Chapter 788: Welcome to Hell, Cho-Mo Trent Holloway’s nightmare didn’t start with a bang—it started with the slow, deliberate grind of men who had waited their entire sentences for someone exactly like him. His first mistake had been believing prison would play out like some gritty Netflix drama: three bland meals a day, a concrete box to hide in, maybe a few hard stares from lifers he could avoid by keeping his head down and his mouth shut. His second mistake—far deadlier—had been underestimating what happened when a man who preyed on teenage girls got dropped into general population with fathers, brothers, uncles, and straight-up killers who’d already lost everything except their rage and their sense of justice. His third, and final, mistake had been taking that first breath inside Cell Block D without realizing every inhale from that moment forward would taste like blood and regret. They hadn’t even let him unpack. Processing had still been in progress—Trent shuffling through intake in his stiff orange jumpsuit, wrists cuffed, eyes darting like a cornered animal—when the first guard opened his file and read the charges out loud, slow and theatrical, loud enough for every inmate in the room to hear every filthy detail. "Sexual coercion of a minor. Blackmail. Forced a seventeen-year-old girls to send nudes. Made them perform sexual acts on camera for three straight weeks. Threatened to ruin their life if they didn’t comply." The guard’s voice had carried like a public announcement, and every head in the intake hall swiveled toward Trent at once. Faces hardened. Eyes narrowed. Smiles died. Trent felt the temperature drop ten degrees as the word cho-mo (Cho-mo. for child molester.) rippled through the room like a curse nobody needed to whisper. He’d tried to stammer something—some pathetic half-excuse about how "she was eighteen" and "it wasn’t that bad"—but the guard cut him off with a flat, venomous. "Shut the fuck up, pedophile." Then he stamped the file, handed it off, and said the words that sealed Trent’s fate: "Cell Block D. General population. Enjoy your stay." Trent’s lawyer had begged for protective custody. Had filed motion after motion. Had even slipped cash to the right people. None of it mattered. The paperwork vanished into the system like it had never existed. Someone—probably the same guard who’d smiled while reading the charges—had made sure Trent went straight to the wolves. His cellmate was Jorge. Six-foot-two, two-forty pounds of prison-yard muscle layered over old gang ink that told stories of blood and loyalty. Serving life without parole for executing three men in a botched deal. Father of three daughters—the oldest already sixteen and starting to look too much like the girls in Trent’s videos that Peter had released online (kept the faces private though). Jorge hadn’t said a single word that first night. He’d just climbed onto the top bunk, stared down at Trent in the dim blue light of the tier, and let the silence do the threatening. Trent lay on the thin mattress below, heart hammering, waiting for the inevitable: for Jorge to drop down, for hands to clamp around his throat, for the lights to cut and the real punishment to begin. Nothing happened. Not that night. Jorge was patient. He wanted Trent to feel every second of anticipation. The cafeteria delivered the first real lesson two days later. 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞 Trent had shuffled in with his tray—gray slop on a plastic plate—trying to shrink into himself, eyes glued to the floor, searching for the safest corner table. He found one. Sat. Kept his head low. Big mistake. A mountain of a man—Black, scarred face, forearms thicker than Trent’s thighs—dropped onto the bench across from him like he owned the table and everything on it. "You the new fish?" Trent nodded, throat too dry to speak. "What you in for?" Trent’s lawyer’s voice echoed in his head: Lie. Say drugs. Say fraud. Never admit the truth. "Uh... possession. Just some weed and—" The fist came so fast Trent didn’t even see it. Knuckles cracked against his cheekbone like a sledgehammer. Vision exploded white. He hit the floor hard, tray flipping, food splattering across the tiles. Then the boots started—ribs, kidneys, skull. One. Two. Three. Four. Trent tried to curl into a ball, arms over his head, but hands yanked him flat, held him spread-eagle while the kicks kept coming. Pain bloomed everywhere at once—sharp in his nose broken, cartilage crunching, dull and deep in his side ribs cracking like dry twigs, wet warmth spreading from his scalp where someone’s heel had split the skin. Through the ringing in his ears and the copper taste flooding his mouth, Trent heard laughter. Not just from the table—from the entire cafeteria. Hundreds of voices. Cheering. Whistling. Chanting "Cho-mo! Cho-mo! Cho-mo!" like a war cry. Phones weren’t allowed, but eyes recorded everything—every whimper, every pathetic attempt to beg, every drop of blood pooling under his face. The guards took their time. Five full minutes of watching before they strolled over, pulled the attackers off with lazy grips, and wrote it up as "inmate altercation." Everyone involved—including Trent—got a week in the hole. Trent tried to protest through swollen lips. "I didn’t—I was just sitting there—they jumped me—" The lead guard crouched down, grabbed Trent’s hair, yanked his head back so their eyes met. "Shut the fuck up, cho-mo. You’re lucky we let you keep breathing. Next time we won’t." They dragged him away while the cafeteria kept chanting. His blood smeared a trail across the floor like a red carpet to hell. That was just the welcome party. Over the next weeks, the real education began. In the showers, they made him wash last—alone—while a circle of men stood at the doorway watching, stroking themselves through their pants, promising what would happen when the cameras blinked out. In the yard, they cornered him behind the bleachers and forced him to his knees, made him recite every detail of what he’d done to the girl while they spat on him and took turns pissing on his jumpsuit. In the cell, Jorge finally spoke after weeks—low, calm, terrifying: "My oldest daughter is sixteen. Same age as your ’little toys’. Every night you sleep, I’m thinking about how many bones I can break before you beg me to kill you." Trent learned to sleep with his back to the wall, eyes open, heart racing. He learned that no one was coming to save him. Not the guards who looked the other way or worse, joined in the taunts. Not his lawyer who’d stopped returning calls. Not his family who’d disowned him the day the news broke. He learned that in here, child predators weren’t just hated—they were currency. A living stress ball for men who’d spent years swallowing their own rage. Every punch, every shank threat, every whispered promise of worse to come was payment for the girl he’d blackmailed, the videos he’d demanded, the innocence he’d tried to turn into his personal porn stash. Solitary confinement had been a concrete tomb—six feet by eight feet of gray nothing. A metal slab bolted to the wall for a bed, a stainless-steel toilet that gurgled like it was dying, a food slot in the door that slid open three times a day with slop nobody should eat. Twenty-three hours locked inside. One hour of "recreation" in a dog-run cage barely big enough to pace three steps. No sunlight. No voices. No books, no TV, no human touch. Just four walls, your heartbeat, and the slow drip of your own thoughts turning against you. For most men, solitary cracked them open like eggs. For Trent Holloway, it had been a goddamn vacation. In the hole, no one could reach him. No fists. No forced kneeling. No whispered threats about what would happen when the lights went out. For seven blessed days, he’d been untouchable—curled on the slab, breathing shallow, almost grateful for the silence that kept the wolves at bay. He’d lain there counting cracks in the ceiling, telling himself he could survive the rest if he just made it back to this quiet hell. But the week ended. They dragged him out by the arms, wrists bruised from cuffs, back to Cell Block D. Back to Jorge. "Welcome back," Jorge said that first night, voice flat and calm like he was greeting an old neighbor. Trent climbed onto the bottom bunk—Jorge had made it crystal clear from day one who got top. He tried to settle, tried to pretend the week in the hole had reset something, that the bruises had faded enough to buy him mercy. Jorge climbed down. Stood over him. Shadow falling across Trent’s face like a shroud. "You know what you are?" Jorge asked, low and deliberate. Trent stared at the underside of the top bunk, saying nothing. "You’re a child predator," Jorge continued. "You hurt girls. Plural. Made them send you nudes. Blackmailed them into performing for your sick little camera. Turned them into your personal slaves for weeks. You think one girl was enough for you? You went after multiple. Different ages. Different school types. Same disgusting playbook." "I—it wasn’t—" Jorge’s hand clamped around Trent’s throat like a vise. Slammed his head back against the concrete wall so hard stars detonated behind his eyes and his teeth clacked together. "Don’t you dare fucking lie to me," Jorge hissed, face inches away, breath hot and steady. "I read your file. Every page. Seen the videos. Read every one of those poor girls victims statement. Every screenshot online from your phone. I know exactly what you did to those girls—how you made them cry, how you made them beg, how you jerked off to their fear. Raped them. Made them play with themselves while you got the thrills. Came. "And you know what happens to men like you in here?"