Damian was thrown into isolation for instigating a fight. Isolation was the prison’s purest punishment. ‘The Hole’, or Solitary Confinement Unit was nine feet long and seven feet wide, with walls and ceilings of heavy gauge sheet metal. The floor was cold concrete. There was nothing in the cell except a metal bedframe with a thin mattress, crammed up against a toilet and a sink. Damian’s only point of contact with the outside world was the feeding slot. They took away his uniform and gave him a thin t-shirt and boxer shorts. At night, they turned up the air conditioning so he couldn’t sleep.
For ninety minutes a day, Damian was allowed into an exercise pen where he stretched and lunged and squatted, making the most of the extra space. For the remaining twenty-two and a half hours, Damian was left in total silence and darkness. For the first time since he pleaded guilty to the charges brought against him, Damian was alone. The isolation was supposed to break him, but he welcomed it. He had gone far too long without being held accountable for all the men whose blood was still on his hands:
Alfredo Ruben Zamora, the man who had tried to take down El Charro in the cantina.
El Charro.
Countless members of the Sinaloa cartel and Los Zetas, in the warehouse explosion.
But it was what he had done to Skye that weighed most heavily on Damian’s mind. He couldn’t stop thinking about the last time he had seen her, and even though it hurt like hell, he recalled every last detail.
When Damian walked into the courtroom, Skye was the first person he saw. His eyes automatically went to her because that’s how it was. When they were in the same space, she commanded all of his attention.
She looked different—not the girl who belonged in an ivory tower and not the girl who belonged in his island bed. She didn’t look like Warren’s Skye, or Damian’s Skye, or a torn up, in-between Skye. This Skye belonged to herself. Whatever she’d been through since the island had changed her. Damian felt the retraction, like she had closed herself off, not just to him, but to everything around her. She was sitting in the same room, but in her own zone, breathing her own air.
The bullet had grazed her shoulder and although it had exited without permanent damage, her arm was still in a sling from the injury. Damian could not look at her without thinking of her blood trickling through his fingers the moment he’d caught her. Blood that he had spilled. Warren’s men had apprehended him. They had carried Skye and Victor, who had passed out from blood loss, to the helicopter. Warren had flown to the hospital with them, while Damian was taken—handcuffed and guarded—to the police station. Rafael had kept him updated on Skye’s status and recovery, but he had not seen her since his arrest.
She was blond again. Her sleek, chin length hair was tucked behind one ear. From Damian’s angle, it accentuated her full, pink lips and made him yearn for things he’d lost the rights to when he’d pulled the trigger.
Skye was wedged between her father and Nick Turner, the guy she’d had dinner with on the night Damian had abducted her. Damian hated him for sitting so close to her, for being able to sit so close to her, his shoulder touching hers. He hated him more for that one single privilege than all the charges Nick had brought against him, because Nick was also the lawyer who was prosecuting Damian.
Although Damian had dual citizenship—Mexican and American—he was tried in San Diego because he had kidnapped Skye on U.S. soil. Except it never got to a trial. Damian pled guilty. He had maimed Victor, kidnapped Skye, held her captive, cut off her finger and finally, shot her. Damian’s lawyer and Nick worked out a plea bargain, with Nick pushing for the harshest sentence.
Nick despised Damian for taking away the girl he had come to adore, and for the things he believed he had done to her. Although Skye refused to see Nick outside of legal proceedings, Nick was convinced it was because of the trauma she had suffered, and that with time, she would give him another chance. He did not believe her when she told him she had fallen in love with Damian. So what if Damian was this Esteban kid she had once known? Skye was not in her right mind and it was up to him and Warren to put Damian behind bars forever. They trumped the kidnapping charge to aggravated kidnapping, given that Damian had caused Skye bodily harm. They wanted to tack on aggravated rape, but Skye insisted that the sex had been consensual, and refused to let them turn it into something ugly.
Of course, Damian knew none of this as he watched Skye between the two men. He saw them as a unit, a trio of joined forces.