The Military Son-in-Law Who Owned Tomorrow

ADRIAN VANDERLEIGH 

Blackridge Correctional Facility housed the men the government was too afraid to execute and too ashamed to keep alive. They called it a prison.

The men inside called it the Graveyard. No one entered Blackridge expecting to leave nor live. And every prisoner who received a black envelope from the military knew exactly what it meant.

Operation Black Mercy. It wasn't a trial. Not an appeal. No reduced sentence.

The military simply came to the prison and offered the condemned a choice. Spend the rest of your life rotting inside Blackridge…

Or walk onto a battlefield where ordinary soldiers were expected to die.  The terms were simple.

Fight on the front line before the official military operation began.

If the prisoners somehow accomplished the impossible, their criminal records would be erased, their sentences terminated, and they would be rehabilitated into legal soldiers of the state.

No prisoner had ever survived the operation. The survival rate was zero. Most units didn’t even make it past the first  1 hour. That was why the military didn’t call them soldiers.

They called them rogues. Gang leaders. War criminals. They were not disciplined.  They did not believe in orders. They believed in survival. And that was precisely why the military wanted them.

Adrian Vanderleigh had somehow found himself in this hellhole, sentenced to ten years imprisonment after being found guilty of assault, aggravated battery and attempted murder.

Only the heavens knew he wasn’t guilty. He had only been protecting his beloved wife.

And certainly, those charges were far from the sins committed by the outlaws condemned to Blackridge.

Yet he had been thrown into the same hell as them. Three years ago. At twenty-seven. 

With ten years of his life sentenced to a place where men disappeared into solitary confinement and came out with dead eyes.

Then came the black envelope. The colonel standing before the prison gates looked down at the file in his hands.

“You’re Vanderleigh?” Adrian raised his eyes. “Yes, sir.”

“You understand the odds?” “Yes. Sir!” “100 percent mortality. You will die within the first hour.”

Adrian looked toward the open prison gates. Beyond them waited the transport trucks. Beyond those waited the battlefield. And somewhere beyond that battlefield was a life he had spent three years dreaming about, 

To survive this prison and go back to his beloved wife Alyssa Auremont, not as an ex-convict, but as a legal soldier who fought for the country. 

And he did exactly that, because three years in Blackridge had taught him something the military never could.

There were worse things than dying.

The trucks left before sunrise. By 06:00, fifty prisoners had crossed the border.

By 07:13, the enemy spotted them. By 07:19, artillery opened fire. By 07:26, the first prisoner died. By noon, eleven were dead. By sunset, thirty-two.

The military command watching from headquarters expected the remaining eighteen to surrender. They didn’t.

At 02:41 the following morning, Adrian Vanderleigh took control of the eastern trench and led the other prisoners. At 04:08, he captured the first artillery position.

At 09:52, the second fell.  At 14:17, the third.

The enemy commander received reports that made no sense. Fifty prisoners had crossed his border.

By the second day, his soldiers were reporting attacks from men who should have been dead.

By the third night, they were calling Adrian’s unit the Black Wolves. By the fourth morning, the eastern valley belonged to them.

Two thousand enemy soldiers had been defeated. Not by an army. Not by an elite military unit.

By fifty condemned prisoners. Only six were left standing. And when the original military operation finally began three days later, the generals discovered something that terrified them more than the enemy ever had.

The war was already over. Five surviving prisoners stood behind Adrian. Adrian stood in the middle of the battlefield, covered in blood that wasn’t entirely his.

The colonel who had sent them there approached slowly. He looked at the bodies. Then at Adrian.

“You were supposed to die.”

Adrian wiped the blood from his mouth.“So were you.” The colonel stared at him.

For the first time in the history of Operation Black Mercy…

someone had won.

Adrian Vanderleigh had just earned his freedom.

A day went by, Adrian Vanderleigh was dressed in a military ceremonial uniform alongside the other survivors he had led and given hope of survival, they were sent to rehabilitation, but after Adrian Vanderleigh’s sentence was reviewed, accompanied with reviews of his previous behavior at the Blackridge prison, he was free to go home.

“Congratulations Sargent Adrian Vanderleigh… today is your day” Commander Tom said.

Adrian stood, grabbing the photograph of Alyssa Auremont with the only three letters she sent in the first month he arrived at blackridge prison…  

They were the only thing that had kept him sane. Adrian had written hundreds of letters after them.

He had written about the prison. About the men. About the beatings. About the cold floors.

About the nightmares. About the days he thought he was going to die. He had written to her about everything.

And received nothing, Yet those three letters from the first month remained precious to him. Gold worth more than every unanswered letter he had ever written.

Because they had come from her, His Alyssa. He knew her family had made sure she couldn’t contact him. He knew the Auremonts and the D’Auberys had their hands in what happened to him.

But Adrian had never allowed himself to believe Alyssa had stopped loving him. And today was the day… he felt the warm sun of freedom on his face, 

“Freedom finally…” he said, the word cracking with hardened emotions, everything he had survived at the prison for three years, attempted murder, ruthless beatings, scars and cruel drills… every night he had slept on cold floors, wondering if he’d die the next day and never see his beautiful wife’s face again. 

Three years ago, Adrian had just returned from his delivery job when he noticed several exotic cars parked outside the Auremont estate.

His brother-in-law, Jorah Auremont, Alyssa’s elder brother, was admiring the cars until he spotted Adrian approaching the manor he shared with Alyssa, a house gifted to them by the Auremont family as part of her dowry.

“You! Wait outside, Gold Digger. Lord Reese D’Aubery is inside.”

Adrian didn’t know who Reese was, but judging by Jorah’s behavior, the man clearly came from a wealthy and powerful family.

Adrian ignored him and walked inside.

He heard raised voices and quickly found Alyssa arguing with Reese D’Aubery.

“You’re wasting your beauty on a common gold digger. That delivery boy doesn’t deserve you. Your whole family wants you to divorce him and marry me instead. Why are you so stubborn?”

Adrian was consumed by rage. He stepped between them and shoved Reese away from Alyssa.

Reese immediately punched him. Adrian fought back without hesitation, landing several hard punches until Reese collapsed unconscious, his jaw broken.

Adrian later found out that Reese was the heir to the D’Aubery family, owners of a luxury furniture corporation.

And for hurting their precious son, the D’Aubery family joined forces with his own in-laws, led by the enraged Lady Dowager Cressida Auremont. To them, Adrian was nothing but a poor rat of a son-in-law who had nearly destroyed the relationship they had carefully built with the D’Aubery family.

Using their combined power and connections, they damned Adrian to Blackridge Prison, certain he wouldn’t survive even a day.

It was their simplest solution. Get rid of Adrian and end his betrothed marriage to Alyssa.

But today, he was free. He was finally back…Adrian walked into the Auremont estate in his army ceremonial uniform instead of a prison uniform, clutching his box as he hurried toward the matrimonial manor. He could barely contain his happiness. After three years, he was finally going to see his beloved Alyssa again, then his mother and sister.

When he stepped into the old living room, he stopped and heaved a deep breath of relief.

Three hard years. He had finally made it home. Until he heard passionate moans upstairs.

The sounds of skin against skin. Lustful whimpers and breathless groans of pleasure echoed from the matrimonial bedroom.

Then he recognized the voice. Alyssa. Adrian froze.

He couldn’t believe his ears. No, it couldn’t be her. He refused to believe it.

It couldn’t be her.

Perhaps the Auremont family had given their matrimonial manor to another member of the family while he was gone. That had to be it.

Adrian ran upstairs and slammed open the bedroom door with a single kick.

And the sight before him shattered everything. His beloved wife…

The woman he had gone to the most dangerous prison in the world and fought a deadly war of 100% mortality for. The woman whose photograph and three letters had kept him alive through every brutal day of Blackridge.

Alyssa Auremont was in bed with Reese D’Aubery… completely naked, straddling Reese D’Aubery, as she rode him in a desperate, filthy rhythm.

Filthy, broken moans poured from her open mouth— Adrian’s heart didn’t just break. It detonated.