The track arrived in Dominic's inbox at 11:43 p.m. on a Tuesday. He was alone in his home office, city lights stretched out below like a circuit board, Saylor asleep upstairs in the bed that used to be ours.
He clicked play.
The production was clean. Professional. The kind of polish that cost six figures and sounded like it. Saylor's voice rode the melody smoothly, hitting every note the way a GPS hits every turn—technically correct, emotionally vacant.
Dominic listened to the first verse. The second. By the chorus, he had stopped hearing the words.
He closed the file. Opened his music library. Scrolled past playlists he had not touched in months.
My first album was still there. *Eigengrau*. The cover art was a photograph I had taken myself—an empty subway platform at 3 a.m., fluorescent light bleeding into shadow.
He pressed play on the opening track.
My voice filled the room. Soft at first, then building, layered over piano chords I had recorded in one take because the feeling only came once. The lyrics were about loss, but not the kind you could name. The kind that lived in the space between what you said and what you meant.
Dominic sat in the dark and listened.
Forty minutes later, the album ended.
He did not start it again.
He closed the app. Poured a glass of Scotch he did not drink. Stood at the window and watched the city breathe.
Upstairs, Saylor's phone buzzed with a notification she would check the moment she woke.
Dominic stayed where he was until the sky started to lighten.
Then he went to bed and did not sleep.
---
Nadia found me in the library on a Thursday afternoon. I was sitting at a table near the back, surrounded by case law I had been reading for three weeks straight, my notebook open to a page covered in citations and procedural codes.
She dropped into the chair across from me. Leaned forward.
"Rochelle's money came from outside," she said quietly. "Management company. Linked to your friend Saylor."
I looked up. Set my pen down.
"You're sure?"
"Inmate transfer records. Rochelle got commissary deposits every two weeks. Same amount. Same source, routed through a third party to look clean." Nadia's eyes were sharp. "It's not clean."
I nodded slowly. Picked up my pen again. Wrote a single line at the bottom of the page.
*Witness intimidation. External funding. Documented.*
"What are you going to do with that?" Nadia asked.
"Nothing," I said. "Yet."
She studied me for a long moment. Then she smiled, just a little.
"You're building something."
"I am."
She stood. Paused. "Rochelle's getting bold. Yard time's coming up. She's got friends."
"I know," I said.
Nadia left.
I went back to the case law. The procedural code I needed was buried in a footnote on page forty-seven. I copied it down by hand, every word exact, and underlined it twice.
Then I closed the book and went to the yard.
---
Rochelle hit me from the side.
I did not see it coming. One moment I was walking the perimeter, humming under my breath. The next, my face was on fire and the concrete was rushing up.
I caught myself. Tasted blood.
Rochelle stood over me, breathing hard, her friends in a loose circle around us. "You think you're special? You think you're better than me?"
I touched my lip. My fingers came away red.
Then Nadia was there. And three other women I had shared meal trays with, traded commissary items with, hummed melodies to when the nights were too loud to sleep.
They did not say anything.
They just stood between us.
Rochelle looked at them. Looked at me. Her face twisted.
"This isn't over," she said.
Vasquez appeared at the edge of the yard, radio already in hand. "Mitchell. Infirmary. Now."
I stood. Walked past Rochelle without looking at her.
Behind me, I heard Vasquez say, "You're done. Segregation. Move."
Rochelle started to argue.
Vasquez did not repeat herself.
In the infirmary, a nurse with tired eyes cleaned the split in my lip and asked if I wanted to file a report.
"No," I said.
She looked at me. Did not ask why.
I went back to my cell. Pulled out the notebook. Wrote down the date, the time, the names of the women who had stepped in without being asked.
Then I turned to a blank page and started writing a new song.
The melody was already there. I had been humming it all week.
Now it had words.
---
The letter took me six drafts.
I wrote it longhand in the law library, surrounded by statute books and procedural manuals I had borrowed and not yet returned. The language had to be precise. Formal. The kind of thing a lawyer would write if a lawyer gave a damn.
I was not a lawyer.
But I had read enough case law to sound like one.
The ethics violation was buried in Conrad Hale's third motion—a procedural filing designed to extend my sentence on a technicality. He had cited a precedent that did not apply. Misrepresented a statute. Small things. The kind of shortcuts a man takes when he thinks no one is watching closely enough to notice.
I noticed.
I copied the relevant sections by hand. Cross-referenced them with the actual statute. Wrote a two-page letter to the state bar's oversight board outlining the discrepancy in language so clean it could have been printed in a textbook.
I did not mention my name.
I did not need to.
I sealed the envelope. Walked it to the facility mailroom. Handed it to the clerk, who stamped it without looking up.
It would take weeks to process. Months, maybe.
I had time.
I walked back to my cell. Sat on the bunk. Pulled out the notebook and turned to the song I had started the day Rochelle split my lip.
The chorus was almost finished.
I hummed it once. Twice.
Then I wrote the bridge.
Somewhere down the hall, someone was singing off-key.
I smiled.
And kept writing.
