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“What are you doing with all your shit?”
I glanced at the stash of food, toiletries, and other random stuff I’d collected along the way. “You keep it.”
Oklahoma got to his feet, holding out his hand to me. I clasped him by the forearm with my free arm and pulled him into my body, thumping him on the back twice.
When I pulled away, I said, “See you on the outside.”
Oklahoma bobbed his head. “Only two more years.”
Sliding my folded-up mattress from my bunk, I left my cell—then C-pod—without a backward glance. Styles was waiting outside the pod door, one hand hitched on his hip and the other jiggling a set of cuffs.
“Dump that shit on the ground there,” he told me, indicating a length of wall in the hall. I dropped the mattress unceremoniously and turned to him, holding my wrists out with a dark look. Styles eyed me warily, indicating for me to put my hands behind my back instead before clicking home the cuffs.
He turned me back around. “You aren’t thinking of doing something stupid, are you?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t play fucking dumb with me,” he snapped, tapping the solid metal door and shoving his face into the small window andin the sight line of the guard on the other side. The heavy metal bolt slid across, the echo of it rattling around in my brain and making my pulse jump. It was the sound of fucking freedom, and I was more than ready to breathe in air that didn’t stink of sweat, piss, and shit.
With his hand wrapped around my upper arm, he guided me through the door and into a long hall. A, B, D, and E pods fed off the same long stretch of painted concrete floor, and the shouts of those inmates rebounded off the walls.
“Remember our deal, Sobolev,” Styles said under his breath. “Get Rixon the message.”
“You want more compensation. I get it.” The greedy fuck. “I’ll tell him.”
Styles’s fingers tightened where he gripped my upper arm. “Don’t forget. If you and your club want the protection inside, you need to pay for it. Want to know how much I had to spend to get that shanking incident to go away? Or all the brawls you started in the chow hall. And don’t even get me started on the smuggling of contraband into the prison.”
I strained against the pull of the cuffs. It would be the last time I had them on, though. “I didn’t hear you complaining when we lined your pockets from our exploits.”
“And if they want to keep my loyalty, mysilence, they will continue to reward me, but much,muchbetter.” Styles hiked his pants up over his gut, feeling good about his sudden backbone.
I’d be telling Rixon all about Styles’s demands, but not in the way Styles assumed I would. There were plenty of other guards out there who would jump at the chance to earn extra cash.
When we reached the end of the hallway, I was led straight into processing where I was told to strip out of the orange jumpsuit that had been my life for the past five years, and I put back on the clothes I’d been processed in. The Henley was tighter across my chest than it had been before, the jeanssnugger across my thighs. I was carrying all that time spent in the yard well.
After signing on the dotted line, I was escorted to the exit where I stepped out into the Michigan sun for the first time without the shadow of bars falling over my face. Inhaling deeply, all I could smell was fresh air.
“You going to stand there all day, or what?” a deep voice called from ten yards away.
Turning my head, I saw Gunnar standing beside his 1965 Shelby Mustang GT350 Tribute. That car was his pride and fucking joy, and I was relieved to see that not much had changed in that department.
As I approached my club brother, I saw movement from inside the Mustang. On instinct, I reached around to the small of my back, grasping nothing but air. Gunnar noticed.
“Good to see your instincts are still sharp.” With a nod, he opened the passenger door of the car and stood back. A large, muscular red-and-white dog leaped out, coming to heel at Gunnar’s side. My best friend reached down and scratched behind its ear.
“You got a dog?”
Gunnar looked down, then back to me. “No. He’s yours.”
“The fuck?”
“He was D’s. He got him a few weeks after you went inside. His name’s Lucifer.”
I let my gaze drift down to the mutt. He was stacked with muscles. His ears had been razored too, making him look mean as hell.
“I don’t want a goddamned dog,” I said.
Gunnar laughed. “It’s funny to think you have a fucking choice. Quit your bitching and get in.”
