Chapter 105 Caged Heart, Unbroken Love

• Jeremy POV
• The jail cell was a tomb, its concrete walls pressing in like the jaws of a trap, each crack and stain a testament to the despair that seeped into the very stones. The air was stale, heavy with the acrid scent of rust, sweat, and hopelessness, the faint drip of a leaking pipe in the corner a mocking metronome, each plink a reminder of time slipping away, of Rachel out there, alone, facing a world that had branded me a monster. I sat on the edge of the metal cot, its thin mattress creaking under my weight, my head cradled in my hands, my fingers gripping my hair so tightly my scalp burned, as if the pain could anchor me, could pull me from this nightmare that refused to end. My body ached—bruises blooming on my jaw from Nick’s fists, my wrists raw from the cuffs that had bitten into my skin, now gone but leaving a phantom weight, a ghost of the moment I’d been torn from Rachel, her tear-streaked face etched into my soul, her voice—“I love you!”—a lifeline I clung to in this hell, a beacon in the dark that kept me from breaking.
• The world had turned against us, Celine’s lies a venomous web that had ensnared us, branding me a predator, a defiler of family, a man who’d preyed on his own niece. The hatred in Nick’s eyes, the way he’d lunged at me in the station, his screams—“My daughter, you son of a bitch!”—echoed in my skull, a father’s rage fueled by a belief in Celine’s twisted narrative, a belief that I’d manipulated Rachel, abused her trust. Scarlett’s tears had been worse, her whispered apologies, her pity for Rachel a knife that twisted in my gut, carving out pieces of me with every sob. They didn’t understand, couldn’t see the love we shared—pure, fierce, a bond forged in stolen moments by the pool, in whispered promises under starlit skies, in nights that belonged only to us, where the world’s rules couldn’t touch us.