Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas

“Do you know how much Will bled in prison?” I asked
her. “Do you know how hard Kai had to fight to hold down
any food because his gut raged with nerves and fear from
constantly having to look over his shoulder?”
Her stern look remained steady on me.
“Do you know that no matter what Michael paid or who he
bribed, there were people paying more to see the rich, entitled
sons of the Thunder Bay elite suffer in prison?” I kept going.
“Do you have any idea how sick they both got from lack of
food and sleep to balance the fucking excess of fear and pain?”
Her gaze dropped for a moment, uncomfortable, but she
stayed quiet.
“Yeah, well, neither do I,” I told her. “Because I wasn’t
there.”
Her eyes shot up, looking confused. I walked, circling the
perimeter of the room as I continued. “Three levels below cell
block six, in the basement, down a dank corridor, below five
feet of concrete, is where I was.” I fisted my hands, the anger
returning almost immediately. “For three years. You didn’t
know that, did you?”
Her eyes, so blue even in this dark room, pierced mine.
“Banks thought she was doing me a favor,” I said. “And
GGabriel agreed with her. He had too many enemies and those
enemies had soldiers on the inside. I was more at risk than Kai
and Will, so I was put in solitary confinement.” I drew in a
deep breath, the blood under my skin growing hot. “Twentythree
hours a day, seven days a week, all day, every day, for
one-hundred-sixty weeks. That’s one-thousand-one-hundredtwenty
days. Twenty-six-thousand-eight-hundred-eighty hours,
Rika.”
My fingers tingled with the urge to dig into my skin, but I
held back.
“I was allowed outside one hour a day, but even then I was
alone.” I walked around the room, glancing at her as I spoke.
“I ate alone, I walked alone, I did everything alone. My father
didn’t want me killed, so I was cut off from everyone.”