Her stern look remained steady on me.
“Do you know that no matter what Michael paid or who he bribed, there were people paying more to see the rich, entitled sons of the Thunder Bay elite suffer in prison?” I kept going. “Do you have any idea how sick they both got from lack of food and sleep to balance the fucking excess of fear and pain?”
Her gaze dropped for a moment, uncomfortable, but she stayed quiet.
“Yeah, well, neither do I,” I told her. “Because I wasn’t there.”
Her eyes shot up, looking confused. I walked, circling the perimeter of the room as I continued. “Three levels below cell block six, in the basement, down a dank corridor, below five feet of concrete, is where I was.” I fisted my hands, the anger returning almost immediately. “For three years. You didn’t know that, did you?”
Her eyes, so blue even in this dark room, pierced mine.
“Banks thought she was doing me a favor,” I said. “And Gabriel agreed with her. He had too many enemies and those enemies had soldiers on the inside. I was more at risk than Kai and Will, so I was put in solitary confinement.” I drew in a deep breath, the blood under my skin growing hot. “Twenty-three hours a day, seven days a week, all day, every day, for one-hundred-sixty weeks. That’s one-thousand-one-hundred-twenty days. Twenty-six-thousand-eight-hundred-eighty hours, Rika.”
My fingers tingled with the urge to dig into my skin, but I held back.
“I was allowed outside one hour a day, but even then I was alone.” I walked around the room, glancing at her as I spoke. “I ate alone, I walked alone, I did everything alone. My father didn’t want me killed, so I was cut off from everyone.”
I started circling the couch she sat on, and without thinking, I skated my hand over the portable bar, tugging on the corner and making the bottles clink together. Heat trailed up my neck.
“The first day, you’re wondering what’s going on,” I explained. “No one’s saying anything. No one will answer your questions. You can’t see anything but your little plot of cement. And after the first week, you start talking to yourself a little just because there’s nothing to do, and you’re getting really fucking bored.”
“You mean lonely?” she jabbed.
“Pissed off,” I gritted out, correcting her. “No one is coming to visit. Where’s Banks? She would be there. Why are they keeping me from her?” And then I nod at her. “But you know you can take it. You can take anything they dole out. Will’s fine. Kai’s fine. They’ll be fine.”
I kept circling the room, the muscles in my neck suddenly tight as I dragged my hand over the surface of tables and walls, going a little faster now and my fingers digging in as I held her stare.
“But a month in, you start to find that your head is heavy,” I said, growing breathless at the memory. “Really fucking heavy, Rika, like you can’t lift it. So you start doing things to snap yourself out of it, like banging it into the wall over and over again.”
I brushed past a vase and sent it crashing to the wooden floor, but I didn’t stop. I was in my cell again, circling the eight-by-eight-foot square and going mad.
“And your skin feels tight, and the walls are pressing against your lungs, so you can’t breathe, and your brain starts slipping sideways, because the world looks so different now than it used to.” I sucked in a breath and squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. “And you just want to run—run hard. And breathe. You’re crawling inside yourself. You don’t just want out of the room. You want out of your skin.”
I winced, and I couldn’t inhale. Something was on my chest. Sitting there.
“And when you finally get a visit—four guards your dad pays to beat the shit out of you on the first of every month so you don’t get soft in solitary—you start to look forward to those visits.” I bared my teeth, still looking at her as I walked. “Because pain in the body quiets the pain in the head. It feels good, like a kill switch for your brain. And then you remember that fucking little cunt sitting in that courtroom, even though she didn’t have to be there, to take pleasure in hearing you accused and sentenced, while people lied about you and said you forced her into it.” My throat grew thick, and I almost couldn’t speak. “Forced her to get naked and to open her legs, going into vile detail like I made her do things I couldn’t already get from her sister down the hall or any other girl I wanted.” I was yelling now. “Acting like that time with her wasn’t the only fucking time I didn’t hate fucking.”
I gasped for breath, my mania replaced with fury, and I saw Winter in my head and then only red. I stopped and stared at Rika, but my anger was still hot.
“And maybe she couldn’t have stopped me being convicted, but she could’ve told them the truth. She could’ve stood up and said something. She could’ve opened her fucking mouth and talked,” I growled, my throat tight and burning. “But she stayed quiet, and you went into solitary for three years, and your friends fended for themselves while your mind slowly slipped off its axis and you’d rip out your own hair because animals do insane things when they’re caged for too long.”
I panted, trying to lower my voice. “Three years,” I said, seething. “Three. Years. Rika.”
I paused, evening out my voice and calming my breathing back to normal.
“So, yeah,” I said, mocking her. “You bet your ass I’m gonna hurt her.”
She sat there, her gaze faltering and her eyes glistening, but her shoulders still squared. She wasn’t a stupid woman, and I knew that. She had to suspect the can of worms she was opening by giving me those documents, but ultimately, she decided what I could give her was worth the damage I would cause. There was a bit of “not-so-honorable” inside her, too.
She did what she did to get what she wanted, and I couldn’t lie. I felt a pang of pride at my new, unlikely little friend here.
But again…she wasn’t a stupid woman. She knew the can of worms she was opening between Winter and me, and it was entirely possible she was planning for it. And while I was enjoying our newfound camaraderie, Erika Fane wouldn’t stand silently by and let me do my work. She’ll try to protect Winter.
And let her. The more she put herself in my path, the more it would bring everyone else into play.
Michael, Kai, Banks…
Will.
Balling my fists, I walked over to the bar, poured two fingers of vodka, and downed it in one gulp, immediately pouring another.
Will.
And Winter.
Will and Winter.
I downed the second shot, liquid heat coursing through my chest as I closed my eyes and heard Rika clear her throat.
“So, do you have anything for me yet?” she asked like she hadn’t just heard all that. “Or are you just ready to admit you’re completely incompetent?”
I squeezed the rocks glass, the subtle burn of alcohol still stinging my throat as I whipped it across the room in her direction.
Fuckin’ girl.
It shattered against the wall above her head, and she turned her face to the side, barely flinching as she let out a quiet laugh.
She was hardly afraid of me anymore.
“Call or text Banks,” she instructed, ignoring my tantrum. “She’s worried about you.”
“She’s not.” I lit another cigarette and refilled my glass. “Banks knows me best. She knows I take care of myself first.”
“And Will?”
I walked for the couch, tossing her a look.
“He has an alcohol problem,” she told me.
But I just smiled to myself. “For men, it’s not a problem.”
Every man I knew or grew up with drank. You held your liquor and you got shit done. Women were the lightweights, which is why I never let Banks drink.
“And he has a drug problem,” Rika continued.
I leaned back on the couch, tucking an arm behind my head and staring at her.
And she was telling me this because…?
I brought the cigarette to my lips with my other hand and took a drag. I met Will at the beginning of high school, and he’d played around with drugs for as long as I’d known him. Weed, X, pills, coke… It all ran rampant in our school. The only reason we didn’t have the heroin epidemic the inner city did was because we had the money and access to good shit from the town M.D.
And Mom’s medicine cabinet.
It was almost the only thing Michael and I ever agreed on.
We didn’t do drugs. We were the drugs.
“I’m sure you all will take care of it,” I told her.
“You whined earlier because you weren’t there for him in jail, but you can be there now.”
“Go home,” I said.
For someone so smart, she was good at stupid. I was the last person Will wanted or needed help from.
She paused a moment, as if waiting for me to say something or still holding out hope maybe, but then finally turned around and headed her ass for the door.
But something caught her eye, and she stopped, lifting up a small black box off the sofa table and inspecting the contents.
My heart thudded a beat, recognizing what she was holding. I clenched my teeth so hard my jaw ached, and then I was up, dropping my cigarette into the ashtray and charging toward her.
Ripping the box out of her hands, I slammed it close, hearing the contents jingle inside as I tossed it on the sofa again, and then grabbed her collar, backing her up into the wall.
Her blue eyes glared up at me, all tough and ready, but her little panting gave away the small amount of fear she still held of me.
“Keep me in this perspective.” I stared down, towering over her. “At any time I could snap you in half and shut you up for good. You need me. I don’t need you. We’re not friends.”
Stay out of my place. Stay out of my shit. No more chit-chat.
“Glad you know that,” she replied, her voice surprisingly steady.
I released her and turned, going back to the sofa, tucking the contents of the box back in, and fastening the latch. I’d cleared some stuff out of my father’s house and brought it in for the driver to take to my apartment at Delcour tonight.