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Prologue
Nick
Three years ago…
“You’re a fucking cheat.”
I turned my attention to my right, staring at the man beside me, then flashed him a savage grin. “What did you say, Jim-Bob?”
That wasn’t his fucking name. I had no idea what his fucking name was. He was a piece of shit who was serving twenty-five-to-life for raping and murdering a young black woman, who did nothing more than stand up to him when he was harassing her friend. As far as I was concerned, any crime against a woman was a fucking hard limit.
Jim-Bob rose to his feet, stance wide, meaty hands clenched into fists at his side. “What the fuck did you say?” His mouth was a twisted sneer, pulling at the swastika tattooed on his cheek.
Remaining in my seat, I stared up at him, not at all bothered that he was looming over me. To show him that I didn’t give a fuck about all his posturing, I let my eyes wander around the yard. There were a number of factions who had stopped playing ball or working out to look our way.
They were like sharks sensing the impending spill of blood.
But what Jim-Bob didn’t know was that I was the biggest fucking shark in the water.
It wasn’t his fault. He was a fish—a new inmate who had only arrived last week—but his cellie should’ve warned him who was the goddamned king of Rookwood Prison.
“Got nothing to say, vatnik?” he spat, chuckling to himself when he thought I wasn’t going to come at him.
The thing was, I didn’t need to come at him.
“Yo! Motherfucking bigot,” Crews, one of the black prisoners called. “Sit your ass down now, before I make you sit down.”
Jim-Bob turned his head to glare at the other man. “Sit down, nig?—”
Before he could finish his sentence, the leader of the AB Chapter, Evan Schuster, forced him back into his seat. “Shut the fuck up, Bachman,” he hissed, then turned to me. “Sobolev, man, he’s an ignorant fuck.”
Ignorance wasn’t an excuse inside. Ignorance could get you killed just as easily as looking the wrong way at the wrong guy. Bachman needed to learn that lesson just like everyone else, and I was more than happy to teach it to him. Peering over my shoulder, I noted the tension in the guards’ shoulders. They could smell it too—the blood that was about to be spilled.
“Sobolev,” a guard warned, easing forward a step—hand resting on the baton strapped to his weapons belt.
I gave Eastwood my easy smile and held my hands up in the universal sign for surrender, then flickered my gaze back over to Crews, a mountain of a man with a bald head and a scar that ran from his eyebrow to the corner of his mouth.
Raising my brows, I gave him permission to start fucking shit up. The man barged his way through the wall of ABs surrounding the table and yanked Bachman up by the collar. The other man yelped in surprise. The supremacists got totheir feet, coming to Bachman’s aid—not because they liked the motherfucker, but because there was a fucking code. If one person fucks with a member of your race, you go to fucking bat for them.
And now that the AB were involved, the blacks joined the fray. Then the Hispanics. The only people who weren’t fighting were me and the white-collar criminals who were in for tax fraud and insider trading. They weren’t stupid enough to have extra time added to their sentences.
Some of the guards in the yard looked bored as the men started to trade blows. One of the new guards, however, was looking frantically between the brawl and the head guard, Styles. Styles shook his head, and the new guy swallowed roughly. They would let the men settle it with their fists until enough blood was spilled. The guards often had pools on who would start the fights, who would draw blood first, and whether anyone would get killed.
My money was on that motherfucker Bachman to get beaten so badly he’d be unrecognizable by morning. As if my thought conjured him, he was ejected from the main mass of bodies. He lay on his belly, looking bewildered. He tried to scramble away but was dragged back by the legs.
“Vatnik,” someone said, and I turned my head.
“Rios,” I acknowledged, keeping one eye on him and the other on the brawl that was finally bloody enough for the COs to get involved. “What do you want?”
Tatum Rios was in for the same thing I was—possession of an automatic weapon. I got done at a random traffic stop. Dumbest fucking moment of my life. Rios was picked up off the street, hustling his whores, using the muzzle of his gun as encouragement.
“Did you organize this hoe check?”
I cocked my head to the side. “Are you asking whether I organized this,”—I gestured to the fight—“to see if the fish would stand up for himself?”
Rios dipped his chin, folding his arms across his chest.
I barked a laugh. “You don’t have a very high opinion of me, do you, Rios?”
