Elizabeth walked into the library and started wandering around looking at several different books when a guard she had seen walking about the prison daily walked up to her and handed her a letter. He never spoke a word, but his eyes seemed to convey compassion as they met the dark angels green ones.

Finding a table that wasn't occupied Elizabeth sat down and opened the letter, instantly noticing Nigel's definite pen strokes.

Dear Elizabeth, sorry I mean Mrs. Oldin:

Well I know I probably shouldn't ask you how your life is going in there seeing as I'm the one who got you there, but please tell me how you're coping with everything all the same. I'm working on your appeal at the moment and it's looking rather good, I've found some new evidence that could swing things in your favor somewhat. My six-year-old daughter says she gets me that cologne because it says 'Dad' somewhere on the bottle but for the life of me I can't seem to find it, I thought you might like to know. If you have anyone there that will speak for you at your appeal then please tell me, the more the better and it's looking highly likely that it will be held in San Francisco seeing as that's where you're closest.

Hope it's not too hot for you out there, I hear that temperatures can get quite high on that Island through summer, but I'm hoping that's not in full force yet and I've heard that the San Francisco summer can be rather nice once the bulk of the heat is gone.

All the best to you Mrs. O.

Nigel Summons.

"You crazy bastard," Elizabeth accidentally said aloud to herself as she dropped the letter onto the table in disbelief of the words written down on the paper in front of her.

The gruff looking middle aged lady at the front desk of the library peered at Elizabeth over the top of her glasses with the 'I'll go and tell the Warden if you don't behave little missy' look.

As she saw the look on the woman's face Elizabeth immediately picked up the letter and quietly walked out of the small library, deciding it would be better to leave before the nasty old lady really did call the Warden down to deal with her.

On her way to meet Sutton for their promised game of cards Elizabeth stopped by her cell and tucked the letter under her small pillow so she would remember where she had put it later.

As the dark angel looked around the recreation yard saying a few quick hello's to several inmates she had befriended in her five days within the prison so far, she finally found Sutton waving to her. It might have been the last day of nice mild weather before summer rolled in for good. Sutton had found a rather warm and sunny patch of concrete in the yard and he seemed to have made himself more than entirely comfortable.

"You any good at poker?" he asked looking up at Elizabeth with a lit cigarette dangling from his lips as she walked over to him. Her beautiful green eyes squinted in the bright sunlight that reflected off the concrete jungle surrounding them.

"I've won my fair share of games." Elizabeth stretched her legs before sitting down on the hard concrete and massaging her still sore throat.

"Want to put a bet on it then Oldin?"

"Tell you what Sutton," Elizabeth replied with a cheeky smile. "If I win the game you have to give me one of those cigarettes of yours and deal with the shame of losing to a woman."

"What if you lose?" with a raised eyebrow Sutton patiently waited for the dark angel's answer.

Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders casually as she watched Sutton shuffle the deck of red backed cards in his dexterous hands. "How about we just work that one out when it happens."

"If that's how you want to play it then girly." Sutton quickly dealt the cards and they started the game.

"Okay Sutton, show me what you got," Elizabeth proposed when she picked up the last two cards she had just been dealt.

"Pair of tens girly," Sutton replied laying his cards down on the warm concrete between them. "Beat that."

"Just so happens that I have what they call a full house, hand it over Sutton and deal with the shame." Elizabeth laid her cards upon the ground with a smile and they indeed showed a poker full house.

With a shake of his head in mock annoyance that he lost to a woman Sutton - as promised - pulled a long thin cigarette from his packet and handed it over to Elizabeth with his lighter.

Elizabeth lit the smoke as though she had been smoking for years and took a long and deep puff of the burning tobacco before throwing Sutton his small metallic lighter back.

"Play again?" Sutton asked as he watched the dark angel suck deeply on the cigarette and savor the acrid flavour it left in her mouth.

"Only if we play under the same rules," Elizabeth replied with a cheeky smile as she still squinted from the bright rays of sunshine bouncing off the concrete floor and walls.

Sutton looked up at her through one eye, not entirely happy at the proposition but knowing that no one else within the prison would play with him. "Fine."

Forty-five minutes and half a packet of cigarettes later McNeill's shadow blocked out the bright stretch of sunlight falling between Sutton and Elizabeth. "Certainly hope you're not gambling there Oldin."

"No Warden of course not." Elizabeth's body instantly tensed in fear at the Warden's ice cold voice, ready to back herself up against the wall if he were to advance on her.

"How'd you get all those cigarettes?" McNeill asked looking down on her, his steely blue-gray eyes glaring deep into Elizabeth's bright green ones.

"Sutton gave them to me Warden." Elizabeth looked up at McNeill with just as much ferocity in her eyes as he looked down on her with.

"An unlikely tale."

"That's what happened sir," Sutton said quickly coming the rescue of the dark angel as the Warden backed her into a proverbial corner.

McNeill turned around and glared at Sutton now instead. "Well then, you've found yourself a little 'toy boy' have you Oldin?"

"Our relationship is strictly non-sexual, on both sides Warden." The words escaped Suttons' lips almost accidentally and filled with the most deadly of poisons.

The Warden glared a malevolent glare at Sutton and muttered something regarding negro slaves before turning his attention back to Elizabeth. He crouched down next to her and grabbed her chin in his fingers again. Glaring straight into her eyes McNeill whispered venomously, "do not piss me off again today Oldin." With a final tight squeeze with his fingers positioned perfectly on Elizabeth's bruises he let go of her chin and walked back off to his corner again, a look of disappointment mixed with that same anger etched onto his face.

"Is he always like that with you?" Sutton asked as he shuffled the deck of red backed cards in his hands again.

"That's exactly what he's like." Elizabeth rubbed the painful bruises on her chin and lit up another cigarette, sucking the fumes in deeply. The dark angel could almost feel all the stress in her body evaporate into the smoke now filling her lungs. "Thanks for standing up for me though, I appreciate it."

"I heard what happened to you in the shower rooms. I might be in a prison but I'm no woman basher. He's a monster, and deserves so much more than one person standing up to him."

"Thank you," Elizabeth said again. She reached her right hand out to take the cards Sutton had just dealt and it was shaking like a leaf.

"No problem Oldin, now I've got to win some of my cigarettes back."

* * * * *

The rest of the morning went by without hassle, as did the long and sunny afternoon. But when dinnertime finally rolled by everyone in the prison knew that the Wardens' anger had escalated even further and that if pushed even slightly he would without a second thought take his frustration out on the first person he could.

"Hey Oldin," Sutton said as he sat down at the table across from her. "Any chance you think I can have a cigarette?"

Elizabeth had won the entire pack of cigarettes as the afternoon had progressed on. "Don't talk to me Sutton," she replied not looking up from her tray of what barely passed as food.

"Why not?" With a concerned whisper Sutton moved forward on the table slightly in hope that Elizabeth would talk to him. "What's happened?"

"Nothing yet but everyone around here knows I'm McNeill's newest favourite beating dog and I don't feel like waking up with fresh bruises tomorrow."

Sutton nodded his head as he spooned rice into his mouth and started chewing, understanding completely Elizabeth's plead for silence between her and anyone else that thought about talking to her. "Right."

All the inmates sitting at their separate tables ate their dinner in complete silence, not one single person dared to put a toe out of line. They hoped that if they all kept silent then the Warden wouldn't be able find any inmate who was acting up and send them down to the dungeons for punishment. But he was to prove them all wrong.

After dinner Elizabeth quietly went back to her own small and cramped cell, got changed into some slightly more comfortable blue prison issue shorts and a black short sleeve tee shirt and pulled out the letter Nigel had sent her. Lying on her back on the bed she read it over and over again as if she had missed something somewhere along the lines.

"Oldin."

Elizabeth jumped slightly at the sound of the icy cold voice she now knew all too well and rolled over onto her stomach to look up at the man through the thick metal bars. "Hello Warden," she said in a low voice.

"What's that?" McNeill asked seeing the small piece of paper she was holding in her thin and bony hands.

"It's a letter from my attorney, Warden. I said he was going to write."

"Of course, do you mind if I come in?"

"No," Elizabeth quietly lied to him as she was determined to wake up fine tomorrow. 'Even if I say yes, you're still going to come in and do whatever you want to me,' she thought depressively to herself.

McNeill pulled the large key ring from his belt and unlocked the door before walking in, not locking the door behind him. "What does it say?"

"Just that he's filed an appeal and so far it's all looking somewhat bright for me." Elizabeth sat up on the bed and dangled her legs over the edge, much like an innocent little child would as she looked up at the menacing Warden. Elizabeth held on for dear life trying not to show the fear that was slowly filling her entire body and threatening to make her do something stupid.

The Warden started pacing up and down the length of the small cell rather similar to the way a tiger would. "I was thinking about what you said earlier Oldin." He stopped pacing and stood right in front of her. "How's this for private?" McNeill put his hand on Elizabeth's exposed knee and ran it up her thigh.

Elizabeth leant back towards the wall her bed was sitting against, trying to get away from him but the Warden leaned in even closer to her, reaching his other hand over and placing it on the bed to steady himself.

Thinking ignorantly that the Warden probably wouldn't hurt her too much because she was still badly injured from last time, Elizabeth quickly jerked her legs away from him with a menacing glare. "You have a wife and children Warden," she growled angrily through tightly clenched teeth, his face within millimeters of hers. "And if you didn't get the god damn hint the first time, I was desperately trying to get away from you."

This was the exact reaction McNeill had been searching for all day and he had finally got it from the one person he truly wanted it from. He grabbed her brutally by the pressure point on her upper arm which was still heavily bruised, and with a heave of his shoulder he easily dragged Elizabeth out of her small and cramped cell. "Guards!" he yelled down the hallway.

Two burly guards came rushing down Michigan Avenue towards them, side arms drawn and ready to be fired.

Elizabeth was trying not to cringe from the extreme pain that the Warden was inflicting upon her arm as the guards neared and put their guns back in their holsters.

"You know where to take her," McNeill said to the two guards with a smile of sheer satisfaction spread across his face. With a quick snap of his strong arms Elizabeth was thrown from McNeill's arms and straight into the arms of both the guards.

"Yes sir," they both replied in unison, tightening their grips of steel around Elizabeth's still bruised arms the second that she was within reaching distance from them.

McNeill stepped forward to look into the fiery woman's bright green eyes. He reached up and squeezed her bruised little chin between his strong fingers once again and watched with amusement as Elizabeth winced from the intense pain he was inflicting with such joy. "You are going to wish you had never murdered your family, and by the end of tonight you will wish you were never born Oldin," the Warden hissed malevolently as Elizabeth glared defiantly back at him.

With nothing more than a wave of his hand the guards immediately nodded their heads in understanding and dragged Elizabeth off to the dungeons for her punishment.

The dark angel who was still full of defiant spirit kicked and struggled against the two strong guards the whole time as much as she could until they reached the entrance to the dungeons and one of the guards smashed his elbow deep into Elizabeth's stomach and the other one threw her violently down the hard metal stairs with all the force he could muster.

When Elizabeth bounced painfully off the last few stairs and hit the bottom she managed to lift herself onto her scraped and bruised forearms and spit out a mouthful of bright red blood onto the stone landing.

"Get on your feet bitch," one of the heavily built guards growled menacingly as he grabbed a hold of the back of Elizabeth's tee shirt and violently pulled her up onto her bare and now bleeding feet.

Elizabeth continued to struggle against their muscles ignoring all the pain screaming out for her body to stop. Continuously she kicked her legs out at the two men until, with their combined force, they threw her into the last cell at the end of the corridor, the same one she was in at the time of the previous beating and she hit the ground with a sickening thud.

"Was that her head?" one guard asked the other when they heard the crack of Elizabeth hitting the concrete sound out through the large cell.

With a maniacal laugh the stronger guard replied, "sounded like it."

When they pulled Elizabeth up to her now numb and blood covered feet her lip was split rather badly and she was bleeding heavily from a nasty gash on the side of her head.

Nevertheless, the guards bound her up in the rusty old restraints just the same as last time and left Elizabeth alone in the large dark cell for the Warden to come along and finish her off.