Chapter 161

Kate POV

The cold evening air hit my skin the moment I stepped outside the prison gates, sharp and unfamiliar, like it didn’t fully belong to me yet. Freedom was supposed to feel different from this, supposed to feel light, like I could finally breathe properly after months of being suffocated by concrete walls and locked doors. Instead, what settled in my chest was something heavier, exhaustion sitting where relief should have been.

My eyes moved across the parking lot almost immediately, scanning for the one thing I expected to see waiting for me. There was a quiet anticipation in me I didn’t bother hiding, because I already knew how this was supposed to go. Any moment now, Marcus would pull up in that familiar black Audi, probably with that smug little grin of his like nothing in the world had changed, like I hadn’t just spent months inside that place.

And then he would open the door like I mattered.

But there was no car. No engine sound approaching