A/N: It took me long enough to update this story, but here it is at last :) I hope the next chapter won't take this long!

Disclaimer: I don't own Death Sentence. Featured song: Hello World, Lady Antebellum

I see a little light, a little hope

in a little girl

hello world

Billy watched as Lisa drove away in that hideous car she got, to God knows where. She didn't know shit about cars, and without him around, it was very likely that she bought a piece of crap. He looked around, trying to distinguish what had changed around Stokely Hall. Aside from a house that got renovated and another one who seemed like it had been taken over by gypsies, everything was pretty much the same. The buildings did seem washed out, but it might have been his eyes, used to the monochromatic life in jail. There was no one on the street but him - it was a Tuesday afternoon, who else would be hanging around on the street? Feeling out of place, Billy turned back to the building, and realized he would be just as out of place in her apartment. With a deep breath under the bright sun, he looked at the direction where Lisa went, and remembered that she said she hadn't sold his car. To know if she was saying the truth, he had to go to the body shop.

It wasn't until he was face to face with the metal door that he realized he didn't have the keys to the padlock anymore. It's not like it had stopped him before; it was his shop anyway, and he was entitled to get in.

Billy pushed back the high grass which now circled the place, headed for the back door. There was a small crack in the glass which served him and Joe very well when they were kids and needed a place to hide whenever they'd get into trouble, and Billy doubted that Lisa had fixed it. With a skilled hand, he found it and unlocked the door. Lisa hadn't been there in a long time, apparently; the air was heavy, the place smelled like old gas, oil and mold, and when he hit the lights, none of them worked. When it came down to choosing between which utility bills to pay, she had chosen her houses'. Billy walked around the shades, roaming over the free space, since there were no cars to be found; everything else was still there: their battered couch, his father's old, filthy desk, the tools that were scattered all over the place.

"Shit", he whispered, coming closer to a tool board and finding out that they were all rusty. To his left, something silver caught his eye; it was a car cover, and he couldn't help but smile when he began to uncover it.

"Hey, babe... daddy's here to take care of you now", he whispered to the Mustang like it was a secret, thankful that it was still there, his only joy in such weird times. No details went unnoticed: a new (at least new for him) scratch that could only be Lisa's fault; the paint, which was dry and cracked; and the glass from the driver's window was gone. Billy didn't expect it to be open, and he was right, but since the window wasn't there, he reached in and opened it from the inside.

He sat on the driver's seat and found his knees touching the wheel; he adjusted it to his size and experienced, once again, the feeling that the car was a part of him, it always has. It never failed him when Billy had to outrun the police; it carried more than a fair share of drugs and a couple of dead bodies; and in it, Billy had his first time with Lisa. The thought of not having slept with any other woman since then made him frown in disbelief, but that was the simple truth: there was no other woman for him. From their very first kiss, he felt a fire in her; a flame that was diminished but not gone, and burnt bright and hot when they met. He knew it because he shared that same heat, that same passion, burning for what was forbidden and wrong; deep inside, both of them were longing for someone who could come and make it right, who could make it worth. The only problem was that they weren't right enough themselves to fix each other.

The keys weren't in the ignition and Billy felt bad about hot-wiring his own car. Resigned, he ran his hand around the wheel. "You don't look good, babe. I know you're broken and nobody knows how to fix you, but I'm gonna do it. Only I know how to do it. I'm gonna make you even better than you were before. Then we can ride together again, just like old times", he said, marking his promise with a smirk. If he hadn't listened to himself, he could almost be convinced that he was really talking about the car.

Billy shook his head and opened the door, coming back to the real world where car and women metaphors didn't exist. He didn't expect that large, dry puddle of oil to be there still, after all that time, just to remind him of another car - the one that started it all.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

"Hey, hey!", Billy yelled from a distance, seeing that Ewan was approaching the beaten Camaro that had just been dropped in the middle of their shop.

"It's leaking like shit, dog. I was going to take a look at it."

"Listen to me, hey, Sticks, Joe, come here", he ordered, and seconds later the three of them were gathered around their boss.

"See this car over here? No one - look at me, Ewan - no one touches it but me. Are we clear?"

"But Billy, you can't-"

"I said no one. Got that through your fucking skulls?"

They all nodded and turned around to leave.

"Joe, come here."

"What's up with the car?", Joe asked, getting closer to his brother. He knew well what that look on his face meant: trouble. To reinforce that idea, Billy walked towards his desk, away from the other guys.

"Belongs to Big Moe."

Joe shrugged.

"So what? It's not the first car that we've fixed that belonged to a dealer."

"It's the first one to have 50 pounds of stash underneath the floor", Billy stated, as if he was talking about the weather, lighting a cigarette.

"50 pounds? What... Why?"

"Because", Billy muffled, running a hand through his messy hair, "because I'm a fucking magnet to this shit. Big Moe said it's my payment."

"Whoa. Unless we have to remodel his car, he's overpaying us."

"He told me I could consider it a deposit. Un-fucking-believable", he said, pacing around.

"What are you going to do?"

"What are you going to do about what?", Lisa inquired, walking in and making their hearts skip a beat. Joe didn't care about it that much - it was Billy who had promised her that the life of crime was behind him, that he knew it wasn't worth it then, that he would make ends meet. And he was making ends meet. It was a rough start, but after a few months, cash started to flow and he could breathe a little more relieved. But something like that... it always made him think twice about that promise.

"Nothing, babe. It's just a little something with this car", Billy said, tossing the cigarette away and looking at Joe to make sure that his younger brother wouldn't say something he shouldn't. He then drove his attention to Lisa and her 5-month pregnant belly, which prompted Joe to mind his own business.

"How are you feeling today, babe?"

"I'm all right. I could have eaten something better at lunch if it wasn't for this never-ending heartburn."

Billy looked at her; her cheeks were rosy, despite the cold February weather; her hair pulled up in a ponytail, and a small smile was forming on her lips. She had never looked healthier.

"What?", Lisa asked with a smirk.

"Nothing. Emma makes you look even better."

"Rose."

"Emma."

"Billy, we're not discussing that again."

"You're right, let's not discuss it. Her name is Emma and that's that."

"Keep dreaming, Darley", she stated before planting a kiss on his lips. "Me, Rose and James will be waiting for you at home."

"Who's Rose? Why are you inviting strangers for dinner?"

Lisa shook her head on her way out. He wouldn't win that one.

"Fuck", Billy curse under his breath, feeling the weight of fatherhood pressing on his chest. "What the fuck am I supposed to do with this shit?"

"It's your call, man", Joe added, not making it any easier on his brother.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

The memory was still vivid in his head; it couldn't be different when he spent a good part of his time in jail thinking about the choice that changed everything. It was easy to say no, and he simply couldn't. The prospect of easy money was too brilliant; it would have been more brilliant if the money had ever happened.

He shook the thoughts away from his head and walked outside. There was nowhere to go but Lisa's place now. He lit up a cigarette feeling a bit guilty; he had to find a job real soon, because there was no way that he could live with the idea that he depended on Lisa to smoke a god damn cigarette.

Once he was inside the apartment, Billy didn't know what to do. Although the place was still familiar, he didn't know anything anymore - how their daily life was, what they used to eat for dinner, what they did after the kids arrived from school. He sat on the couch again, turned on the TV and started to get a hold of what was happening around the world and in their city first. He would take care of knowing about his family later, if he could still call them that.

Meanwhile, Lisa waited for James outside his school, with Emma already in her arms. The kid who used to run down the halls and into his arms was gone; now James walked towards her with his head low, and with zero enthusiasm. It was hard, but Lisa still tried her best, day after long day, to be a good mother – as good as James allowed her to be. No one really knew how hard it was for her to witness the transformation of her son. He had aged a decade in a couple of years and it simply wasn't fair, but she had spent enough nights wondering if James would go back to being the happy child he once was. She never found the answer.

They got into her car; Lisa strapped Emma to her baby seat, made sure James fastened his seat belt and got to her seat. She put the key in the ignition and it stood there, untouched, as she looked at him in the rear view mirror. His eyes were lost somewhere out the window.

"James."

He didn't look back at her, and she kept on going.

"James, I... I picked up Billy from jail today. He's out. Isn't that great?", she asked him with a half-hearted smile, not really expecting an answer. It took James a few seconds to meet his mother's eyes in the mirror, and he shot her a look she knew too well. It was the one that blamed her for the hell they've been through. And although Lisa knew he was right, it hurt her all the same. She turned the key and they drove off. Emma was entertained by her tiny stuffed hippo and didn't care much. It was easier when you were a 2-year old who had no recollection of her father and could form brand new memories of him.

Without a single word, they went up the stairs, Lisa carrying Emma and James dragging himself up behind them. She would hurry him up if she didn't know why he was stalling. When she opened the door, Billy jumped up from the couch, and Lisa fought hard to suppress a smile and the tears that clouded her eyes. Three years had passed, she was still his wife, he was still her man and that tiny girl in her arms was their daughter. That was the truth behind everything.

Billy put his hands over his mouth, so spontaneously that even Lisa was surprised. Emma was staring at him with her bright blue eyes and Lisa was right, she looked exactly like him. He hadn't seen many pictures of him as a baby, but in the ones he remembered, he looked like that. He opened his mouth to speak, and realized that if he said as much as a "wow", he wouldn't be able to hold himself together. Lisa, on the other hand, didn't care about that. A single tear, representing all the joy and the sorrow that Emma meant for her, rolled down her cheek.

"Emma, honey," she said, stroking her daughter's fine blonde hair, "this is William Darley... your father."

Her heart was wrenched as she saw Billy turn around so that she wouldn't see him crying, but it was useless. Lisa heard him sighing deeply and saw looking up to dry the tears from his eyes before he turned back, still in silence.

"Wanna hold her?"

He exhaled; his speech still unsure and filled with emotions that ran so deep that he couldn't even begin to understand.

"I don't... I don't know how."

Lisa tried to hold Emma so that he could pick her up, but she squirmed and buried her face in her mother's shoulder.

"It's ok, honey, I know", she whispered to Emma, and Billy stormed out the room. Too many things have changed, including himself.