Easy Sacrifice by Anna Brooks Read Free Book Online Page A

anyone else. I fall asleep but wake up after only two hours. I circle the house, and before I lie back down again, I triple check that the pistol beside the bed is loaded.
    Marco’s got so many on the inside, so many dirty cops, that aside from Jay, I don’t trust anyone. He was the one who approached me when I was seventeen years old. I started snitching for him, and one thing led to another.
    Being a street kid means jail time, regardless. It was like a rite of passage to do time in juvie. But as an adult, I didn’t want to go back. With Marco on my ass, I lacked so much freedom as it was, and I didn’t want any more taken from me. I laugh at the irony of the fact that the United States Government employs me, yet I’m rotting away in a jail cell.
    All it takes to snap me out of my pity party is one thought of Jessa. She’d never survive on the inside, and when she got out, Marco’d have her ass for killing his guy.
    But since I’m the one who took the fall, he’s waiting. For me. Eye for an eye. Then he’ll go for her. I know how he operates, and his silence right now doesn’t mean shit. He’ll get his revenge. I just have to be smarter and faster.
     
    * * *
     
    I grip my hands on the bars and rest my head against the cool metal. It’s about four a.m., so nobody is awake yet. Only five more months. Five more months until I’m outta here. I’m so fuckin’ thankful I was able to get outta here for a few months a couple of years ago. But since then, I’ve done lots of thinking … too much, actually.
    I dream about what things could be like if I were normal. If I would have been born to a fuckin’ banker or some shit. How I could have had what I so desperately want. What I’d work my hands to the bone to protect. What I’d treat like gold.
    I can’t even jack off to anything but the picture of her face I have tattooed on my mind. She’s inside me. She’s everything to me. I’ve asked myself a million times what it is about her. Why her? How the fuck can it be someone I barely know? And each time, I don’t have an answer. It’s just her. She’s just her.
    Footsteps take me out of my thoughts as one of the guards walks by and hands me an envelope. I take it back to my bunk with me and open the paper, reading Jay’s update. My eyes skim the pages until they land on her name.
    He tells me that she has a boyfriend and that she doesn’t seem as happy as she should, but it’s probably the stress of opening the veterinarian clinic. She’s gotten her dream. My lips tilt up into a smile, and the foreign feeling is only something that she could produce.
    I tear the pages up when I’m done and flush them down the toilet. As I watch the white squares wash away, I clutch my chest from the sudden knife through my heart.
    But through it all, I’d do a lifetime in here if it meant keeping her safe.
     
    * * *
     
    Jessa
     
    “How are you holding up?” my mom asks.
    I shift my feet under me and swallow another drink of wine, adjusting the phone on my ear. “Good. Really busy, though.”
    “I’m sure you are. I’m so proud of you. Proud of both of my kids. I have a successful actor for a son and pretty soon a veterinarian for a daughter.”
    Her pride is reflected in her voice, and I laugh. “Are you crying?”
    She sniffles. “No.”
    “Why are you crying?”
    “I’m just so proud of you. I know things haven’t always been easy, but you’ve managed to push all of that aside and strive for your dreams and … I’m rambling.” She giggles. “Sorry.”
    “It’s okay, Mom. I’m glad I make you proud.” And I’m glad that she’s oblivious to the fact that I’m still a heartbroken woman.
    We chat for a few more minutes before hanging up, and I decide I’m too tired to get up and go to bed, so I pull the blanket from the back of the couch over me and fall asleep. Mom’s usually right, but one thing she’s wrong about is my dreams. They’re not the same as when I was a kid. For ten years,