The second time Stacy walked into the prison, she felt less like a visitor and more like a diver stepping into dark water. The clanging of the gates, the hollow echo of her shoes on the concrete floor, the cold eyes of the guards who checked her badge and bag all weighed heavier on her than before. She kept telling herself that she was here for the story, nothing more, but her chest still ached with the memory of Rafael’s smile, the way he had looked at her as though he had already claimed something of hers she had not intended to give.
When she entered the visiting room, Rafael was already waiting. He leaned back on the chair, his hands resting loosely on the table as though he had been carved there from patience itself. The glass divided them again, and the phone hung silently between them. Stacy sat down, straightened her blazer, and picked up the receiver.
Rafael’s lips curved. “I wondered if you would return.”
“You knew I would,” Stacy said flatly.
“I hoped,” Rafael corrected. “There is a difference. Hope is more fragile than certainty. And today I hope you are ready, because my first confession is not gentle.”
Stacy pulled out her recorder and switched it on. “Then begin. Tell me about the first murder.”
For a long moment Rafael was silent. His eyes, however, never wavered from hers. They were dark and steady, filled with a kind of haunting clarity that made her skin prickle. Finally he leaned closer to the glass, his voice low, steady, almost intimate.
“I was thirteen,” Rafael said. “Thirteen and already too old for childhood, too young to know restraint. By then I had survived seven years on the streets of Tondo. I knew the taste of hunger, the sting of fists, the smell of blood drying on my skin after a fight. But that night was different. That night, I killed for the first time.”
Stacy’s pen froze on the page, waiting.
“There was a man,” Rafael continued. “A drunk who wandered the alleys near the pier. He was large, clumsy, the kind who threw coins at children just to watch them scramble. I hated him already, because men like him reminded me that I was only a dog to be fed scraps. That night he caught me trying to lift his wallet. I was desperate. My stomach had not known food for two days, and I thought maybe if I had money, I could finally rest. But he caught me. He dragged me into the shadows, and he beat me until I tasted blood in my mouth.”
Rafael’s tone remained calm, but Stacy could see his knuckles whiten slightly as he spoke, as though the memory still lived in his muscles.
“He laughed while he did it,” Rafael said. “He laughed and said I was nothing. That my mother had left me because I was worth less than the rats that gnawed on garbage. He called me filth. He spat on me. And in that moment something inside me broke.”
Stacy swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “What did you do?”
Rafael’s eyes flickered with a strange light. “I found a piece of broken glass by the wall. He had knocked me down, thought I was too weak to stand again. I was small, half his size, but rage is bigger than muscle. I grabbed the shard and I drove it into his throat.”
Stacy’s hand shook slightly, but she kept her pen moving.
“He tried to fight me off,” Rafael went on, his voice even. “He clawed at me, but the more he struggled, the deeper the glass went. His blood sprayed across my face, hot and metallic, and I remember thinking it smelled like rust. I remember watching his eyes widen, not in anger, not in cruelty, but in surprise. He never expected a boy to end him. And when he fell, when his body stopped twitching, I felt something I had never felt before. Power.”
Stacy exhaled slowly. “You felt powerful after killing him.”
“I felt alive,” Rafael corrected. “For the first time since my mother abandoned me, I was not the one left behind. I was not the one beaten and spat on. I was the one who decided who lived and who died. It was not joy. It was not pride. It was survival blooming into dominance.”
“And what did you do after?” Stacy asked.
Rafael leaned back, his eyes still fixed on hers. “I took his wallet. I used the money to eat until my belly hurt. And then I washed my hands in the river, watching the water turn red. That was the first night I slept without fear.”
Stacy’s stomach twisted. “You were thirteen. That was a child’s choice made in desperation. But it was still murder.”
“Yes,” Rafael agreed. “That is why it is my first confession. I will not dress it in excuses. I will not pretend I regret it. Regret is for those who can afford it. That man would have left me broken and bleeding in the alley. Instead, I left him there. The world did not mourn him. The world barely noticed. But I noticed. And once you notice that line between victim and predator, you cannot unsee it.”
Stacy leaned forward, unable to stop herself. “But you could have stopped. You could have chosen differently after that.”
Rafael gave a small laugh. “Do you think the world gives boys like me choices? No. The first murder was not the end. It was the beginning. The seed of the man who would sit before you now. The boy who killed in desperation grew into the man who killed with purpose.”
Stacy looked down at her notes, her hand trembling. She wanted to see only the monster in his words, the cruelty and violence. But what echoed in her mind was not just his brutality. It was the image of a boy beaten, bleeding, told he was nothing, and clawing his way into survival. Against her will, she felt a thread of sympathy, and it scared her.
“You are making me see you as a victim,” Stacy said, her voice sharper than she intended. “That is manipulation.”
Rafael’s eyes softened, though his smile remained faint. “It is not manipulation if it is true. You asked for my confession. That is what I gave you. If sympathy creeps into your heart, it is because part of you recognizes the boy I was. And that frightens you, does it not?”
Stacy gripped the receiver tighter. “I am not here to be frightened. I am here to record.”
“And yet you are human,” Rafael replied. “And humans cannot help but feel. That is why I chose you. Not because you are ambitious or sharp, though you are. But because you still have the ability to feel, even when you try to hide it. I do not want a machine to record my story. I want a woman who will wrestle with it.”
The words felt too close, too intrusive. Stacy’s chest tightened, but she forced herself to steady her voice. “So your first confession is that you killed a man at thirteen out of survival. That is what you want remembered.”
“Yes,” Rafael said quietly. “And that killing became the lens through which I saw the world. Every betrayal after that, every hunger, every violence, all of it confirmed what I learned that night. That life belongs to the one who dares to seize it.”
The guard cleared his throat in the corner, signaling the session was close to ending.
Stacy scribbled down her last notes, though her mind raced faster than her hand. She could not shake the image of that boy in the alley, clutching broken glass with bloodied hands. It warred with the man in front of her, calm and charismatic, speaking with elegance about his crime.
She looked up at him once more. “You call it confession, but it sounds like a lesson. Are you trying to teach me something?”
Rafael’s smile widened just slightly. “Every confession is a lesson. Whether you choose to learn it is up to you. The next one will be harder. If you return, I will tell you how survival turned into ambition. And then you will begin to see the man I became.”
Stacy lowered the receiver slowly. Rafael kept his eyes on her, unwavering, as if even through the glass and the guards he held her in place. When she finally stood, her knees felt unsteady. She walked out of the room, the clang of the gate closing behind her echoing in her ears.
Outside, the air was heavy with the smell of rain again, and Stacy drew a deep breath. She wanted to tell herself that she felt only disgust, only horror. But beneath it, buried and persistent, was the dangerous flicker of understanding.
Rafael had given her his first confession. And she was afraid that, despite herself, she wanted to hear the second.
ns216.73.216.23da2
and then Add to home screen.