Chapter 110 Chains Of The Past

• Jeremy POV
• The jail cell was a concrete tomb, its walls cold and gray, etched with the scratches of past prisoners, the air thick with the sour tang of sweat and despair. I sat on the thin cot, its metal frame creaking under my weight, my hands clasped tightly to still their trembling, my heart a war drum pounding with a single, desperate need: Rachel. The news had reached me like a thunderbolt through the prison grapevine—Rachel’s confrontation with Celine, a struggle that ended with a gunshot, Celine’s arrest, the police hauling her away in cuffs, caught with the smoking gun, the evidence Rachel had gathered exposing her crimes. My relief that Celine was finally caged, her lies unraveling, was drowned by a tidal wave of fear for Rachel, the woman I loved, the woman who’d risked everything to save me.
• Was she alive? Was she safe? The thought of her bloodied, her fierce spirit dimmed, was a knife in my gut, twisting with every second I was trapped here, unable to reach her, unable to hold her. The cell’s dim fluorescent light buzzed overhead, casting harsh shadows across my bruised knuckles, a reminder of the station, Nick’s fists, the accusations that had branded me a predator, a lie Celine had spun to destroy us. Rachel’s voice from our call, trembling but defiant, echoed in my mind, her vow to fight, to wield the evidence—the flash drive, the documents proving Celine’s theft from the Morrows, her role in Bonnie’s accident—against the woman who’d torn us apart. She’d done it, my brave, unbreakable Rachel, facing down Celine’s venom, her cunning, her gun, but at what cost?