Page 69 of Save Us

“So, your plan is to come in here and knock off your old man?” he asks with an incredulous tone of voice. “You know I’m in here for life, don’t you?”

“I’m simply offering you a choice,” I reply. “It’s your decision, Carl, though I think I know what I would do. As I said, I thought I owed you something.”

He picks the glass back up and tips the liquid up and around the sides, then raises it one more time before necking it back in one go.

“To Rosalie, I shall be with her again soon!” he grins smugly.

“No, you won’t,” I reply before getting up to buzz the door to let me out, “not where you’re going.”

“Goodbye, Malcom,” he says before pouring another three fingers into his glass.

“Goodbye, Carl,” I reply, then let out a long sigh while following the guard back out through the grey corridors of lost men.

Once outside, I see Jonah still waiting for me. We say nothing to one another, but he watches me take out my phone to call Dad.

“Mal?” he answers.

“It’s done,” I tell him.

As I listen to him crying with tears of relief, Jonah comes up and shakes my hand with a proud smile on his face, the both of us knowing that Carl Steele’s lineage has just ended with him. I have never been a Steele, and neither are my children, nor my granddaughter. I am a Taylor, and so is my son. Beth is now a Fenton, as is her daughter. With Carl’s demise, we can finally close the door on Mayfield and all that it has done to my family.