After endless days swallowed by silence and nights drenched in agony, regret, and the kind of hopelessness that rots a man from within, the long-dreaded day finally arrived.
Today was the D day. It was judgment day.
It came not like salvation for Matt and his cohorts, but like the grim reaper waiting to take their soul to the great beyond.
Matt had been waiting for this day ever since he surrendered himself to the law.
He knew what his fate would be—death by lethal injection—and unlike the others, he welcomed it with open arms.
Like a hopeless man, he craved the numb embrace of the afterlife, even if it meant rotting in hell, as long as he could reunited with the family he wrongly believed were dead.
With just ninety minutes left until the closed-door court session that would seal his doom, Matt sat hunched on the icy floor of his cell, his face buried in his knees.