Ruaan woke up and made a decision.
He was not thinking about Harolin Crowe.
He was not thinking about Mara Crowe. He was not thinking about the name, the timing, the transfer request, the two years, the cold smile in the processing room, or any of the seventeen thoughts that had kept him staring at the ceiling until some ungodly hour of the morning when exhaustion finally dragged him under.
He was not thinking about any of it.
He was being rational. He was being calm. He was a twenty-six-year-old man with a functioning brain and he was choosing, deliberately and consciously, to consider the possibility that he had simply been tired and paranoid and that Crowe was not an uncommon surname and that Mara was two years ago and buried and—
"You're doing the face," Split Lip said from across the cell, without looking up from lacing his shoe.
"I don't have a face."
"You've got a face."
Ruaan smoothed his expression into something serene and said nothing.
He had a plan. Keep his head down, stay out of Harolin Crowe's path, behave impeccably, and do nothing that would draw attention or conflict for the duration of his sentence. Simple. Clean. Manageable.
He could do manageable.
---
Breakfast was an improvement over dinner only in the sense that it was a different colour.
Ruaan sat at the grey section table with his cellmates, poked at something that might have been an egg if you were feeling generous, and focused on being invisible. Around him the hall operated on its usual rhythm — grey uniforms eating fast and quiet, dark blues spreading out in the middle, the low current of tension that ran under everything like bad wiring.
He was doing well. He was being calm. He was not thinking about—
"Cellmate 2525!"
The guard's voice cut through the hall noise like a blade. Ruaan continued eating.
Bandaged Arm's elbow connected with his ribs.
Ruaan looked up.
Half the hall was looking at him.
He set his spoon down slowly and raised his hand slowly.
"...Here."
"You have a guest. Move."
He pushed back from the bench and looked at his cellmates. "I'll be back."
"It's Wednesday," Bruised Jaw said.
Ruaan paused. "What does Wednesday mean?"
"Gym day. We'll be there when you're done." Bandaged Arm nodded toward the door. "Don't keep the guard waiting. We'll explain later—"
"'2525!'"
Ruaan exhaled through his nose, pointed a single finger at Bandaged Arm in a 'we are continuing this conversation' gesture, and turned to follow the guard.
He made it three steps before he heard it.
"Oh! Wow... look at that, would you—"
"—told you new meat always—"
"—the 'ass' on him, I swear to God—"
He did not turn around. He did not react. He kept his chin level and his stride even and followed the guard out of the hall with composed dignity.
.
.
The visitation room smelled like antiseptic and disappointment.
A long counter ran the length of it, thick glass panels dividing it down the middle, phones mounted on either side. The guard cuffed Ruaan's hands in front of him with a practised efficiency that Ruaan was beginning to resent, told him he had five minutes, and gestured toward the closest seat.
Ruaan sat.
On the other side of the glass, already seated, perfectly put together in a grey coat that Ruaan recognised as the one 'he' had paid for — was Dominic Frey.
Ruaan's chest did something complicated. He ignored it.
"Dominic."
Dominic looked at him. His expression was calm. Not the calm of a man who was holding something together — just calm. Settled. as he had already processed whatever this was and filed it neatly away before arriving.
That, more than anything, made Ruaan's stomach drop.
"What are you doing to get me out of here?" Ruaan said. He went straight to it without any preamble. Five minutes was five minutes. "Lawyers, appeals, whatever your contacts can—"
Dominic raised one hand. A small gesture. A stop gesture.
Ruaan stopped.
"I'm not doing anything," Dominic said.
The words landed flat.
"...What?"
"Your father called me. He said to leave it alone." A small pause. "And I think he's right."
"My father—" Ruaan leaned forward, cuffed hands pressing against the counter edge. "My father told you to leave it alone and you listened? After everything I—" He stopped. Recalibrated. "What do you mean you think he's right. Dominic. You're my fiancé."
Something moved across Dominic's face. It was quick and gone before Ruaan could properly read it.
"About that," Dominic said.
The way he said it was like someone who had been carrying for long enough that they'd worn smooth.
"I'm ending the engagement," Dominic said.
The hall was quiet enough that Ruaan could hear the guard shifting behind him.
"You're—" He heard his own voice come out very controlled. Impressive, actually, given the circumstances. "You're breaking up with me. While I'm in prison. You came here, in person, to break up with me while I'm in prison."
"I thought you deserved to hear it directly."
"How generous of you." Ruaan's jaw tightened. "After the money, Dominic. After I funded the business, after I—" His voice dropped. "You took everything I put into that company. You took two years of—"
"I lied."
Silence.
Ruaan stared at him through the glass.
"I lied," Dominic said again, quieter, like saying it twice made it more honest. "About being gay. I was never — it wasn't real. I needed the money and I needed cover for something and you were—" He seemed to search for a word and settle on none of them. "It was convenient."
The word 'convenient' sat between them like something physical.
Ruaan looked at Dominic — at the coat he'd paid for, at the calm that had never once looked like grief — and something cold and very clear moved through him, pushing everything else out of the way.
"By 'something,'" Ruaan said slowly, "do you mean 'friends—'" The word arrived in his mind before he'd consciously reached for it. "And by friends, do you mean the Crowe siblings?"
Dominic's calm cracked.
Not much.
Then he smiled. Small. Almost impressed.
"You're not as foolish as I thought," he said.
Ruaan stood up.
The chair scraped back. The guard behind him took a half step forward. Ruaan ignored him completely.
"When I get out of here," Ruaan said, and his voice had gone very quiet, "I am going to dismantle everything you've built. Every contact, every contract, every single thing you constructed with my money — I will take it apart piece by piece and I will make sure you remember exactly where it all came from."
He was warming up. He had more. He had significantly more—
"2525. Time."
"I'm 'talking—'"
"Time's up. Step back."
Ruaan's hands curled into fists against the counter. He looked at Dominic through the glass — at the small, infuriating smile that hadn't moved — and took one breath.
"I won't let any Crowe run my life," he said. "Not Mara. Not whoever else. And especially not Harolin."
He turned and walked.
Behind him, through the glass, Dominic's voice carried easily. "Good luck, Ruaan."
Ruaan didn't turn around.
'I don't need luck,' he thought. 'I've never needed—'
He stopped walking as he stood in the middle of the visitation corridor, cuffs being removed by the guard, and stared at the floor.
'Tomorrow is Thursday.'
The games. The bottom ten get punished. The top three move up. And he had spent yesterday arriving, being searched, being assigned the worst cell in the lowest block, eating food he didn't recognise, and not sleeping, which meant he knew absolutely nothing about what the game involved or what form it took or who his competition was or what the rules were—
'Wednesday,' Bandaged Arm had said. 'Gym.'
'That's why they were going to the gym.'
Ruaan looked up.
No. He was not losing a Thursday game in week one of two years. He was not ending up in the bottom ten. He was not becoming anyone's punishment. He was not giving Cullen Ray anything to work with, he was not giving the prison hierarchy anything to work with, and he was absolutely not giving Harolin Crowe — who had engineered this entire situation from the outside using Dominic as a very expensive puppet — the satisfaction of watching him lose.
He had three clear and specific reasons.
One — nobody was using his toilet seat again. Ever.
Two — he was not becoming anyone's anything, and Cullen Ray could take that information and sit with it.
Three — Harolin Crowe had come to this facility for him specifically, had planned it, had executed it, and was presumably waiting for Ruaan to fall apart. And Ruaan Calder did not fall apart on request.
The guard gestured toward the corridor.
Ruaan straightened his grey uniform, lifted his chin, and walked.
To the gym, apparently.
Fine.
.
.
He heard it before he reached the door — the flat, rhythmic sounds of a space in use.
The guard stopped at the entrance and nodded him through.
Ruaan pushed the door open and stepped inside.
He saw the gym. He saw his cellmates near the far wall, Bandaged Arm already raising a hand to wave him over. He saw the equipment, the other grey uniforms scattered through the space, the dark blues keeping their own corner.
And then he saw something else.
He stopped walking.
Everything in him went very still.
"Oh," he said, very quietly, to absolutely no one.
The door swung shut behind him.