Page 6 of Firefly
Just another poor kid thrown into the grinder.
I slam my cuffed fists into the concrete wall. “We weren’t driving!” I shout at nobody. “We didn’t fucking kill anyone!” My voice cracks, because I know deep down that the truth doesn’t matter.
Not when powerful men decide your fate before you ever step into a courtroom.
I slide down the wall until my ass hits the floor, breathing hard.Fifty-five… fifty-five.
By the time I get out, Ophelia will probably have kids. A husband with a perfect rich life, some asshole in a country club sweater.
And me?
I’ll be the ghost she used to love.
The thought hollows me out.
But then, another feeling rises beneath the grief. Something darker.Hatred.
I lift my head slowly, starting at the steel door in front of me. Judge Fitzgerald thinks he won. He thinks he buried me where nobody will ever find me again.
But prison doesn’t kill boys like me. It creates new weapons. And one day, I’ll get out and I’ll hunt down every person involved.
Every cop.
Every lawyer.
Every lying bastard who helped destroy my life.
Especially him—Judge Fitzgerald.
And when I finally stand in front of him again, I’m going to rip apart everything he loves most. Including his precious daughter, because Ophelia is still mine.
She always will be… even if I have to crawl out of hell itself to get back to her.
Ophelia
“Ghost-Justin Bieber”
Three years later… present day.
The engine beneath me growls, vibrating between my thighs as I sit at the starting line in my shiny black and gold Triumph Daytona 675.
The smell of gasoline, cigarette smoke, and burning rubber fills the air around the empty strip in the middle of nowhere.
Nothing but farmland for miles and no one to bother us. It’s loud here.
Chaotic and wild.
Which is exactly why I love it.
Out here, I’m free.
The chains that hold me in place during the day are unlocked and I get to do what my heart loves most—racing and being around my true friends, not the fake ones from school.
Nobody here knows how broken I truly am… well, except for Bianca. She lived it with me. Losing her twin brother Justin the same day I lost Hayden made us closer.
The trauma bonded us.
She was the only one who was there for me when I tried to take all this pain away. I was so hollowed out by grief I just wanted to be with him and swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills was the only way to do it.
