"It was you."
The words hung in the sterile air, heavy and accusatory. Olivia Risa leaned back in her metal chair, her eyes locked on the man across the table, searching for a crack in the mask.
For the first time in ten years, Joseph Cassian laughed.
It wasn't a chuckle or a smirk. It was a genuine, booming sound that erupted from deep within his chest, shaking his entire frame until the chains rattled against the table leg. The sound was so alien in this place of silence that Olivia flinched, her hand instinctively twitching toward the panic button under the desk.
"Me?" Joseph asked, still chuckling, shaking his head as he leaned forward. The light caught the hollows of his cheeks, making him look gaunt yet terrifyingly vibrant. "Lady, I suffered for ten years for something I did not do. My family put me here, yes. And you know what I thought about every single day?"
He looked deep into her eyes. For the first time since she had entered Blackwood, Olivia Risa felt true fear. It wasn't the professional caution she felt around dangerous criminals; it was a primal, biological response. Goosebumps rippled up her arms. Her legs trembled beneath the table. She forced herself to breathe, to maintain the facade of control, but her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird.
She had done everything right. She had investigated everyone close to Joseph. She had dug into the underworld, bribing informants, threatening kingpins. Nothing. Not a single piece of evidence linked him to the massacre. Even the deepest, most paranoid figures in the criminal world claimed ignorance. They said the hits were executed by ghosts.
And now, the person everyone pointed at, the scapegoat, the victim; was laughing about the fact that his entire family had been massacred. That their heads had been cut off and mailed to the very officials who jailed him. That those officials, too, had been butchered days later.
And he was laughing.
"What...?" Olivia stammered, trying to regain the upper hand. She clutched the release papers, her knuckles white. She had come here for one reason: to see if the monster was real.
"I thought about killing them the day I got arrested in my own fucking home," Joseph said, his voice dropping to a conversational tone that was somehow more chilling than a shout. "I lived my life away from them. I worked as a welder. I had no connection to the mafia, nor the crimes they committed. Yet, I was thrown in here by them."
He leaned forward, the chains pulling taut. "In the last ten years, I just thought: The day I get out, I will chop them up." He leaned back, shaking his head, a dark amusement dancing in his empty eyes. "Every fucking single day I sat in silence, I wondered what my sin was. What did I do wrong to deserve this treatment? But there was nothing, lady. Nothing. Not a single thing... except maybe that I said 'no' to the family. It was the perfect escape plan for them when the knot tightened around their necks. And it worked."
His gaze intensified, pinning her to the chair. "I served ten years. I couldn't be a boyfriend. I couldn't enjoy what others my age did. I sat in the darkness and thought about the same thing all the time... to kill them." He paused, tilting his head. "And when I heard that they were dead? Did you know what I did?"
Olivia shook her head slowly. How the hell did he hear that? Solitary confinement meant no news. No radio. No visitors.
"Nothing," Joseph whispered, the laughter dying instantly, replaced by a cold, sharp edge. "I wasn't happy. I was furious. Furious that somebody else did what was mine. My family. My chance to kill them and die with them."
Olivia could imagine the feeling. Waiting a decade for a moment of revenge, only to have that moment stolen by an unknown hand. Or... was it just another act? A performance designed to save his skin?
There was no evidence Joseph ever lifted a finger. His life before prison was clean: studies, welding school, a rented apartment. Yet, something was profoundly off.
People feared him inside these walls. Crime bosses outside these walls dipped out of the city when they heard he might be released. Why? If the government had published a statement admitting wrongful imprisonment, if the system had changed, why did the shadow of Joseph Cassian still loom larger than any active syndicate?
The question was a mystery no one could solve. Why did everybody fear him when the state itself had declared him innocent?
The world had shifted in ten years. The government had changed. Corrupt presidents, governors, mayors, and police chiefs, all those who participated in the great era of gangsters, were now behind bars. The new administration offered restitution to those wrongly jailed during that period. But of all the people investigated, Joseph was viewed as the most dangerous.
He was a two-sided blade.
If it was him who orchestrated the purge from a cell, he wasn't just a gangster. He was a criminal mastermind. A genius. A monster willing to sit in hell for a decade, waiting for pardon so he could walk free into a kingdom he had cleared himself.
Olivia needed to make a decision. It was nearly impossible. If he was who people thought he was, releasing him would be a catastrophe. But falsely imprisoning him for life after the state admitted its error would be a disaster for the justice system. The optics would destroy the new agency before it even started.
She closed her eyes for a moment, centering herself, then opened them and looked straight at him.
"If I sign, and you get out, what are you going to do?"
"Eat, drink, and fuck," Joseph answered immediately. It was a blunt, human answer. A biological need after a decade of deprivation.
But it wasn't the answer she was waiting for.
"There are hundreds of millions to your family's name, maybe billions. No one knows where it is. Offshore accounts? Buried in a warehouse? In the ground?" Olivia pressed, her voice firm. "A legacy is waiting for you outside. As well as enemies. Even if you are a misunderstood person, the target on your back is huge. So I ask again... what are you going to do if I sign this paper?"
Silence stretched between them, thick and suffocating.
"Try to survive," Joseph said finally. A faint smile touched his lips, but it didn't reach his eyes. Those eyes remained dark, empty pools. "Just try to survive."
Olivia felt a pang of pity mixed with dread. If this man tried to survive using the influence he held, even if that influence was based on fear rather than reality, it was still power. Power that could shake the city, the country, the continent.
But maybe that was the right thing to do. Even with a new government, gangsters remained. Bribery remained. Corruption was a hydra; cut off one head, two more grew. If a guy like Joseph appeared suddenly, perhaps he could kill them all. And when he was done, he himself could be killed. A final cleansing fire.
She let out a long breath. She grabbed the pen. As her hand hovered over the paper, she realized she was shaking. Violently. The weight of the signature, the potential consequence of this moment, creeped into her bones.
"One more question," she said, looking up. "How do you know about the death of your family and the others?"
Joseph's expression didn't change. "The guards have big mouths. Pride mixed with greed." He shrugged slightly, the chains clinking. "They were mocking me. Telling me I don't have power anymore. That my family died like dogs. They wanted to see me break."
It made sense. Guards talked. Especially when they thought the prisoner was harmless. Olivia would have done the same in the early years. The sheer scale of the deaths; civilians, law enforcement, mobsters,had numbed many people to the horror. To them, it was just gossip. To Joseph, it was everything.
"It means nothing now," Joseph added softly.
Olivia nodded. She signed the paper. The ink flowed black and final.
"You are going to visit a psychologist chosen by the DSA," she said, her voice regaining its professional cadence. "You will be put under heavy surveillance. But there is good news. After ten long years of suffering, the Justice and Corrections Agency (JCA), acknowledging the misjudgment and wrongful jailing, offers one hundred thousand dollars for every year served."
She watched him closely. "That means you will receive one million dollars. You can use it however you want."
There was no reaction. No smile. No gasp of relief. Joseph just sat there, staring at the table, looking like he was calculating something far beyond money.
"What is DSA and JCA?" he asked quietly.
"The DSA is the new Domestic Security Agency. They will hunt you down if you step out of line," Olivia explained. "The JCA is the Justice and Corrections Agency. A lot of things have changed in ten years, Joseph."
She pushed the paper toward him. "Read it."
Joseph squinted, wincing. "It hurts my eyes."
Olivia paused. Of course. Ten years in darkness. It was a miracle he hadn't gone blind. The fluorescent lights must feel like needles.
"Effective immediately, you are hereby exonerated of all charges and ordered to be released from custody without condition," she recited, pushing the document closer. "All records pertaining to your conviction will be expunged in accordance with Section 4 of the Wrongful Convictions Act. On behalf of the Ministry of Justice and the JCA, we extend our formal apology for the wrongful imprisonment. There are clauses regarding your stipend, your monitoring, and your legal standing. Just glance at it, and we can go."
Joseph looked at the paper for exactly one second. The blur of text meant nothing to him compared to the clarity of his freedom.
"I'm done then," he said.
"Good." Olivia stood up and walked to the door. She opened it, calling the guards in. "Get off the chains. He's a free man."
Time seemed to stop. Free? After ten years in Triple Nine?
"Do it," Olivia commanded, her voice sharp. "I already spoke with the warden and the principal of the facility. He is cleared."
The guards moved quickly, almost frantically. They didn't look Joseph in the eyes. Their hands fumbled with the keys, unlocking the handcuffs, the belly chain, the leg irons. As soon as the metal fell away, they hurried out of the room, eager to put distance between themselves and the man who had just been unshackled.
Joseph stood up slowly. He towered over Olivia, his frame lean but radiating a coiled intensity. He looked intimidating, a predator stretching its limbs after a long sleep. But Olivia held her ground. She was too.
"By the way," Joseph said, his voice low and rough. "Who are you?"
"I am Olivia Risa," she replied, meeting his gaze without flinching. "Special Agent of the DSA. And for the next year, your supervisor."
She turned and stepped out of the room. "But now, let's go."
Joseph followed her.
Within ten minutes, after signing a few more bureaucratic forms that blurred together in his painful vision, Joseph Cassian walked through the final set of heavy steel doors.
The air outside The Bastion supermax prison hit him like a physical wave. It smelled of rain, exhaust, and freedom. The sky was a bruised purple, twilight settling over the city.
He stopped on the concrete steps, breathing in deeply. The chains were gone. The cell was behind him. But as he looked out at the skyline, at the city that had forgotten him and then feared him, he knew the cage hadn't truly opened.
It had just gotten bigger.
Olivia stood beside him, watching his profile. "Million dollars," she reminded him gently. "A fresh start."
Joseph didn't answer. He just stared at the distant ruins of the Cassian tower, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips.
"A fresh start," he repeated softly. "Or a new game."
He took the first step down the stairs, walking into the night, two sides of the blade ready to cut whatever stood in his way.