17 Months

The prison gate slams behind him, and suddenly the world is too bright, too loud, too open.

After two years inside for killing the man who took his child, Sam steps back into a life that kept moving without him. The city hasn’t changed much. Mya has. She’s the woman he walked away from when rage swallowed everything, and now their time together is measured in shy coffees, short visits, and the way her hand almost reaches for his, then thinks better of it.

Every siren makes his heart punch against his ribs. Every shadow feels like bad news arriving early. Sam lives like the next disaster is already on its way, counting exits in every room, sleeping with one shoe on. The only place he’s ever been able to breathe is behind a tattoo gun, ink buzzing, skin warming under his gloved hand. Art as penance. Art as prayer.

So he bargains with a universe he doesn’t really believe in: if he gives up tattooing—the one thing that still feels like himself—maybe the constant dread will ease and the people he loves will finally be safe.

Seventeen months of freedom stretch ahead, tight as a wire. To keep Mya in his life, to stay on the right side of the law, Sam has to decide whether he’s willing to carve out his fear, piece by bloody piece, or let it rewrite him into someone even he no longer recognizes.