Stolen Love (Beauty in the Stolen 3)

Chapter 21

Ian

Peters fumes a little because his appeal for letting me wear a suit was rejected. I suppose fuming is a big rebellion in his eyes. The guy never indulges. He does everything in moderation. Has he ever had a day of fun in his life?

When the guards lead me into the courtroom, I search the crowd for her face. She sits in the same spot, wearing the same red hair and brown contact lenses. We’ve had countless conversations during the last three days using nothing but our eyes.

How are you keeping up, baby doll?

You don’t have to worry about me, Ian. I know how to take care of myself.

Where are you staying? Are you safe? Are you taking care of yourself? You shouldn’t come here. But fuck, am I happy to see you.

The sassy, playful smile she puts on for my benefit says, Wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Wild horses couldn’t drag me away from you, Cas.

That’s what I think when the defense attorney addresses the judge. That’s what my eyes are telling her as the prosecutor counts off my crimes. In my head, I’m between Cas’s legs while I keep my promise to Hackman, giving him what he wanted.

After my statement has been read, we break for lunch. I resent the hour I can’t see her face. Selfishly, I want to keep her on that hard bench for the eight long hours of the trial every day. It stokes my fantasies and sates my hunger to fill my mind up with images of her face, memories I can store for after.

Peters passes me a sandwich on a paper plate after the guard has checked between the layers and cut the bread in small cubes. A man like Peters will never slip me a blade, but protocol is protocol. While I eat and down a bottle of water with cuffed hands, he tells me he’s happy about the media attention. The polls his smartass firm run show my popularity has grown, not that I give a shit about any of that. It was never about that.

Peters wipes the crumbs from his lap and stands. “It’s time.”

He goes to the bathroom reserved for free people while the guards take me for a piss in the basement toilet. We resurface on the ground level next to an arched window. Protesters with posters are lining the street. They’re waving their self-made signs, shouting, “Free Ian.”

One of the guards tells me to get a move on. I shuffle in my shackles, eating up the distance to the courtroom. It feels a lot like the end, as in written with capital letters, those words you find at the end of a story, those words that are followed by a blank page.

Not even a clean slate.

Simply nothing, like dropping off the edge of the earth.

And they lived happily ever after.

I enter, immediately searching the crowd for her face. The tall guy in front of her hides her features, but I can make out the halo of her red hair in the sun that filters through the window. I don’t crane my neck to look at her when I sit down, but her presence ghosts over my skin. If I close my eyes and block out everything else, I’ll catch a whiff of orange blossoms in the air. It’s my mind playing tricks on me, but tricks are good enough for me. I sure as hell won’t be getting more.

I stand when the judge commands me. The public’s faces in the gallery are sympathetic, which is never a good sign. The judge, an old-school, University of Pretoria alumnus who’s sat on several human rights commissions, barely spares me a glance when he convicts me to life imprisonment without parole or pardon for one hundred years.

Peters’s face drops. He was bargaining on a double life sentence, at most triple.

The verdict doesn’t come as a shock. It’s a disappointment all the same, but I can’t say I didn’t expect it. A soft, female gasp comes from the back of the courtroom. I turn my head a fraction. The tall guy has shifted to the left. I catch Cas’s gaze as she sways a little in her seat, clutching the back of the bench in front of her. I smile, offering her the best comfort I can. I doted on these secret moments even if I didn’t want her to come. I pocketed them to take out and enjoy later when the longing gets too much.

All I can offer her is my heart. I leave it in her palm as I walk from the courtroom to the holding cell. I won’t go back to the cell at the local prison where they’ve kept me for the duration of the hearing. I’ll go back to Pretoria.

Now I face the real music. The hearing was for show, appeasing the media and spectators, giving them a false sense of justice. Like the prison guard told me this morning, accidents happen in jail. The government doesn’t intend for me to get out of this alive.