Frame Me

My husband, Alec Craig, was Chicago' s star prosecutor, the man who saved me from a dark past. Or so I thought.

He was the man who sent me to prison, framing me for a crime I didn't commit to protect his ex-girlfriend, Catalina.

My three years in Joliet Correctional Center were a blur of concrete and gray uniforms. The woman who went in, a successful graphic designer who loved her husband, died in there. When I was finally released, I expected to see him, but he sent an assistant to "cleanse my bad energy."

Then I saw them: Alec and Catalina, hosting a "welcome home" party for me, the woman they put behind bars. They paraded me around, forcing me to drink champagne until I bled internally from a perforated ulcer.

Alec, ever the devoted protector, rushed to Catalina's side, leaving me bleeding on the floor. He even falsified my medical report, blaming my condition on alcohol.

I lay in that hospital bed, the last remnants of hope withering and dying. I couldn't cry. The feeling was too deep for tears. I just laughed, a wild, unhinged sound.

I wanted to destroy him. Not jail. I wanted him to lose everything. His career. His reputation. His precious Catalina. I wanted him to feel what I felt.

Chapter 1

Alec Craig was Chicago' s star prosecutor. He put bad guys away, and the city loved him for it. On TV, he was charismatic and righteous. At home, he was my husband. I thought he was the man who had saved me from a dark past.

I was wrong. He was the man who sent me to prison.

He framed me for a crime I didn't commit. Vehicular manslaughter. He stood in court and used my deepest, most private traumas against me, painting a picture of a woman who snapped and killed her own abusive father. The jury believed him. They gave me three years.

The real killer was Catalina Rowland, his ex-girlfriend from law school. A beautiful, unstable corporate lawyer he felt eternally responsible for. He had made her five promises, and protecting her from a DUI manslaughter charge was one of them.

My three years in the Joliet Correctional Center were a blur of concrete and gray uniforms. The woman who went in, a successful graphic designer who loved her husband, died in there. The day Alec came for his final visit before my trial, he held my hands through the thick glass of the visitation booth.

"Just trust me, Haven," he' d said, his voice a low, convincing hum. "This is the only way. For us."

I had. And it had destroyed me.

Now, the heavy steel gate clanked open. Freedom. The air, thick with the smell of rain and exhaust fumes, felt foreign after three years of recycled prison air. I expected to see his sleek black sedan waiting. I expected to see him.

A different car pulled up, a generic silver sedan.

A young man in a suit I didn't recognize got out. He looked nervous.

"Mrs. Craig?" he asked, his voice cracking slightly.

The name felt like a costume I was forced to wear. I didn't answer, just looked at him with the same flat expression I' d perfected in my cell. My face was thinner, my eyes holding a hollowness that hadn't been there before.

The assistant, flustered by my silence, opened the back door. Before I could get in, he pulled a small bundle of sage from his pocket and a lighter. He lit the end, and a plume of thick, cloying smoke filled the air. He waved it around my body, a clumsy, awkward ritual.

"What are you doing?" my voice was rusty, unused to speaking above a whisper.

He jumped, startled. "Mr. Craig' s orders. He said… to cleanse the bad energy. Before you come home."

Cleanse me. The humiliation was a cold, familiar weight in my gut. He hadn' t even come himself. He' d sent a boy to perform a purification rite on me, as if I were a haunted house, not his wife returning from a prison he' d put her in.

"Is that what he calls it?" I asked, the words sharp. "Bad energy?"