Convict: A Bad Boy Romance (18 page)

* * *

T
he cops knock
on my door before dawn. I’m asleep and naked when they arrest me for nine counts of Grand Theft Auto, a number that only gets higher in the coming days.

There’s a mountain of evidence against me: surveillance videos, security footage, my fingerprints on stolen cars that have been recovered. I’ve seen something I shouldn’t have seen, and the Syndicate wants me
gone
.

I tell my public defender about the girls in the shipping container, and he tells the prosecutor, but I’ve got no evidence, nothing to back up my story. They don’t offer a plea deal, but when I lay awake at night, I’m not thinking about myself, or my case, or the fact that the jury is definitely going to find me guilty as hell.

I’m thinking
I should have done something besides just stand there
.

They find me guilty. I couldn’t be less surprised.

The judge sentences me to fifteen years in the Georgia State Penitentiary.

“
Y
ou’re in my seat
,” the guy says.

I know
, I think, but I don’t even look up. I lift another fork full of over-boiled carrots to my mouth, then chew them slowly.

“You hear me, asshole?” he asks.

I finally look up, still chewing. He and I are wearing the exact same thing, scratchy khaki drawstring pants and a khaki shirt, but
everyone
here is wearing the same thing.

More importantly, he’s got a spiderweb tattooed on one elbow, a bloody knife on the other forearm, and a shitty circle that’s supposed to be a clock with no hands.

In other words: he’s dangerous, he’s a murderer, he’s here for life, and he’s a couple inches taller than me. Six six, six seven, probably.

I swallow my carrots.

“I don’t see your name on it,” I say, because a supermax prison is a lot like elementary school sometimes.

“It don’t need my name,” Hammer says. “Everybody knows that’s
my seat
.”

It’s his seat because this is the table unofficially reserved for Andrew Valdez, and Hammer here is Valdez’s current protector.

And I’m in his way.

Adrenaline shoots through my veins, because I know what Hammer has done to people. The feds showed me some pictures when they pulled me out of the state pen and made me a deal.

I take another bite of my lunch and don’t even look at Hammer. His lunch tray clatters onto the table in front of me, food flying everywhere.

Here we go.

Hammer bends down until he’s eye-level with me, still seated at the table. A crowd has already gathered, though they’re giving us five feet. I’m sure the guards are somewhere, but prison guards tend to be disinclined to get in the middle of fights unless they really
need
to intervene.

As far as they’re concerned, we’re still just talking.

“You made me spill my lunch,” he says, then gets even closer. “Lick it up.”

I don’t even look at him, just take a bite of dry, flavorless cornbread.

That does it.

“I said,” Hammer roars, “LICK IT UP.”

He grabs me by the hair and pushes me across the table, smearing my own lunch across my chest and nearly pushing my face into the overcooked carrots smeared across the table. The guys gathered around to watch the fight all laugh nervously as my face is half an inch from the table.

“Come on, Elvis,” he says. “You’re not hungry?”

Hammer leans in even closer, because he’s not a very smart man.

“Not really,” I say, and slam my elbow into his nose as hard as I can.

He shouts, cursing, and lets go of my hair. In a flash I’m on my feet and I’m after him as he stumbles back two steps, getting him hard in the solar plexus.

Hammer doesn’t go down like I expect him to. Instead he gets me in the side of the face, and I feel my head snap around with the force of his fist, my entire skull screaming in pain.

Holy fucking shit, the man hits like a freight train. I put my fists up again and duck his next couple of blows, watching the guards from the corner of my eye. They’re moving toward us, but they’re not excited to get involved. They’re hoping one of us ends it before they have to.

I dodge again but this time Hammer gets me in the shoulder, pain blossoming through my arm, my fingers going numb for a moment. I hit him in the jaw with my other hand while he’s overextended, but he barely seems to notice.

There’s a guard at the edge of the circle. I need to end this
now
or I’m gonna have to do it all over again in a week.

I grab Hammer by his shirt and shove him arm’s length away. He looks surprised, like he’s realizing for the first time that I’m nearly as tall as he is, that I’ve got enough power to move him like that.

Then I stomp his right knee with all the force I can muster, and everyone in the cafeteria hears the
crack
. Hammer screams and falls over, his weight suddenly off balance. Everyone shouts at once.

In moments I’m on the ground too, tackled by at least three guards who don’t mind slamming my head into the concrete floor as they shout at me, their knees in my back. They yank up on my arms so hard I think they might break them, handcuff me, then shackle my feet.

Hammer is still screaming on the floor, his knee at an odd angle. I almost feel bad for the guy, since all he did was make the wrong friend, but then I remember the tattoos and don’t feel bad any more.

I spend two weeks in solitary for that.

* * *

M
y first day
out of solitary, most people won’t look me in the eye. For a bunch of men who did something bad enough to get sent to a supermax facility, most of them don’t want too much trouble.

I’m out in the yard, enjoying my twenty minutes of outdoor time, carefully watched by four guards with rifles in watchtowers, when someone comes up to me.

“Hey, Elvis,” a voice says.

I drop the weights I’m using, turn around, and stand.

“That’s not my name,” I say.

The man who spoke is middle-aged and black, thick glasses on his face. He’s Thurmond, one of Valdez’s cronies in prison. Originally, he was doing four years in a minimum security joint for embezzling, but then he stabbed another prisoner, the guy died, and Thurmond wound up here. Looks can be deceiving.

“It’s the sideburns,” he says, both hands in the air in front of him, like he’s afraid I’ll attack.

Good.

“You need something?” I growl.

“Valdez wants to dine with you tonight,” he says.

I raise both eyebrows.

“Dine with me?” I say, as sarcastically as I can muster.

“Just chat over dinner,” Thurmond says.

I look Thurmond up and down, wondering whether he’s hiding some kind of rudimentary weapon. Probably. I wouldn’t fight him if I didn’t have to. Guys like him are dangerous because they don’t
look
dangerous.

“What’s he want?” I ask.

“He likes interesting company,” Thurmond says. “Congratulations, you’re interesting.”

I think that means
you kicked Hammer’s ass and don’t have a single facial tattoo
.

Thurmond turns and walks away without even looking over his shoulder at me.

There’s dangerous and there’s
dangerous
, and I know which kind I’m involved with now.

* * *

U
p until now
, I’ve only glanced Valdez in passing. I’ve only been with the general supermax population for a couple of days, and he’s usually surrounded by huge, tattoo-covered meatheads. The agents I made the deal with showed me his head shot from his arrest, but I didn’t recognize him then. I told them I’d never met the guy.

Now, entering the cafeteria with my dinner tray and heading for his table, I realize I was wrong. In the headshot his hair was scraggly and gray, the light making deep hollows under his eyes, his skin nearly gray and wrinkled as he scowled at the camera.

But holding court in the cafeteria, he looks totally different. I walk toward his table feeling like I’ve swallowed a brick, the dread heavy in my stomach.

If he knows I was in the Syndicate, even though I was just a low-level thug, he might suspect something. Hell, he might even connect me to the guy who stole the Veyron and opened the wrong shipping container.

Valdez was one of the Syndicate bigwigs until a mistress got angry at him, stole his computer, and took it to the cops. She’s dead now, but he’s here, though rumor has it that he’s even more powerful now, his fat fingers in even more pies.

You can make some
very
good criminal contacts in prison, it turns out.

I never met most of the bigwigs, and that was by design. I only met Valdez by accident, one night when I was out at a swanky nightclub in Atlanta. The guy above me in the Syndicate, the guy I took orders from, was stumbling drunk, saw someone he called El Hefe at a table in the corner, and brought me over. We didn’t even exchange words — I think Valdez nodded dismissively — but I’d forgotten that moment until right now.

Hell, I didn’t
realize
that was Valdez until right now, when I’m walking toward him because the FBI’s sent me.

He’s sixty-something, and even though he’s in prison and wearing the exact same thing as the rest of us, somehow his looks
polished
and pristine. His black hair is combed back, his temples almost completely gray.

Most striking, he eats with
manners
, holding his plastic knife and fork in the correct hands, cutting his dry turkey breast into small bites and chewing neatly. Like he’s cultured.

He looks at me appraisingly, like he’s calculating my usefulness. I can practically see him thinking
tall, jacked, white guy, quiet, isn’t afraid to take on guys way bigger than him. Wins those fights
.

What I
don’t
see is a flicker of recognition.

“Ellwood, is it?” he asks as I sit.

I’ve always hated my first name.

“I go by my middle name, Sam,” I say, stabbing a green bean and cramming it into my mouth. I watch his two bodyguards from the corners of my eye, ready for them to try anything.

“Pleasure to meet you, Sam,” he says cordially. “Thanks for dining with me.”

I just nod. The whole situation is making me jumpy. I wasn’t worried about one guy Hammer’s size, but two might be a different story.

“You did a number on Wilson,” he says.

I look up at him and frown.

“He goes by Hammer,” Valdez explains. “He’s going to be in a wheelchair for some time,” he says, like we’re just having a conversation.

I look up at him. What, does he want me to apologize?

Valdez half-smiles, like we’ve got a secret.

“I always told him to watch below the belt,” Valdez says, and shrugs. “I once had a bodyguard get his jaw wired shut for two months after he got kicked in the face by an assailant. I told him, too.”

I don’t know what the fuck Valdez wants me to say, but I’ve been in solitary for fourteen days, and I can barely string sentences together in my own head. I eat another green bean.

“You’re in for auto theft, is that right?” Valdez asks.

All my muscles tense up and I look around. That’s a dangerous question to ask and a dangerous one to answer. No one goes after car thieves the way they go after pedophiles, but I like to keep it under my hat just the same. Especially now, since
anything
could jog his memory.

I look at Valdez. He’s waiting. I nod once, tersely, holding my breath. Valdez’s eyes brighten. He tilts his head to one side.

He’s recognized me
, I think.
Now he knows who I am
.

“Would you indulge me for a moment?” he asks.

I pause, because no
way
am I gonna let him fuck me. Not for my stupid mission, not to get out of jail. Hell
no
. My asshole’s unviolated after four years inside, and it’s gonna stay that way until I leave.

“Indulge you how?” I grunt.

His bodyguards haven’t moved, but I’m watching them both, just
ready
for them to try something.

Valdez leans forward.

“Tell me what you stole,” he says. “I miss fast cars so, so much.”

If he doesn’t know I took the Veyron, maybe he doesn’t recognize me
, I think.

“You want the fastest or the most expensive first?” I ask.

He rubs his fingers together.

“You pick,” he says.

“A Rolls Royce Ghost,” I say.

He whistles low.

“I had the pleasure of driving one of those once,” he says, a faraway look coming into his eyes. “Made me feel like I was some sort of rich European lord, money in my family since the middle ages.”

“Made me feel like some kind of middle eastern Sheikh,” I say. “Room for a harem in the back.”

Valdez laughs.