Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
The moment I’d stepped out of the infirmary, I’d started asking around, finding out everything I could about her. She’d only been here a few months, but already the inmates all loved her. I’d heard lots of stories about how gentle she was, when she patched guys up, or how she’d helped guys through withdrawal as they tried to get clean. And then there were the guys who wouldn’t say why they’d seen the doc, only that they had and that she’d been good to them. They wouldn’t look me in the eye, and I knew what they were talking about: some predator had cornered them. Olivia had helped them through that, helped them feel like survivors, not victims, and that spoke volumes about her.
She was an angel, right in the middle of hell. A wholesome reminder of the world I used to be a part of. And I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
Boots shuffled in the dirt near my head and a shadow fell across me. I knew from the slow, plodding footsteps that it was Bruno, one of the guards.
Here’s the thing about prison. The biggest problem isn’t the years or the months or even the weeks. It’s the seconds. The sound of a wristwatch will drive a man crazy in here, every tick another second of the outside world that you’re missing. That tick-tick-tick is your son’s birthday, your daughter’s graduation, the last breath of the parent you never squared things with. There’s a reason they call it doing time.
There are two rules to staying sane.
One: never have anyone you give a shit about.
Two: have something that makes doing the time worthwhile.
They wanted to give me life but they couldn’t definitively prove I was the mastermind behind the theft, only that I was heavily involved, so they had to settle for twenty-five years. They seized almost all my assets and I blew every cent I had left on a top lawyer, leaving me broke. But it was worth it: given that no one was hurt during the robbery, the lawyer managed to get my sentence down to ten years, no parole. So far, I’d served three. And the gold I stole?
They never found it. It’s sitting there waiting for me. Waiting for the day I get out.
Four hundred million dollars divided by ten years works out to forty million dollars per year, or over three million dollars per month, or—and this was my favorite—seventy-six dollars and ten cents per minute. I was making more money than most CEOs.
All I had to do was find ways to pass the time and there are always plenty of those. Big, complicated organizations pride themselves on having rules that lock everything down tight. But there are always gaps in security, opportunities to be taken. It was true in the Marines and it’s true in jail. You just have to know where to look.
“How’d it go last night?” I asked Bruno without turning around.
Bruno’s six-foot-five and for the last two years he’s been trying to work up the courage to ask out this little five-foot-nothing waitress at the coffee shop he stops at after his shift. “I told her that her eyes were nice,” said Bruno uncertainly.
“‘Nice?’” I put the barbell down. “No, no, it was like stars, Bruno. Like stars that light up the whole room!”
“I feel dumb,” said Bruno. “I can’t say it how you say it.”
“Well, that’s something we can work on, big guy.” For the next half hour, as I lay there lifting weights and the sun beat down on us, I coached Bruno on sweet talk. And this is why Bruno makes sure I get the sought-after work details, like painting the ceiling in the air-conditioned admin office, and not working in the laundry where the temperature pushes one-twenty. Arrangements like this, with guards and gangs and individuals, are how I got a TV in my cell and the pick of the best food at mealtimes. All the little perks that make prison bearable. You need them when you’re looking at ten years and every day’s the same.
A guard’s voice rang out from across the yard. “Kain! Visitor!”
My brows knitted. I slid out from under the barbell and slowly sat up, sweat rolling down my chest.
I hadn’t had a single visitor since I’d been in here. Who the hell would come to visit me?
A few moments later, I sauntered into the blessed cool of the air-conditioned visitor’s area. A guard pointed me to booth number five and I dropped into the chair, still mopping sweat from my face. Then I frowned at the guy sitting on the other side of the Plexiglass. He wore a suit and I’m enough of a connoisseur to know that this one cost a lot. But even though it was tailored, it didn’t look quite right on him. There was a brooding intensity about him: I couldn’t imagine him sitting in meetings. And there was something unusual about his look. The heavy eyebrows and strong jawline put me in mind of somewhere old and mist-covered: warriors swinging swords and carrying off maidens. But it wasn’t Scandinavia: his hair was black, not blond. And Germany didn’t feel right, either. He was from somewhere else, somewhere more unusual. I had a feeling I’d seen his face before.