After Being Framed and Imprisoned, I Bathed the Aristocratic Family in Blood

What would you do if, at nineteen, you suddenly became the most wanted man in the city—going from everyone's golden boy to a despised murderer overnight?

What if the victim was the girl every guy on campus dreamed about, and her last call, her final text, and even the bloody knife at the crime scene—all of it pointed straight to you?

What if your parents drained their savings and exhausted every connection they had, putting on brave faces and telling you "we believe in you"—only to die in a suspicious "accident" before they could visit you again?

Nineteen-year-old Adrian learned the answer the hard way.

I did absolutely nothing.

Because when fate decides to grind you to dust, you don't even get the dignity of fighting back.

It all started with that damn class reunion.

The air that night was thick with hormones and the sickly-sweet smell of cheap beer. Celeste—the campus queen—lost at Truth or Dare and had to borrow something from the guy she liked most in the room.

Through a chorus of whoops and catcalls, she approached me, her cheeks flushed pink.

"Could I… maybe borrow your phone?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. Those long eyelashes fluttered like butterfly wings, sending ripples across my heart.

I remember my heart stuttering in my chest. And I remember the icy glare from the corner of the room—from Julian Montgomery, Pingcheng University's golden prince, the guy everyone worshipped.

But I brushed it off.

I was just a regular kid from a middle-class family. My world revolved around basketball, grades, and suddenly, this girl who'd crashed into my thoughts. Just another college crush, I figured. No big deal.

God, was I wrong.

The next day, when cops kicked in my door and slapped cold metal around my wrists, I realized that night wasn't the start of something beautiful—it was the beginning of my funeral.

They found her body in Lovers' Lake, just off campus.

Every piece of evidence pointed to me with surgical precision. My phone—the one I'd lent her—showed I'd texted her to meet at the lake. My Swiss Army knife—the one I carried everywhere—was buried in her chest.

I couldn't even speak. The net of money and power had already closed around me, air-tight.

In court, I spotted Julian Montgomery.

The bastard sat in the gallery, dressed like a GQ model, with this slight smile playing on his lips. Like he was watching his favorite show.

And just like that, everything clicked.

Maybe it was just because Celeste had smiled at me. Maybe that was enough for him to decide this "nobody" needed to be crushed.

"On the charge of first-degree murder, this court finds the defendant guilty. The sentence is life imprisonment without possibility of parole."

The gavel came down like a wrecking ball, demolishing the life I once had.

Then came the second circle of hell.

My parents sold everything—the house, their savings, all of it—trying to prove my innocence. Every visit, they'd press their hands against the glass, holding back tears: "Just hang on, Adrian. We're going to find proof. We're going to get you out."

That thin promise was the only light I had in the darkness.

Then even that light went out.

"Adrian, I regret to inform you that your parents were killed in a car accident en route to visitation. Death was instantaneous." The warden delivered this like he was reading the lunch menu.

In that moment, the world died. All I could hear was the thunder of blood in my ears.

And then prison—already a brutal gladiator pit—showed its true teeth once I had no one left to protect me.

I became the favorite toy of "Scar," the yard boss. Daily beatings, constant humiliation—that was my life now.

But pain doesn't erase hate. It just pushes it deeper, like magma building beneath the earth, getting hotter and hotter until it finds a way out.

My eruption came on an otherwise normal afternoon.

Scar was using me as his personal punching bag again, forcing me to kneel and bark like a dog, when I looked up at him and asked, cool as ice: "Is this really the best you can do?"

He froze for a split second, then his face twisted with rage as he aimed a kick at my ribs.

That's when I struck—like a cobra that had been waiting for months. I didn't punch him. Instead, I drove my weapon into his eye—a toothbrush handle I'd been secretly sharpening against the concrete floor every night for months.

His scream echoed through the entire cell block.

Everyone thought I was dead meat—that the guards would shoot me on sight or drag me away for some "special treatment."

But then, from a shadowy corner nobody ever noticed, an old man named Tristan slowly lifted his head.