okay," Jenna said, dropping into the seat across from her, "you've been staring at that sandwich for five minutes like it insulted your family."

"It was him."

"Who was who?"

"The flowers. The wine. All those numbers I kept blocking." Mia put the sandwich down. "It was Dante. This whole time."

Jenna's fork froze halfway to her mouth. "Wait. Back up. The guy from the bar is the inmate who just got moved into this building?"

"Yes. And his classification got fast-tracked overnight with one signature instead of two."

Jenna blinked. "Okay, that's a very specific thing to be mad about in the middle of finding out your one-night stand is a mob boss."

"It's not unrelated. If someone's greasing his paperwork, I want to know who."

"That's very you." Jenna leaned in. "But be honest with me for one second before you go full detective. Are you scared of him, or are you a little thrilled that he apparently blew up his own freedom to end up in your building?"

"I'm scared."

"Mia."

"Both…I don't know…Both."

"That's the most honest thing you've said all week."

Mia dropped her head into her hands. "I spent four years trying to build a case that would put him away. And instead I—"

"Instead you slept with him first and found out later. That's not on you."

"Feels like it is."

"It's not." Jenna's voice softened. "But you need to figure out what you're doing about the part where he's still doing it. Turning up wherever you are. That doesn't stop just because you know his name now."

"I know."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Find out who signed off on his housing change, for one."

Jenna raised an eyebrow. "That's not the question I meant, but sure, start there."

Mia picked the sandwich back up and didn't eat it.

She saw him three more times that day. Near the guard station when she clocked in from break, standing exactly where the schedule board would have told anyone she'd be. In the yard during her hour, though yard access for his tier was supposed to be staggered separately from general population. Once at the exact spot in the corridor where she always stopped to check her radio, like he'd learned the rhythm of her whole shift and folded himself into it without ever technically breaking a single rule.

That was the part that unsettled her more than the coincidence itself. Nothing he did was against policy. Every appearance had a plausible institutional reason behind it, a movement order, a tier privilege, a scheduling overlap. It was the accumulation that didn't sit right. Policies didn't usually line up this conveniently on their own.

"You're doing that on purpose," she said, the third time, not bothering to pretend otherwise.

"Doing what."

"Being wherever I am."

"I'm an inmate, Kitty. I go where I'm allowed." His mouth curved. "Not my fault you keep ending up there too."

"I work here."

"I know. That's why I'm here."

"You picked this prison because of me."

"I picked this prison because you work here. Yes."

"Say that like it's normal."

"It's not normal." No apology in it at all. "I don't chase people. People come to me. You didn't come." He tilted his head. "So I had to become something worth walking toward instead."

"You threw away your freedom."

"I threw away nothing I can't get back."

"That's convenient," she said. "A man in your position doesn't get moved to a lower-supervision tier overnight on one signature unless somebody wanted that outcome badly enough to skip a step. So either the review process here is broken, or somebody arranged this before you ever walked through intake."

For the first time since she'd met him, something in his expression actually stalled. Not the practiced pause she'd started to recognize as performance. A half second of genuine recalibration, like she'd landed somewhere he hadn't expected her to look. It was gone almost as fast as it came, folded back under the same unhurried composure, but she'd seen it, and she let herself feel exactly one second of satisfaction before pushing forward.

"I don't control the paperwork in this building," he said. "I'm not omniscient, whatever you've decided about me."

"Then who signed it."

"Ask whoever's name is on the form. I'm not the one keeping it from you."

"That's not a denial."

"No," he agreed. "It's not." And there was something almost approving in the way he said it, like he hadn't minded losing that exchange as much as she expected him to.

She held onto that small win the rest of her shift, right up until she realized she wasn't walking to her car alone.

She was three doors from the exit when she heard footsteps behind her that didn't belong to anyone doing final rounds.

She stopped. The footsteps stopped too.

She turned. He was standing closer than any inmate under any tier should be allowed to stand unescorted, which meant either nobody was watching this corridor tonight or somebody had decided not to.

"You're outside your cell." Her voice came out level, not smaller, and she was glad of that.

"I saw you leaving. Wanted to say goodnight properly."

"You don't get to say goodnight to me."

"I already did once." His voice dropped low enough to land under her skin instead of in her ears. "You just didn't know my name yet."

"Stop doing that."

"Doing what."

"Reminding me."

"You don't need reminding, Kitty. You've been doing that all on your own. I've just been watching." His eyes held hers. "I let them lock me in a cage for you. Don't insult either of us by pretending that doesn't scare you a little, in all the ways you like."

She didn't step back, and she didn't answer either, mostly because nothing she could say would land the way she wanted it to. Every instinct told her to write him up, end this right here, put it on record. None of it moved her feet, and she hated that more than she hated him for noticing.

He straightened and walked past her like nothing had happened.

She turned to watch him go. She couldn't help it.

He reached his cell, stepped inside without being told, and turned to face her from the threshold. Instead of pulling the door shut the way every other inmate did without being asked, he stood there, watching her watch him.

"Lock it if you want, Kitty. The prison isn't the cage you should be worried about."

Then he smiled, and left the door open anyway.

She logged that too, on her way out. Inmate Moretti, self-returned to cell, door left unsecured, officer engaged lock manually. Small, procedural, exactly true. It didn't answer a single one of the questions sitting in her notebook. It just meant that whatever was happening in this building, at least her own paper trail would hold up when someone finally asked.