“she couldn’t scream while I held her throat; I promised not to let her go.”
→ murder trilogy au 

After a young woman is brutally murdered in an alley in Las Vegas, the police doesn’t take long to investigate the case and find the murderer – an equally young man, only known to the press under the synonym “Mr. Brightside”. The trial is short and merciless, though there is one sentence, that sticks around for years to come: while defending himself on trial, Brandon, the murderer, says, “there ain’t no motive for this crime, Jenny was a friend of mine.” And the victim Jenny Bennam was really a friend of his, but, more importantly, also the girlfriend of local sports star Andy Riverman, who supposedly was engaged in a love affair with the suspect, turning the crime into an impromptu act, driven by an unruly combination of passion and jealousy. 

Sentenced to 15 years in prison, Brandon spends the better part of his life in jail, but is released three years earlier due to good behaviour, only when he returns to the real world nothing is as it was before. His mother died years ago, his father already left his family when he was three years old, none of his siblings want to know him anymore and he never got around to finish his degree at law school. His world is a foreign shade of darkness and he is nothing but a shadow walking among strangers – what is left to do? He took a girl’s breath beneath the chandelier of stars in atmosphere and now there is no air left for his lungs.