The prison chamber was quieter than usual. Stacy sat across from Rafael, recorder already running, her notebook open but her pen unmoving. She felt the air was heavy, as if the walls themselves were leaning closer to listen. It was their final session. Seven confessions. She had come all this way to hear them, to capture the words of a man condemned to die. Yet today she felt her pulse quicken in a way that was more than anticipation. It was fear.
Rafael leaned back, his wrists chained to the table, though the weight of the metal seemed insignificant compared to the gravity of his presence. He looked at her with a calm smile, eyes unwavering.
“You are tense today,” he said gently. “Have my stories unsettled you so deeply?”
Stacy cleared her throat. “This is the last one, Rafael. The seventh confession. I expect clarity. I expect truth.”
“You always expect truth,” he murmured, his tone almost tender. “But truth, my dear Stacy, is rarely simple. Sometimes truth is more dangerous than lies.”
She pressed her pen to the page. “Then speak it. No more riddles. No more games.”
Rafael tilted his head, studying her as though memorizing the contours of her face. “Very well. You have been patient. You deserve the truth, even if it changes everything between us.”
“Just say it,” Stacy insisted, her voice sharper than she intended.
He leaned forward slightly, the chains clinking with the movement. “My final confession is not about blood. It is not about betrayal. It is not about politics or greed. My final confession is about love.”
Stacy’s hand paused. “Love?”
“Yes,” Rafael said simply. “The last crime I have committed, and perhaps the greatest of them all, is falling in love with you.”
Silence stretched between them. The sound of the recorder whirring filled the room. Stacy’s stomach tightened. She wanted to laugh at the absurdity, to dismiss it as another one of his manipulations. But his gaze was steady, unflinching, filled with something that unsettled her more than threats or confessions of murder ever had.
“Do not,” she whispered. “Do not twist this into something it is not. This is not love. This is obsession. You are trying to entangle me in your madness.”
Rafael smiled faintly. “You think I cannot love because of what I have done. You think a man who has held knives to throats and burned bridges to ash cannot feel tenderness. But love, Stacy, is the most violent crime of all. It breaks the self, it consumes, it leaves no one untouched. I have killed with my hands, but this… this is a fire that kills me every day I breathe.”
“You are insane,” Stacy said firmly, though her voice betrayed a tremor. “Love is not violence. Love is not destruction.”
“Is it not?” Rafael asked softly. “Tell me, then. Why do you dream of me? Why do your hands tremble when I look at you? Why does your voice soften when you say my name?”
Her eyes widened. “You are imagining things.”
“No,” he whispered. “I see it in you. I feel it. You came to me for stories, but now you carry me in your veins. You are not untouched, Stacy. You are already part of my crime.”
Stacy slammed her notebook shut. “Stop this. This is manipulation. You are trying to make me doubt myself.”
Rafael laughed quietly, a sound both chilling and intimate. “I do not need to make you doubt. Your heart already does that for me.”
She rose abruptly, but the guard outside did not move. Stacy realized she was still in control of herself, and yet she felt tethered by his words, as though invisible chains bound her in place.
She forced herself to sit back down. “Explain it then. Why call it a crime? Why frame love as if it were blood on your hands?”
Rafael leaned forward again, his eyes gleaming. “Because love is the one act I could never control. Murder, betrayal, manipulation, those are things I wielded with precision. But this… this feeling for you, it has unmade me. It is dangerous because it makes me weak, and weakness, in my world, is fatal. To love you is to sign my own death warrant long before the executioner’s needle touches me.”
Stacy swallowed hard. “You are trying to romanticize what you feel, but it is dangerous, Rafael. You know that.”
He chuckled. “Everything about me is dangerous. And yet here you are, still listening. Still writing. Still letting my voice into your dreams.”
“That does not mean I love you,” Stacy said firmly.
“Not yet,” Rafael replied, his voice low and certain. “But inevitability does not ask for permission.”
She stared at him, her pulse hammering. “You sound as if this was fated.”
“Perhaps it was,” Rafael said. “Perhaps every knife I held, every body I left behind, every betrayal I enacted, was only leading me here, to this table, to this moment where I could confess the only crime that truly mattered. You.”
Stacy felt her breath catch. She tried to steady herself, to remind herself of her role, of her professionalism. But her words came out quieter than she wanted. “You are going to die soon, Rafael. What does it matter if you claim to love me now?”
“It matters because death cannot kill this,” Rafael said. “The body ends. The sentence ends. But the story lives. And now you are part of that story. No matter what you write, no matter how you fight it, you cannot erase yourself from it. That is my final gift. Or my final curse.”
Stacy shook her head. “I will not carry this. I will not let you make me part of your mythology.”
“But you already are,” Rafael said, smiling again. “You sit across from me, risking your name, your family’s pride, even your sanity. Why? Because you need me. The truth is not what you came for, Stacy. You came for me.”
“That is not true,” she whispered.
“It is,” Rafael said calmly. “And one day you will admit it, perhaps when I am gone, perhaps when you find yourself staring at an empty page and realize the words you want to write belong only to me.”
Her eyes burned. She wanted to tear her notes to shreds, to walk away and never return. But her body betrayed her. She stayed seated, listening, writing down every word.
Rafael leaned back, closing his eyes as if satisfied. “There it is. Confession Seven. I have killed many, betrayed more, but the only act that terrifies me is this love. And I do not regret it.”
Stacy finally stood, her chair scraping against the floor. “This session is over.”
As she moved toward the door, Rafael’s voice followed her like a shadow. “Remember, Stacy. Love is the perfect crime. And now you are my accomplice.”
She did not look back. She could not. Her chest felt heavy, her mind spiraling with his words. When she stepped outside, the guard closed the door behind her, but the echo of his confession clung to her skin like a second heartbeat.
That night, Stacy sat at her desk again, staring at her notes. She replayed his words in her mind, trying to dissect them, trying to distance herself. But the more she tried, the deeper they sank.
She whispered to herself, “It is not love. It cannot be love.”
Yet in the silence of her room, Rafael’s voice lingered. A confession that was both intimate and terrifying. A confession that bound them together in ways she did not know how to untangle.
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and then Add to home screen.