The Paper Swan(76)

Monique blinked. Had this piece of fresh meat, this newcomer, just swiped the food off his plate? Only a fool would disrespect another prisoner so blatantly, and this fool had chosen to tangle with him?

Damian needed a reaction. Fast. Before the guards got involved. He picked up his mug and splashed icy, cold water in Monique’s face. Monique let the water drip off his nose and down his chin. He wiped his face without breaking eye contact with Damian. And then all hell broke loose.

If you’re going to get in a prison fight, be the first to strike, thought Damian, as he slammed his elbow into Monique’s throat, getting him in the voice box. It took the bigger guy a second to recover. By then, they were surrounded by a circle of convicts, keeping the guards at bay.

Monique lunged across the table, toppling Damian off his chair. The two men crashed to the floor, grappling with each other. Damian took heavy blows to his chin, his jaw, his chest. Each hit felt like he was being pounded by a hammer. Monique powered over him, stomping on his instep to keep him pinned down, so he couldn’t fight his way back on top. He grabbed Damian’s neck, clamping down on his windpipe, choking him with an iron grip, before bashing his head against the floor. All the air in Damian’s lungs left him in a sharp whoosh. Damian felt like his face was going to explode, like all the blood had collected in his head and Monique was tightening the wrench, cutting it off from the rest of his body. Monique was dodging his punches, punches that were quickly losing force as Damian’s vision started to fade. The inmates looking down on them turned blurry, one blue uniform melding into another. The noise, the chaos, the chants turned distant. Skye’s face floated before him, haunting and frozen, the moment before he’d pulled the trigger, her eyes stricken, the silent ‘no’ she’d mouthed.

What do you do, Damian? He heard her voice in his head.

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.