CHAPTER 1

 Prison 

"Time's up! You got to go now and let her get back to prison." One of the guards that worked in this prison told my friend Mary, who visited me inside this cold lonely cell. 

Mary was the only real friend standing with me through this ordeal. She was the only one who didn't turn her back on me during the time when the world turned its back on me. Every week, as if with clockwork precision, she came to see me, bringing with her food and books but, above all, companionship. And many times I used to think, what have I done to deserve her? It was the fifth year that I had already spent inside the prison for a crime I did not do. 

Painfully long years behind bars, away from the world, away from my home, all because of just one horrible lie. Memories came flooding in, memories of what I lost, as my eyes began to well with tears. They slid down my cheeks like rain falling from a heavy cloud, and no matter how hard I tried stopping them, they refused to let up. 

The more I thought about it, the more the tears came until quietly I was sobbing. I used to be the favorite. Once I had been the treasured lover of Maxon Adams, the rich powerful billionaire who gave me everything. And now, everything has changed. 

Everything had been taken from me. My whole life had been turned upside down; I lived a nightmare that I never thought in my life I would live. Is this how my life is going to end? Alone, trapped in this living hell of a prison, paying for a sin I didn't commit? I asked myself that every day for the last five years of my life. Every morning, I woke up hoping, praying that something would change-that finally someone would believe me. But nothing ever did. 

The walls of the prison were as unchanging as the bars on the windows that kept me trapped inside."Humans are wicked," I said in a whisper to myself, not really to anyone else. There were certain people I was thinking of, people I once trusted, people who had betrayed me. People whose lies had put me here.A prisoner's life is a life of no freedom. 

Each day, I woke up in the same place and performed the same thing. There is no room for dreams or hopes in a place like this. But still, I couldn't stop myself from dreaming, from hoping that maybe one day I will be free again. If God says that one day I will be free, then I will live to see that day. And even when I finally am free, this fear will linger on, the fear of people and their cruel actions. The tears would not stop as I walked again in slow motion to my cell. 

The guard had firmly yet delicately grasped my arm and started to take me away from the visiting room. His voice came hoarse, but nothing else was uttered. What else was there to say?. He didn't care about me; I was just another prisoner, another number. I walked and my mind wandered back to the past, back to when I had all that mattered to me. 

I remembered being in the Adams' mansion living an ongoing life surrounded by gold and bliss. I remembered the look in Maxon's eyes when he'd stare at me, or the way he used to hold me tight while he whispered sweet nothings in my ear late at night. I was his favorite. His lover. She whom he had sworn he would always protect. Now it was just a distant dream. And now? Now, I was but a memory, a prisoner shut out from the world, forgotten. 

I reached my cell, and the guard unlocked the door. Cold metal creaked as it opened, and I stepped inside. The heavy iron door slammed shut behind him, and I was alone again. The tears hadn't dried up yet, and I seriously doubted they ever would. Scarcely had I sat myself down on the small cot in the corner of my cell when the guard reappeared. His voice was like a growl, breaking the silence. "You've got another visitor. This will be your last chance to see anyone today." A visitor? I sprang up in bed, wiping my face dry of the tears which had stained my cheeks. Who could it be? was the panting thought. In five years no one save Mary had laid eyes on me. My heart raced and for a part of me was daring to hope that this visitor-just this time-might prove an angel. 

Perhaps they would tell me that the nightmare finally was over, that I could go home. But then, just as quickly as it had come, it was gone. No. It couldn't be. It's probably just some official or lawyer. Someone was coming to discuss the details of my case once again and reminding me of the endless battle that I had fought to prove my self-innocence. Yet, curious, I got up and followed the guard. Who could the visitor be? What could they want? My mind went through possibilities which grew more desperate with each turn of my brain. 

The guard ushered me back to the same small, somewhat dark room that I had seen Mary in just a few minutes ago. I stepped inside; my eyes adjusted to the light. It was an empty room save for one figure sitting at the table, its back turned to me. I couldn't tell who, but something in the way he was sitting there, motionless, wordless, gave me a run of cold up and down my spine. I swallowed hard and stepped forward, my hands shaking slightly as I approached the table. 

The visitor at last turned around to face me. My heart hitched a beat, and all the blood seemed to run out of my face. Of all the people I might have expected to see, it was him.