Page 54 of From Best To Bested

Roman fell to the floor and cried. He cried in a way he never allowed himself to cry. He cried like he had before his father beat it out of him. He cried like he had after murdering Stacy. He cried like he had when they brought down his sentence, and the rest of his life ended.

It hadn’t dawned on him how awful it’d be. His incarceration. How exhausting and painful and grueling every second would be. It hadn’t been awful, not like now, not while he kept his head above water. But he floundered once, just once, and now he just kept sinking, kept drowning, kept falling deeper and deeper, losing pieces of himself along the way. Those parts of Roman floated up, lost to the current like the air bubbles he’d never get back.

Roman sobbed, alone in his cell with no answers to the problems he faced, no way out, no way to fix them.

Chapter Eighteen

Alarms rang from out of nowhere, and without a word, the entire prison was locked down. Even the guards were stuck in the cellblocks where they were posted until SWAT retrieved them one small group at a time. It was chaos. They had to usher inmates out halfway through the mandated lockdown. People kept demanding the prisoners remain in their cells while other instructions came down, insisting the buildings had to be evacuated.

Pure fucking chaos.

Roman didn’t know what to make of it; he didn’t have the energy to care. Every day since his incident…since his fun. He held that word close, praying for it to become reality. Every day since he looked back on the fun he had, it became more excruciating than the next. Nothing Roman did managed to piece together the events properly. Oh, he recalled everything vividly, even when he lied to himself and said most had faded away to a haze of shame. No, the only part he couldn’t recall was where he messed up, where he’d offended Ezra. Memories kept screaming that Ezra wanted this, that he wanted Roman to do this, that he pressured it. Not pressured. Encouraged. Roman always needed encouragement.

Now, he remained close to Ezra even if the man continued acting cold toward him in the days since his fun with Jake.Roman held onto that word, held onto the misunderstanding as just that. The minute he let his walls down, the moment he actually considered it something more. Acknowledged what he already knew, he’d break into a billion pieces of shame.

When firetrucks arrived, Roman figured out why they prioritized evacuation. He also surmised they wanted a lockdown to determine who set it. Well, he guessed at that. As he and Ezra ended up stuck in the clustered crowd, he did his best to stay within a few feet per their arrangement. Not that Roman thought Ezra cared much about that anymore. Jake’s words continued to haunt him, horrify him, and he tried to think of how he could make Ezra happy again. How they could be happy together again. Roman blamed himself. He didn’t show enough respect to Ezra. He spent too much time resisting this arrangement. He wasn’t good enough.

“I’ll do better,” he said in a low hush, too afraid to raise his voice, too frightened to be heard until he had a real apology to provide Ezra.

“They fucking killed him,” someone said.

Ezra and Roman searched the crowd, conversations and speculation spreading almost as quickly as the fire that hit the prison.

It didn’t take long for Roman to piece together the news. Cellblock D had been hit by the fire; their rec room had been burned down. Roman scanned the area, searching for Levi. He lived in that wing of the building. His heart surged at the idea the last time they saw each other, the last time they ever encountered one another, was much to Roman’s shame. He couldn’t fathom how he’d ever face Levi again, but the idea of never seeing him again sent more startling fear through him.

“Let’s go,” Ezra demanded, which Roman appreciated.

Their current spot offered him no real vantage point, and Roman desperately wanted to continue searching the crowdfor Levi. He couldn’t tell Ezra that, with the champion already annoyed by him, already bored of him.

When Roman bumped into one of Jake’s pets, he flinched. The man was wispy and frail, eyes wide with exhaustion and bloodshot from whatever high coursed through him to make it another day. Roman trembled, staring into his future, seeing how much further he could fall and how terrible the collision would be.

“He’s dead, you know,” another person said.

The rumors of death had swept back around, this time carrying more intel alongside the gossip.

“They’re all dead.”

“Heard the fire was just to cover up the bodies.”

“Stabbed him like fifty times.”

Roman’s breathing hitched as he continued listening, continued searching, continued worrying about everything all at once until finally, a familiar face offered him the smallest relief in this sea of chaos.

Opposite the crowd over by the firetrucks and ambulances, Levi sat with some EMTs being tended to with a small group of inmates covered in ash. He didn’t appear burned or injured, but he looked completely devoid, like all his energy had been sapped.

Roman didn’t care who’d been caught in the flames, how this had happened, or even what would befall him in the days to come. He took a bit of solace in Levi’s safety and remained close to Ezra.

After hours of waiting, standing outside, and missing dinner, they finally allowed everyone back inside but relocated a bunch of inmates thanks to the loss of a cellblock. Levi ended up near Roman, and every part of him wanted to walk over, but shame and guilt held him back. Shame for what Levi knew about Roman’s fun night, guilt for how he continued to upset Ezra.

As the night swept in and lights out came close, news finally came in some tangible form. Ezra had a guard provide him and a small group of his friends with the news. Roman was hesitant to stand among them, expecting the friends he’d already serviced to be among them, but Jake and his crew were nowhere in sight.

“They’re all fucking dead,” the C.O. said, her voice low and harsh and nervous.

Roman blinked, completely bewildered as the information unfolded. The fire had been intentional and possibly a cover. Someone lured and locked most of Jake Finnegan’s crew inside the rec room and then set it on fire. They suffocated from the smoke, but a few were found with fatal cuts, too. They weren’t the only ones.

Jake himself wasn’t in the rec room, either lucky or unlucky enough to escape the trap. The few members of his crew who followed him out of the rec room ended up with their throats slashed in a nearby hallway. As for Jake, he’d been stabbed multiple times in the groin and left to bleed out.

“Forty-eight times?” Ezra scoffed, unconvinced.

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