Chapter 8 - ECHOES OF THE PASTFar away, in the maximum-security federal penitentiary in Florence, Colorado, the environment was a stark, suffocating contrast to the coastal peace of Maine.
Inside a sterile, windowless concrete cell measuring six by nine feet, Ethan Sterling sat on the edge of a bolted-down steel bunk. He wore standard orange prison denim, his hair cropped close to his scalp, his fingernails chipped and dirty. The smooth, pampered hands of a billionaire heir were now calloused and scarred from prison labor in the facility's industrial laundry unit.
Clang!
The heavy steel meal slot rattled open, and a plastic tray containing a slab of gray mystery meat and a carton of warm water slid onto the concrete floor.
Ethan didn't move. He stared blankly at the opposite wall, listening to the distant, hollow echoes of slamming cell doors and the muffled shouts of violent inmates down the cellblock.
His mind replayed every single detail of that fateful night six months ago. He remembered laughing in Rachel's face. He remembered telling her that even her father couldn't save her. He remembered the arrogant thrill of thinking he was untouchable.
How painfully, catastrophically wrong he had been.
Because of his arrogance, he had lost his freedom, his fortune, his family name, and his entire future. His father and brother were locked away in different maximum-security facilities three states away, refusing to ever speak to him again, blaming him entirely for the total destruction of the Sterling legacy.
"Sterling! Wake up for rec time!" a guard barked harshly through the intercom speaker on the wall.
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Ethan didn't answer. He curled inward on the narrow bunk, pulling a thin, scratchy wool blanket over his head, desperately trying to block out the harsh fluorescent light and the chilling reality of his endless nightmare.
He was trapped in a concrete tomb of his own making, while the woman he had tried to break was living free, radiant, and untouchable under the protection of a four-star admiral.
