Page 4 of Buy Back My Love

I barely heard him before my arms were pulled behind my back and cold metal snapped around my wrists.

“You’re being detained.”

“For what?” I tried to turn around. “I don’t know what that is! I don’t know where that came from!”

Nobody listened. An agent walked past carrying another brick and dropped it onto my manicure table right beside the Swarovski crystals I’d been using less than a minute ago. Pink anniversary balloons were still floating near the ceiling while bundles of cash and bricks of cocaine covered the table underneath them.

The cuffs dug into my wrists as I stood there watching them keep pulling shit out of my walls. Five minutes earlier, I had been taking pictures of a fresh set and celebrating five years of the business I built. Now federal agents were tearing that same business apart while I tried to understand how any of it had gotten there. I didn’t know it then, but the second those cuffs clicked around my wrists, five years of my life were already gone.

Leona "Lee" Davis

The last morning of my sentence started the same way every other morning had, with metal clanging against metal as an officer ran her baton across the bars while making her way down the row. The overhead lights came on a few seconds later, followed by groans, somebody cussing about it being too damn early, toilets flushing, and women dragging themselves up from thin mattresses to start another day.

I opened my eyes and stared at the bottom of the bunk above me. For five years, chipped gray metal had been the first thing I saw every morning. Today was supposed to be different.

I had spent countless nights imagining my release. In some versions, I woke up smiling. In others, I cried so hard I could barely pack. I pictured myself counting down every final second, my heart pounding as officers escorted me through one locked door after another.

Instead, I felt numb.

I sat up slowly and placed my feet against the cold floor. My celly Patrice was still asleep, her long arm hanging off the edge of her bunk and dangling down by me. She was snoring loud enough to wake the dead, but it was a sound I had gotten used to. Last night she claimed she was going to stay awake with me all night, but she had fallen asleep before midnight. I didn’t blame her. This was only a special day to me. To everybody else, it was Wednesday.

I stood and smoothed my hands over the front of my uniform. There was no reason to fix it. In a few hours, I would never have to wear one again. Still, I straightened the shirt and tucked it neatly into the stiff waistband of my pants. Routine was hard to abandon.

My blanket got folded into the same tight square they required every morning, corners tucked, edges lined up, nothing hanging loose. After five years, I could damn near do it without looking.

“Girl, you better stop making that bed.”

I glanced over my shoulder. Patrice was sitting up now, rubbing one eye.

“I’m not trying to hear Officer Bradley’s mouth on my last morning.”

“Forget Bradley.” She waved me off. “What she gone do, give you more time for an ugly blanket?”

“With my luck?” I glanced at the door out of habit, and that got a laugh out of her.

Patrice climbed down from the top bunk and stretched. She was forty-six, though prison had added another decade to her face. Deep lines sat around her mouth, and silver had started taking over the edges of her braids.

“You sleep at all?”

“Some.”

“That means no.”

I shrugged. She knew me too damn well after almost two years of sharing a cell. Patrice knew when I was lying, when I was angry, when I was close to breaking. She knew I hated peaches, loved romance novels, and could braid hair well enough to keep commissary money in my account when JB’s deposits ran low.

She also knew I had stopped talking about home during my third year. At first, I talked about Love-Lee Nails all the time. I was reopening the minute I got home. I drew layouts on notebook paper, planned color schemes, and kept up with nail trends through magazines and whatever pictures Anika mailed me.

Then I found out the building had gone up for sale. Hannah, one of the girls who used to work for me, bought it and reopened the shop as House of Hannah. After that, I stopped making plans out loud.

Patrice leaned against the bunk. “You nervous?”

“No.” I kept my eyes on the blanket.

“You lying. You better not come back in here,” she said.

“I’m not.”

“I mean it, Leona.”