Chapter One

The Wrong Kind of Free

SHAW

“We’re not fucking this up,” I said out loud to myself and the legions in my head while I stood on the mayor’s pavement with my duffel bag hanging from one fist and the weight of the parole bracelet firm on my ankle.

Unlike every other blokes on parole, I got placed in the mayor’s house. Like I’m one hell of a dangerous criminal that needed proper scrutiny.

I’ve been staring at the huge mansion for three minutes now and it still doesn’t look real. It’s the kind of house that exists to remind you what old money looks like even when it stops trying to be subtle. It’s all dark stones and high windows and a front door that probably costs more than everything I’ve ever owned combined.

I was told as a warning by Officer Bill, the prison warden that there were more cameras here than in Blackbridge.

Of course, he’s lying. But I get that he kinda wants me to stay out of trouble.

I shift the duffel on my shoulder.

I am to reside here, report weekly, stay employed, stay clean, and stay invisible.

Simple.

I can do simple stuff.

I walk up the front steps and knock before I can talk myself into standing there any longer.

Thirty seconds pass. I study the door for a while. Dark wood. Brass knocker. This door has never once been kicked open.

Damn! Why that thought?

The huge door opens up shortly.

The man standing on the other side is not the mayor.

He’s around my age, maybe a little older. Way taller than I am. It would take a man with a low self esteem to be jealous of his height and built. His eyes slowly move over me once, like he’s pricing something at an auction and finding it disappointing.

He leans against the doorframe.

Don't move to let me in.

“You’re the parolee,” he says, his sharp jawline flexing.

“Shaw Carter,” I say.

“I know who you are.” He tilts his head slightly. “You’re late.”

I glance at my watch. “I’m three minutes early.”

“I said what I said.”

I stare at him. He stares back. Completely unbothered. Like he has all the time in the world and none of it is mine.

“You must be Lucas,” I say.

I’ve done a background check on the mayor and his family the moment I was handed a cellphone at the correction office, and I had recognized him alongside his elder sister who was married and had her own family.

The mayor has such a cute little family. Something I’d die to have.

“Must I?” He straightens up, finally stepping back from the doorframe, not quite an invitation, more like he’s decided I’m not worth the energy of blocking. “My father isn’t home. He’ll be back at seven. Until then try not to touch anything.”

He turns and walks back into the house.

I stand on the threshold for a moment.

I’ve got just four months, I remind myself. One hundred and twenty days. I have survived four years of Blackridge Correctional Facility. I can survive one arrogant rich boy with a god complex and a stupidly nice jawline.

I pick up my duffel bag.

I walk inside.

The inside of the mansion hits me like a museum I accidentally wandered into.

Everything is cream and gold and screams luxury. A chandelier hangs in the entrance hall like it was placed there specifically to make people feel small. The floors are marble—actual marble, pale and cold and gleaming—and the living room beyond opens up like something out of a magazine that people like me don’t subscribe to.

I try not to look too hard.

I failed.

There’s a bronze sculpture on a pedestal near the archway. It’s abstract, probably worth more than every apartment I’ve ever lived in combined, and I’m so busy trying to figure out what it’s supposed to be when my foot catches the edge of the Persian rug and I stumble.

It’s brief but it feels graceless and completely humiliating.

I catch myself on the archway and straighten up immediately.

Lucas is already looking at me.

Arms crossed. Scowl fixed firmly in place. Like he was waiting for exactly this.

“Careful,” he says. “That rug is older than your entire criminal record.”

I say nothing.

He tilts his head, a slow smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, the kind that has nothing warm in it.

“First time in a house with actual furniture?” He lets the question marinate for a moment. “Or just the first time you’ve seen a floor that isn’t concrete?”

My jaw tightens.

I keep my mouth shut and my grip firm on the duffel bag strap because I am on parole in this man’s house and I have come too far to let him cost me everything in the first five minutes.

Lucas seems to find my silence amusing. He unfolds his arms slowly, like a man who has won something.

“Relax, Carter. I’m just making a damn conversation. Don’t be a grouch.”

That’s not what that was. We both know it.

Before I can decide whether silence is still the right strategy, a figure emerges from a corridor to the left, a small older woman, dressed in a neat dark uniform with her white hair pinned back. She moves with a quiet efficiency, hands folded in front of her, like she has been navigating this house and the people in it for a very long time.

Lucas doesn’t look at her.

“Mrs. Able,” he says, his eyes still on me. “Show him to his room.”

“Of course, sir.” Her voice is soft. She looks at me with a quick look of sympathy, and gestures gently toward the staircase. “Right this way, dear.”

I follow her.

I’m almost at the stairs when Lucas speaks behind me.

“Carter.”

I stop to turn.

He’s still standing in the same spot, arms recrossed, chin tilted up just slightly. He’s still has that look of filth in his fucking blue eyes.

“Make sure you scrub properly in the shower.” A beat. “I’d hate for the guest room to smell like the shithole you’ve been at.”

I offer him nothing but silence that is filled with every ounce of discipline I have left.

I thought the elite kids were less rude.

This one is something else.

I held his gaze for exactly three seconds. Long enough to make sure he knows I never absorbed his jab. Then I turn back around and follow Mrs. Able up the stairs.

Behind me I hear nothing. No laughter, no retreating footsteps.

I know Lucas is still watching.

I can feel it all the way up the staircase.