“Your sentence is served. Good luck out there.”

Officer Sarah Bennett’s voice was firm, but not unkind, as the metal door groaned open.

I stood slowly, the sound echoing in my chest like a gunshot. She waited—stoic, composed. Detachment was survival here. I’d learned that much in two years.

This was it. The breath I’d held through every sleepless night. Freedom.

As I stepped out, murmurs stirred behind me—quiet claps, nods. Even a few “good lucks.” Inmates I’d barely spoken to now gave farewells like we’d shared lifetimes.

“Alice.”

That voice—low, steady—stopped me dead in my tracks.

It was Claire.

She gripped the bars, her eyes locked on mine, dark and fierce. She wasn’t crying. Claire didn’t cry.

“You said you’d never make it out,” she said softly. “But I told you—you would.”

My throat tightened. “I didn’t believe it anymore.”

“But I did. Every damn day.”

I stepped closer. Our fingers met through the gap.

“You saved me in here,” I whispered.

“No,” she said, eyes sharp. “Save yourself out there.”

I wanted to promise I’d come back for her, reopen her case, break the door down if I had to—but Officer Bennett’s bark behind me made the moment slip.

“I’ll find a way to send music your way,” I murmured, stepping back.

She smiled, faint and dry. “I’ll be listening. Even if it’s through static and steel.”

The corridor felt colder than I remembered as I followed Bennett to the release office.

Chief Officer Daniel Cross sat behind a desk stained with coffee rings and too many goodbyes. He barely looked up as he slid my papers forward.

“Sign here. And here.”

I signed: Alice Rodriguez. Wrongfully convicted. Finally free.

“Don’t come back,” Cross said, pausing. “You’ve got a future. Don’t waste it looking back.”

That line—it haunted me.

Funny. Marcus Hale, my old producer, said the same thing the day he signed me. Back when the world screamed my name. Now it barely whispered it.

But I wasn’t here for charts anymore. I was here for truth.

Why did Rick disappear? Why did the letters stop? Why didn’t anyone fight for me?

I’d served two years for a crime I didn’t commit. Rick promised four months. Then vanished.

Now, I was walking out—not with a mic. With questions.

The prison gates creaked shut behind me with a finality that felt like both an ending and a beginning. I stepped out, heart pounding in my chest, knees a little weak, but my head was high.

I exhaled hard, as if trying to breathe out the years I’d lost. Then I shut my eyes, tilted my face toward the sun, and spread my arms. The warmth soaked into my skin, kissing the shadows off my bones.

Freedom.

It tasted like hope and smelled like fresh asphalt and spring wind. And then, a tap on my shoulder, yet I didn’t move.

Part of me—some fragile, naive piece—hoped it would be him. Rick. That his voice would break through the quiet and make everything make sense.

But it wasn’t a man.

“Hello, Miss Alice,” a woman’s voice greeted me.

I opened my eyes and turned slowly.

She was tall, maybe mid-thirties, with cool brown eyes, auburn hair tied into a low bun, and a nurse’s uniform that looked too clean for this grimy place.

Her face was calm—almost blank—but her eyes held something like sympathy.

I blinked at her, confused. “Who are you?”

She pulled out a badge clipped to her chest. “Emma Ward. I’m your grandmother’s nurse.”

My stomach dropped.

For a second, I forgot how to breathe.

My grandmother.

The woman who raised me. Who gave everything she had so I could stand on a stage, bathed in lights and applause. Who skipped her medication just to buy me a better mic.

And yet… I never told anyone to go to her when I was arrested. I never asked my lawyers. Never once did I say her name.

I’d been so selfish—so obsessed with Rick’s silence, with my broken dreams, with the betrayal that I forgot the only person who truly loved me unconditionally.

Tears stung my eyes.

“My grandma?” I croaked. “She’s in Venice?”

Emma nodded. “Yes. She’s been waiting. And she still believes in you.”

I bit down on my trembling lip.

“Come with me,” she urged softly. Her gaze dropped to my clothes. “But first, let’s make you presentable.”

I looked down at the faded, oversized prison-issued clothes and gave a small, sheepish smile.

“Right,” I whispered.

We walked to a dark grey car waiting at the corner of the lot. She slid into the front passenger seat, and I climbed into the back.

“Let’s go, driver,” she ordered.

I didn’t ask questions yet there was too much I didn’t know, too much I needed to understand.

As the car pulled out of the station, I turned to look one last time.

And that’s when I saw her.

A robust woman, cheeks glistening with tears, a look of pure devastation on her young face as two officers dragged her in handcuffs toward the gates.

Her floral blouse was wrinkled, her lipstick smudged. She fought against them, crying, “Please! I didn’t do anything. I swear, I didn’t do anything!”

My heart clenched.

It was like watching myself all over again. I shut my eyes, and swallowed the lump in my throat.

That girl was just beginning her nightmare.

And I… I was finally waking from mine.

---

The neighborhood Emma brought me to looked lifted from a children’s fairytale: blooming porches, ivy-draped fences, sunlight dancing through flowered curtains.

I’d been here five minutes and already felt like home.

We stepped into a modest cottage, and the scent of jasmine hit me.

Wooden floorboards creaked under my feet. Then I saw the walls—hundreds of photos, a gallery of a life I’d almost forgotten. Me, mid-song, and clutching music awards at the world stage.

My knees buckled, and I sank onto the couch, my chest so tight I could barely breathe.

“I—” I started, voice cracking, but Emma was gone, her footsteps fading down the hall.

She returned moments later, her eyes distant.

“She’s asleep. But before you see her, eat something. Get dressed. I brought clothes.”

The bathroom mirror revealed someone I barely recognized. My hair hung brittle, like straw left too long in the sun.

I scrubbed off two years of cell sweat until I felt like myself again.

I slipped into the sundress Emma left—a soft, pale blue thing.

When I returned, Emma was on the couch, her fingers tapping a restless rhythm, her face shadowed with something she wasn’t saying.

“She’s… not waking up, is she?” My voice trembled, a child’s plea disguised as a question.

Silence stretched, heavy.

Then, softly, Emma said, “She passed last night. She waited as long as she could.”

The world stopped. My heart thudded once, twice, then seemed to forget how to beat.

I stumbled to the bedroom, each step heavier than the last. Granny lay there, still as stone, her face serene but hollowed by time.

I pressed my hand to her cheek—cold, so impossibly cold.

“Granny?” My voice broke, a sob tearing free. She didn’t stir. The silence was louder than any prison cell.

Emma knelt beside me, her hand warm on my shoulder.

“I’m so sorry, Alice.”

I couldn’t speak. I traced the lines of Granny’s face, the ones I’d memorized as a child.

She’d been my support, my safe harbor, the one who believed in me when the world turned its back. And now she was gone, stolen by time I’d lost to lies.

Two days later, I stood by her grave, the earth still fresh, the air thick with the scent of lilies and loss.

Her name was etched clean on the headstone: Grace Rodriguez.

My tears fell like rain, each one carrying a promise I could barely voice.

“I’ll make it right,” I whispered, my voice raw, crushed under the weight of grief and guilt.

Emma stood beside me, her presence steady but heavy.

“The world may never believe in your innocence,” she said softly, her words cutting through the haze. “But she did.”

I nodded, fists clenched until my nails bit into my palms.

The petals drifted around us, pink and fleeting, catching in the breeze.

Silence wrapped us tight, a shared mourning under the weight of all we couldn’t say.

Back at the cottage, Emma poured tea, the clink of the pot against the cups a fragile sound in the quiet.

She sat across from me, her hands steady but her eyes betraying a storm.

She closed them for a moment, took a breath, then said, “You were framed.”

My heart seized, a jolt of ice and fire in my veins.

“What?”

“By Rick… and Yvonne.” Her voice was heavy, each word a stone dropped into still water.

“They liquidated your accounts, fled to Greece. He’s married now, with a child. Your grandmother’s old detective friend uncovered enough to commute your sentence—but not enough for conviction.”

I always suspected something was going on between them.

The way they laughed too long at each other’s jokes, how close they sat when they thought I wasn’t looking.

Their intimacy bothered me. But every time I brought it up, Rick would dismiss it—call it paranoia, jealousy.

He’d say, “Yvonne’s like a sister to me.”

Right. A sister he ended up marrying.

If he didn’t want a life with me, he could’ve just said it. But instead, he chose to destroy mine.

He framed me. Let me rot behind bars for two years while he built a future with her.

My vision blurred, not with tears but with a rage so fierce it burned.

“They used me,” I whispered, my voice trembling with the weight of betrayal. “They took everything.”

Emma’s gaze met mine, steady and fierce. “Don’t let them win this battle.”

But how could I fight back? How could I even begin to find Rick and Yvonne, let alone make them pay?

They didn’t just take everything—I was the wreckage left behind.No money. No name. No future.

Just me… and the ruins they made of my life.