I fight back and I fight hard.
Damian’s eyes shot open. He grabbed hold of the beads around Monique’s neck and pulled. When Monique’s face was close enough, Damian head-butted his nose. Monique let go of Damian and clutched his nose. Blood spewed over his blue chambray shirt. Damian punched Monique in the jaw and got on top of him. By the time the guards got through, Monique’s face was raw and purple from smeared lipstick and Damian’s blows.
As they dragged Damian and Monique away, the sea of prisoners parted. Both men were unsteady on their feet, bloodied and battered, but one thing was clear: Damian Caballero was not a man anyone wanted to mess with.
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.