Aaron | ON HOLD

Prologue

Prologue

The gun in my hand felt heavier than it ever had before. My fingers curled around the cold metal and I squeezed hard enough for the blood in my veins to slow down until the tips of my fingers were chilling.

The blood on the floor was one of picturesque grime. It splattered across the floor until there was more on the hard slab of concrete than there was inside of him. A lifeless body laid in the stains until it was swimming in the pool of red, drowning. All I could do was stare at the crime scene before me, the bone chilling picture one that would be forever etched in to my memory.

I couldn't go down for this but I knew I would have to. I would because of the scene before me and the gun in my hands. There was no getting out of this, absolutely no way of running. I wouldn't leave, I couldn't leave, I relied on this and so did she.

The sound of police cars were just in a distance. My eyes didn't move from the murder before me, my heart rate should have been accelerating the closer the cops got to my shaking body, but it felt as if it was slowing down by the minute. I couldn't breathe, let alone call for help.

Who would help me anyway? I was a suspected criminal from now. I was a piece of shit, a convict, a murderer. In their eyes, I was a man who deserved to die too. An eye for an eye, they say, this time, a body for a body.

This man had a family, a couple of sons and a small country house situated outside of the village. Those kids were now without a father and the wife without a husband. For what? For this?

"No, please, don't kill me!" He screamed. "I can't die, I've got children!"

His voice was a record in my head. It played over and over and over again until I could hear nothing else. The police cars had drowned out, the screams from the crowd in the street had nothing on the screams in my head playing ransom from the man who was before me.

I would have done anything to be away from this.

The police cars were so close now, their lights illuminated the blood a deep blue. It also illuminated me, a criminal standing before my own murder scene. It was if I was in the spotlight but for all of the wrong reasons. The crowd didn't cheer me on, hell, they screamed at the lifeless body beneath my feet. They eyed the gun in my hands and they fled as if I was somebody to be afraid of.

I was.

The cars skidded and stopped with a halt before me. The police had gotten out of their cars by now and were facing me with guns of their own. My eyes flickered over to the gang of men in uniform and I held my hands up in surrender.

"Put the gun down!" A deep voice shouted through a megaphone. I didn't have to think. I dropped the gun to my feet with a metal thud.

The gun was now also in the puddle of blood. The weapon that had aided to kill him was now with the body itself, they both bathed in the blood that had escaped through a bullet wound.

As soon as the gun had hit the floor, a swarm of men surrounded me and pulled me to the floor. My arms were forced behind my back and handcuffs were slapped on to my wrists quicker than I could think. I didn't struggle, I didn't have to. I knew exactly what I was getting arrested for and exactly why too.

All of this for her.

I could have cursed her name. I could have had her brought down but I refused to. I loved her even though she had cheated me. She broke my heart faster than she could have ever mended it.

My large frame was pulled by four men. I was pushed in to the back of a police car and the doors were slammed in my face.

I had expected that that night was going to be the last night I would have in the outside world. It was the last night where I could roam the streets in whatever clothes I chose, I could eat from wherever I wanted to eat. I saw daylight and moonlight and was able to feel the fresh breeze on my skin without the sounds of at least a thousand other men surrounding me on a daily basis.

It was the last time I felt free.

Those police doors closing me in symbolised a lot about the restrictions I was currently living with now. I wasn't a free man anymore with reigns which could lead me to wherever it chose. It signified the closing of my old life and what could have been.

I fucking missed what could have been, and I never even made it there.

Even though I was relatively muscly, I had tattoos and a scary face to match, prison life just wasn't for me. I didn't belong here.

I did think about that man everyday during my time in prison. I mean, I'm talking about my could have been, but what about his?

I was still alive and ready to get my life back again.

I had served two years in prison already and had twenty more to go. I was already thirty two and it felt as if I was never going to get out of here.

But I didn't deserve to get out of here.

I was arrested in May 2012 and was sentenced to twenty two years in a Californian prison for the murder of Phillip Easton.

I didn't even deserve to live.