Ruthless Regret (Ruthless Games Duology #2)

Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ZAIN

I’ve been out of prison for five days. How have I been out for five fucking days? It feels like five years.

How did I manage to fuck up so much in so little time?

That’s the question that haunts me while I stare up at the bathroom ceiling. The room isn’t as small as my cell in prison, but it’s small enough that I don’t feel exposed.

The bed is too soft, too open, too big. I tried sleeping in it earlier, but the space swallowed me whole.

Fourteen years in a cell does something to a person. It makes you forget what it’s like to have room to breathe. Four walls, close enough to touch if you stood in the center of the room, became my world. Being in a room where I can stretch out without my fingertips brushing against the walls feels wrong.

So here I am, lying on the bathroom floor, staring at the ceiling and pretending I’m going to fall asleep.

I slept in prison. Not well, not deeply, but enough to make it through the days. Out here, it’s different. Everything is different.

It’s too quiet. It’s not like the constant hum of prison life. There was always noise. The shuffle of footsteps outside the cells, the buzz of doors locking and unlocking as the wardens made their rounds, the shouting, the banging on bars.

Out here, the silence bothers me.

In prison, I knew my place. I had a schedule. A routine. Rules that kept everything simple, even if it was brutal at times. But now? Now I’m lost in a world that feels too big, too open, too different. It’s moved on without me, and I don’t have a place in it.

I don’t know who I am out here.

I shift on the tiled floor, and try to relax. It doesn’t work. I’m too keyed up, too wound tight from everything that’s happened. I came out of prison with a plan, a clear goal that got me through every endless day.

Focus on Ashley.

Focus on revenge.

Make her pay for everything she took from me.

Every year. Every breath. Every fucking second I spent rotting behind bars, because of her.

It’s the only thing that kept me going while I was inside. The only thing that kept me sane when everything else was stripped away from me. Every fucking time I closed my eyes in that cell, I pictured her—a vague figure of a girl with dark hair, and no features. Every night, I imagined the day I’d get out and make her pay for everything she did to me.

But now? Now that I’ve twisted her life into something unrecognizable, the victory feels hollow. Empty.

I roll onto my side, and drape an arm over my eyes, trying to block out the thoughts that won’t stop filling my head.

How did I lose control over the situation?

I was supposed to get the upper hand. I was supposed to be the one pulling the strings, making her dance to my tune. Yet every plan I made, every calculated move, has brought me to the point where I don’t know if I’m torturing her or myself.

I grit my teeth, pushing the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to shake off the image of her face. The way she looked at me. There was fear there, sure, but also something else. Something I didn’t expect.

Something that’s been fucking with my head ever since I forced her to watch the videos of both our police interviews.

Regret .

Not just the regret of someone forced into a situation they don’t want to be in, but the regret of someone who realizes they’ve been living a lie.

She isn’t the monster I built her up to be .

I fucking hate that realization. Hate it more than I hated the years I spent behind bars, the endless grind of survival, the endless cycle of anger and despair.

The thought of getting revenge kept me alive. I told myself that if I could make Ashley suffer the way I did, it would fill the cold, empty space inside me.

But now that I’m out, now that I’ve been face to face with her, I see the cracks. I can see the fractures in the story I’ve told myself for so long. And those cracks are driving me insane.

Because it means I was wrong.

I was wrong about her.

And that means I wasted years focusing on her when I should have been trying to figure out who really murdered my best friends.

I exhale slowly, forcing my breathing to even out, trying to focus on the rhythm of the air moving in and out of my lungs. It doesn’t work, and I push myself up into a sitting position. My head is pounding, my body aching from days of tension, but I can’t sleep.

Not in here. Not in the bed. Not any fucking where.

I know it’s because I spent so long in a space that confined me, defined me, that I don’t know how to function outside of it. I keep wanting to fall back into the prison mentality of waiting for someone to tell me what to do. For the rules to be laid out in front of me, simple and clear.

But there are no rules out here. No structure. No routine. Just a void of endless choices, and decisions to make. And I’m fucking drowning in them.

I glance at the bed through the open door of the bathroom. The room doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the kid I was before prison.

I tried to sleep there. Tried to pretend I was the same person who the room belonged to. But the truth is, I don’t belong in that space.

I don’t belong in a world that has moved on without me.

Leaning my head back against the vanity unit, I close my eyes. The image of my cell comes back, sharp and vivid. The narrow bunk beds, the small sink, the toilet that sat in a corner, and the shelf that doubled as a desk.

It was a world of confinement, sure, but it was my world. I knew how to navigate it, how to survive in it.

Out here? I don’t know shit.

Well, nothing except the fact that when I touched Ashley, when I stripped her and tasted her and fucked her, it made being free a little more real, made me feel a little more normal.

It wasn’t about revenge or payback. I wanted her. Not to hurt her, not to make her suffer.

I. Wanted. Her.

The girl that ruined my life.

The girl who’s haunted me for years.

The second I got the taste of her on my tongue, the hate I felt for her twisted into something else. Something raw and primal. And it scares the fuck out of me, because I don’t know what it means.

I can’t undo what I’ve done, any more than she can. Neither of us can take back the decisions we made that led us to this point. And sitting here on the bathroom floor, it dawns on me that the revenge I’ve been chasing for so long is just another prison. One I built for myself.

And I don’t know how to break out of it.