Cade
Gravel crunchedunder my shoes as we walked through the prison gates. It was a chorus of determined, pounding footsteps that followed Isaiah, Brantley, and me. We didn’t say much on the ride over, which wasn’t necessarily unusual without Shiner around. We’d asked him if he wanted to go, knowing his father was locked behind bars here as well and had been for many, many years, but he refused before storming off, which only solidified the fact that Shiner had a lot more under the surface than faceless jokes and fucking girls.
“Are we ready for this?” Isaiah asked, leaning back in the chair.
We were in a single horizontal line, each of us facing a smudged plastic window that looked into the other side of the prison. We weren’t the only ones in the room, which surprised me because we were nearing the end of visiting hours.
One woman was three spots down, crying hysterically as her mobster-looking boyfriend sat stoically on the other side with his hands face-down on the table in front of him. She was blubbering about cheating on him, and if his dark glare said anything at all, it was that he wanted to strangle her.
Then, to my right, past Isaiah and Brantley, there was another woman, but she wasn’t crying. She was speaking in Spanish, and if I had to guess, she was fucking pissed about something.
My pulse hammered behind my skin, and although my face was smooth and my gaze was level—because I refused to flinch when I saw him—I felt fucked on the inside.
There was something raw about seeing the man who you were eager to please as a child, only to grow to hate him as an adult, behind a single sheet of plastic. I wasn’t afraid of my father, not in the sense that most children were afraid of their abusers, but I was angry and disappointed that this was the man who I had been raised by. This was the man that I could have turned out like. And worst of all, this was the man that made my own mother reject me and leave me stranded at a boarding school to fend for myself.
The doors opened, and my chest grew tight. I wish Journey was here. If she were here, it would only take one touch of her hand on mine to give me the resilience I needed to keep my shoulders level and my fists untighened.
Instead, that was exactly what they did. My fingers dug into my palms, turning white at the knuckles like there was no blood left in them. One by one, our fathers walked through the door in handcuffs, looking smug and airy, as if they weren’t locked away in a federal prison, awaiting a multitude of charges that could very possibly leave them behind bars for the rest of their lives.
Arrogance was their backbone, and as they sat down in their chairs in front of us. Isaiah, Brantley, and I all leaned back in ours, seemingly even more arrogant than them. The only difference was that we were the free ones here, and they weren’t.
My father was the first to speak. “What? Not gonna talk? Did you boys just come here to stare at your old men, knowing we can’t wrap our fucking fingers around your necks to kill you for setting us up?”
I ignored my father, dipping my eyes down to his neck. Faded black ink peeked from under his orange jumpsuit collar, and I knew it was the serpent he’d had tatted there when I was seven. What I would do to wrap my hands around your neck, Pops.
“We want to know what you know about someone named Slave.”
Isaiah’s father chuckled, looking more disheveled than ever before. I’d seen him with blood splattered across his face, but right now, he looked rough. Dark circles laid beneath his eyes, and his black hair was no longer slicked back like usual. It was messy and long, and the snarl of his teeth made him seem like a rabid animal.
My father was looking at his ringleader, and so was Brantley’s. When I looked at Isaiah, I had to keep my face steady because the grin slowly slithering on his cheeks made me want to laugh in the worst way. I wasn’t going to lie; it was a fucking nice change of pace to be the ones on top versus the other way around.
Carlisle, Isaiah’s father, nearly growled. “You punks think you can come in here, after turning us into the feds, and demand information? I hope Slave fucking guts you all.”
My ears perked. “So, you do know him?”
His eyes never left Isaiah’s. I could feel the burning gaze of my own father, but for once, I didn’t have to look at him. There was nothing he could do to me or my mother if I didn’t submit like a little bitch at his feet.
“What?” Brantley’s father finally spoke. “Want to throw Slave in here, too? Good luck with that.”
Isaiah’s hands were planted firmly on the table in front of him, and he leaned in real close to the see-through plastic in front of his father. “Did you know that I have to give a formal statement soon? That I have to sit down with the DA and tell them everything I know about you and your little scheming gun-running business and give them the names of every last person you’ve killed or had a hand in killing?” He shifted his attention to my father and Brantley’s. “And your sons will be doing the same shortly after.”
If we were on the other side of that plastic, I bet I could have heard the grinding of each of their teeth. It surely shut them up, and that was something we had never been able to do before.
“So, you’re here to make a deal?”
Isaiah shrugged. “Depends on the information you give me.”
The haughty laugh was chilling and boisterous all in one. “You think I’m going to trust you? You may have my blood running through your veins, but you, my son, are fucking dead to me. I’m not telling you shit.”
“Okay,” Isaiah said, staying calm even though I could see the constant tapping of his foot beneath the table. Same, Isaiah. Fucking same. “That’s fine. Have fun getting the death penalty, then.” A laugh left him. “All it takes is for me to give them a few more names, and boom, you’ll have multiple murders under your belt.”
“All of you will,” I added, seeing my father looking at me with heavy betrayal over every wrinkled line of his face.
“So, let me ask you again,” Isaiah said. “Tell me everything you know about Slave, and maybe I’ll knock off a few horrendous acts that you’ve committed in my presence.”
There was silence between us. The crying woman was still wailing, irking me like no other. The Spanish woman had stormed away moments ago, her fury still intact. I knew that visiting hours would soon be over, so if they didn’t start talking soon, then we’d be out of fucking luck, and I was determined to find out who was after my girl.
“Fuck you. I could easily order to have you three killed, even from here.” Carlisle’s smile was menacing, and there was a hollowing in my stomach. “I’m just buying my time so that when I get out of this shithole, I can do it myself.”