Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20

Jackson

"Thanks for meeting me."

Nina lowered herself into the seat across from me, her wide-rimmed sunglasses still perched on her nose. The bag she'd brought with her, a large leather satchel that I recognized from her court hearings, was set down onto the chair next to her.

"Did I have a choice?" she asked, though there was no real bite behind her words.

"Funny."

Her sharply cut hair, angled down toward her chin, was slicked back with the arms of her sunglasses as she slid them onto the top of her head. Her beautifully done eye makeup had a dark and smoky look to it, bringing out the clear blues of her eyes, and was angled in a way that complimented her angular features.

Under the table, I was bouncing my leg like crazy. My pent up nerves from coming back from the courthouse early this morning with the thick folder sitting next to me on the table felt like it was burning a hole in me. I'd chanced a look through it while I'd been waiting for her, only getting to the fifth page before a sick twisting in my gut had forced me to stop.

There weren't any evidence pictures attached to the documents, but the descriptions alone had made me nauseous. How Ayen went through any of that and still got convicted was beyond me when there were so many more violent offenders out there still walking the streets.

I'd managed to cash in a favor at the county court's office from an officer friend of mine—who had not so subtly given me a sideways look when I'd told him what I needed to get passed along to me—but had, thankfully, been able to pull some strings and get me the papers without much fuss from the county clerk.

Now, I didn't know what to do with them. How we would get any of this in front of a judge was beyond me, but that's where Nina came in.

Hopefully.

"So," Nina's voice brought me out of my thoughts. "What's made you about this inmate so much? Aside from your ridiculously sensitive moral compass."

I slid the file over to her. "Just take a look?—"

Her hand slapped down on top of it, preventing me from moving it any further. "Jax, be honest with me."

Tension burned inside me.

My and Nina's relationship dated way back, far enough that we'd both consider each other childhood friends even if we didn't exactly meet as ‘kids'. She was essentially a part of my life, despite us hardly seeing each other these days.

With her firm taking off the moment she'd made partner, and me running the work program for inmates, we were lucky if we got to texting each other for more than an hour or two every few weeks.

Still, regardless of all of that, I knew I could trust her. At least with helping me figure out if Ayen had a real shot in getting this entire case thrown out or not.

Her knowing about me being intimately involved with him, though?

That was the more dicey question.

"I feel bad for him." Not exactly the entire truth, but true nonetheless.

She raised a brow. "That's it?"

"What more do you want from me?"

"I just didn't think you were spending enough time with any of them that would get you close enough to get their side of the story."

"When you work with people long enough, you start to see their humanity," I said.

Her sigh was long, but she didn't argue with me. Lifting her hand away from the file, she let me slide it closer to her, flipping open the front flap to look over the cover page detailing the highlights of Ayen's case.

While she read silently, I ordered us a light lunch and two coffees, needing the caffeine myself from barely sleeping last night. No matter what I did, I replayed Ayen's words in my head so many times that I had them memorized by now.

The hitch in his voice when he spoke, the dead tone of him telling me it was pointless to even try to get his sentence overturned, all of it. And while he lay sleeping peacefully on my chest, I'd promised myself that I wouldn't let this go no matter how hard he fought me on it.

That son-of-a-bitch husband wasn't going to win and taint Ayen's life for the rest of eternity. I wouldn't let him.

Halfway through finishing my plate of food, Nina finally pulled her head out of the documents. "Jesus, this kid has had it rough."

I nodded and chewed slowly.

If she saw half of what I did just from that file alone, I knew Ayen had a real chance. Nina was a viper in the courtroom. A lawyer not to go toe-to-toe with if you knew what was good for you. She'd gotten that reputation from college and had allowed it to be carried with her all the way to the firm she worked at now, not letting the ‘boy's club' stop her from doing some great things for people.

I admired her every damn day for not giving up and making something of herself that my late brother would be proud of.

She sighed. "I'll be honest, this is going to be a tough one."

Lowering my fork, I said, "You don't think he can be proven innocent?"

"It's not that. The problem is that a lot of his evidence proving spousal abuse wasn't put in front of a jury. So all it seems like from that perspective is spousal estrangement gone wrong."

"We can't get all of that in front of another jury?"

She shook her head. "He wouldn't be going for a re-trial since he was already convicted. I could see about getting a judge to look at it, but you know those asswipes. They protect each other and if one degenerate decided on something, there's not typically any other judge who will actually go against the original judgment. Especially, if they're in the same county circuit."

Leaning back in my seat, I let myself sit with the information.

Ayen's original lawyer had told him that going up in front of a judge for a dismissal was pointless, and while at the time I'd thought that was complete bullshit—and still do—maybe it was because of the abhorrent politics within the justice system.

Forcing my baby bird to relive any of that shit in order to have the slim chance of a possible overturned conviction was a big ask, and understandably, not something he should be put through again.

But on the other end of the tossed coin, what if it was the thing that got him out of prison?

What if putting this file in front of a judge—the right one this time—got him set free and his record wiped in exchange for parole and time served?

I doubted he'd even care about the parole part, anyway.

"I need him out of there, Nina." My voice was soft as I spoke.

Her eyes widened briefly, caught off guard by my sudden confession. It wasn't every day that I opened up and bared my soul like this, especially about a taboo subject involving an inmate that I absolutely had no business getting entangled with.

This was the real deal, though. My feelings for Ayen were all encompassing, to the point where the four weeks I had left with him were feeling like hours now. Our time together was slowly dwindling away by the ticking of a grandfather clock, ominously waiting to chime at midnight.

I couldn't let him slip through my fingers and be lost to the system for another three years.

What happened if someone were to hurt him while he was there?

There was no guarantee that he'd be safe, regardless of what part of the prison he was in. Anyone at any time could deem him as a threat and take him out.

I could never forgive myself if that happened. Not when I could do something to try and prevent it altogether.

Whatever Nina saw in my eyes had her slowly nodding her head at me, a thoughtful look crossing over her face while she placed her hand over the stack of papers.

"If you're actually serious about this, if he is, then I need to talk to him," she said.

"I can set that up."

She nodded again. "Let me know when. I'm going to take this with me and head back to the firm. I'm going to have some of my colleagues look it over. If there's a possibility that we can get this overturned for wrongful conviction, then we're going to need all the damn help we can get."

I breathed out a slow breath, relief washing over me. "Thank you, Nina."

"Don't thank me just yet. Get your boy on board and then we'll talk."

Warmth curled in my belly.

My boy.

I loved the sound of that.