by J. L. Beck
“Dad, you know I never asked you for much,” I interrupt. “But I am asking you not to keep us apart.”
“You must let me finish speaking, Vinny,” he says, a slight hint of a smile playing on his lips. “You are a lot like me when I was young, but sometimes your mother’s fiery temper comes through.”
He pauses to tap my cheek affectionately. “Normally, I would have no choice but to punish you, but I’m doing away with all the call girls, and all the online girls. Buying them never sat well with me, and I never should’ve let Tony talk me into it. You and your girl are free to do as you will, but I trust you will make her understand none of what happened to her will come back to haunt us.”
I nod, fighting the urge to hug him. “You have my word.”
“Which only leaves the matter of you and Tony,” he says. “I cannot have you two working side by side anymore, because I fear he means to take the ultimate revenge on you. So you will take over the restaurant in my hotel in Las Vegas, just as your mother, and I had planned for you all along.”
“I want to work for you,” I say, even though a fresh start for me and Kat on the other side of the country sounds like a great fucking idea too. And I do love to cook.
“And you will be,” he says. “Out West where it’s safe. Please don’t fight me on this, son.”
I’m trying really hard not to. Eventually I succeed.
“As you wish, Dad,” I say. He nods and finishes the rest of his coffee.
“Good. You’re leaving tomorrow,” he says and stands.
I stand up too, shake his hand then do give him a hug.
Kat comes out of the bedroom as soon as the door closes behind him.
“We are free?” she asks breathlessly.
“Yes, we are free,” I say, smiling at her as I spread my arms wide. She flies into my embrace, the force of our collision waking some of the pain in my ribs. But that’s quickly gone once my lips find hers.
Anywhere is home as long as she’s in my arms, and nothing matters more than her staying there forever. My place in this world is holding her and keeping her safe. Loving her and earning her love. I knew that the moment I saw her in that dark warehouse at the auction. But I took a long time accepting it as my only truth. Working for my father, taking over his organization, means nothing, if I don’t have Kat. And I will gladly give it all up for her.
“We have packing to do,” I tell her. “We’re moving to Vegas tomorrow.”
“I know, I heard,” she says.
“You cagey little minx. It’s not nice to eavesdrop.” She gives me a sheepish little grin that tells me she’s not sorry at all.
I kiss her again, and then some more.
And that’s all I’ll do for as long as I live. Because it’s all I need.
Epilogue
Kat
Three months later
The morning breeze coming in through the open bedroom window is cool, but already carries the promise of a scorching hot day ahead. Vin is still sleeping beside me, and normally I’d be content to just lay here and watch him do that, enjoying the soft rhythm of his even breaths.
But my parents are arriving at noon, we have to go pick them up at the airport. I called them as soon as Vin’s father freed me, and even though it hurt to lie to them about where I’d been, I did it, saying I missed them so much I couldn’t bear to speak to them while I got adjusted to my new life. My mother didn’t believe me, and I don’t think I convinced my father either, but they didn’t force the issue. Maybe one day I’ll be able to tell them the truth, but for now I will respect Vin’s wishes and keep it all a secret.
It took me a month to convince them to come here, and another two before they got their visas, and even that had to be sped along by Vin’s father. I so hope they like Vin.
I kiss him softly on the cheek, and he grunts, but keeps on sleeping. He works late at the restaurant every night, we both do, since I also work there as a hostess. He didn’t want me to take that job, but I don’t want to be away from him more than I absolutely have to, and I was just getting in his way hanging around the kitchen watching him cook for the first few weeks. He didn’t say so, but I know when I’m being a pest. He keeps telling me I should start modeling like I always wanted to, even said he’d use his mafia contacts to help me along. But becoming a model was a dream before I met him, and it’s tinged with pain and suffering now. Besides, I just want to be with him all day and all night. Everything else can wait.
I kiss him again, a little harder, and he stirs this time, but still doesn’t open his eyes.
I get bolder, kiss him on the lips, and shriek as he suddenly grabs me and pulls me on top of him, deepening the kiss. He was only feigning sleep. I should’ve known! But even my annoyance at that fades, as the kiss gets more serious, making me forget all else but his sweet, strong presence, and the cloud soft serenity I feel each time he holds me. I can get completely lost in him, always could and always will, and I don’t want it any other way. He feels the same for me, I know he does, he says it often, shows me always.
But we have no time for that this morning.
“We have to hurry, or we’ll be late,” I say, trying to extricate myself from his arms, but he won’t let me.
“Just five more minutes,” he says, embracing me even tighter.
“I’ll tell you what,” I say, smiling at him, as I lay my fingers over his lips to prevent him from kissing me again. “We can take our shower together.”
“Good idea,” he says, letting me go abruptly and throwing the covers off.
I giggle as he picks me up and carries me to the bathroom, his childlike excitement contagious, making me wish we had hours to devote to each other right now. Then I remember we do.
We have all the hours of the rest of our lives to enjoy our love.
THE END
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The Warden
M.C. Cerny
The Warden © 2017 M.C. Cerny
Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
The Warden
Falsely accused, convicted, and imprisoned. I was his for the taking.
Convicted.
Imprisoned.
At only nineteen.
And a minority.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse...
I met him.
Cohen Shephard.
The Warden.
With his sexy eyes, controlling demeanor, and badass attitude,
I was his for the taking.
And he wants me...
To help him.
In return, he’ll clear my name.
After all, I’m Benedicta Cruz.
And I’m innocent.
To an extent.
But I want more.
So much more.
1
Nene
“Benedicta Alejandra Cruz, you are found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to…” I stopped listening when the verdict was read. I’d never experienced depression, but I was sure my parents had to be rolling in their graves. Their only daughter, their hope for the future, was about to be shackled in silver, skin biting cuffs and sent to prison.
In all of this chaos, the reading of the verdict was the first time I lost my last shred of hope. The grain striations of the wooden table where I sat looked more interesting than the man in robes yammering on about my debt to society. What about the debt society owed me? This wasn’t a fair trial. It was a speedy trial with an easy conviction because I fit the bill, not because I was guilty.
Circumstantial evidence, my ass.
The judge continued speaking to me, but my eyes had glazed over. “…at least five years in prison and not more than ten as per the Texas statute. Given your youth and the likelihood that this act was committed out of provocation for your safety, I have no choice but to remand you to the state correctional unit in Colby. You will stay there for the duration of your incarceration until your parole hearing. Since your arrest, you have accumulated four months of time served.
And then there was my lazy ass lawyer who was more interested in trying to bone me in the back of his powder blue 1991 Caddy Seville than getting the evidence to prove I didn’t do it. My anger simmered and with it my jaw clamped shut. Freaking out now would only give the entire courtroom justification for the sentence. No need to show them my crazy Latina side.
I clasped my hands together to keep from punching my thighs or slapping the table in anger while the judge droned on. “That time will be credited to your remaining sentence. Do you have anything you wish to say?” The judge graced me with a fatherly glance before giving a deep sigh that marred his weathered face with a frown. He was gruff, and no nonsense, looking me over as if he was waiting for my meltdown and only hesitated a moment for my response, which wasn’t forthcoming.
My face flamed, hot and shamed, but not with guilt for the crime I’d been charged with and found guilty of, but because there was nothing for me to say. People who knew me would have said I was full of fire, but today, it felt like a torrential rain had beaten me down to sputtering smoke and ash.
“May she burn in hell! Puta!” Damp air speckled my cheek from the spittle that flew in my direction from just a dozen feet away.
“I make her suffer too! An eye for an eye is my vengeance!” A pencil hit my cheek, grazing the skin, and I ducked down to avoid further abuse. The prosecutor stood up defensively as I sat there numbly taking the verbal insults. My hands were high over my head in surrender.
“”Enough! Sit down, Mrs. Espina, or I’ll hold you in contempt! Bailiff!” the judge fired back, because hey, what’s a blanket threat when I’ve already been convicted? Bailiffs standing against the wall took one step forward in a languid attempt to hold her back from the first lunge at me. She managed to knock papers and glasses of water over, spilling the liquid on my lawyer in her effort to hit and slap me. I knew better than to touch her when the judge slammed his gavel down repeatedly urging those lazy guards to break it up. She got lose able to reach me and my cheek rung with the violence of her backhand. I nearly toppled from my chair, my shoulder and arm up to protect me from a second strike.
Anything I did now would have been self-defense, not that this court understood that at all. After all, she was the mother of the man I’d supposedly killed almost five months earlier. Grant’s mother thought I deserved what I got. It’s kind of hard to convince the world you’re innocent when your fingerprints are all over the tire-iron that bashed his head to smithereens.
My lawyer, Zeke Walls, Esquire, is a smug shit for brains public defender who tried to grope me the last time I saw him two months ago. He promised I wouldn’t get any time for the crime. I could see he really worked hard to save me since I turned him down cold. His greasy hair looked like a puddle of motor oil, and the first time he spoke to me it was in broken Spanish. Apparently, he thought all Hispanic looking people speak Spanish. I hadn’t been back to Mexico since my grandmother died a decade earlier.
Dad insisted we become American and banned speaking it inside the house. Even my poor mother had to do without her beloved soap operas in the native tongue she loved. This farce of a trial was over and done with and this was the consequence a woman with no financial means faced when nobody gave a shit. My parents brought me here as a precocious three-year-old, enrolling me in every state funded program they could until I got my citizenship while they worked four jobs between them. All that effort wasted because it was obvious I would never be treated equally. The irony wasn’t lost me.
Lies.
All of it had been lies, and now I was on my way to a woman’s prison that would make the television show look like the Hilton. My tender ass would be fucked six ways to Sunday, no doubt about it, as my county cellmate often remarked cruelly.
The judge, a man in his seventies who’d likely heard and seen it all gave me one last look before taking in the negative shake of my head. The uncontrollable cries from Grant’s mother echoed as she fought the restraining guards waiting for the formal sentence.
“Very well Ms. Cruz, you are now property of the state of Texas, and will be given an inmate identification number upon your intake at the Colby Meyers Unit.” I mean, really, what could I have said? Thanks for letting her not kill me? Thanks for assigning me the public defender who barely graduated law school with pot dust and cocaine under his nose, but still ended up with a law degree to practice? Yeah, thanks were wasted around here.
The bailiff came and clasped a large hand around my arm, pinching the lean muscle to bone, leading me away through a set of reinforced metal doors to a holding cell. Mr. Wells followed behind me, crudely adjusting his cock more than once looking me over. He shoved wet papers into his briefcase, as he smoothed down his stained jacket and crooked tie.
He shuffled my file around on the holding cell table, making small talk. They gave me a new set of clothes to change into and a paper bag for my belongings that would transfer with me. Orange and black block letters identified me as an inmate of the Texas prison system. The next four years and eight months—if I was lucky—were sure to be a blast.
My period was due to come, and I was afraid to ask Zeke the Creep about getting a box of tampons or pads; heck–I’d take anything sanitary or rolled up toilet paper like I had the past four months in county. I figured if I bled everywhere, maybe the guards would take me to the medical unit and out of my crowded bunk room with strange new roommates. I learned pretty quickly I was more alone inside here than I ever was on my own outside.
More paperwork was filled out and my stomach cramped waiting for the first, but probably not the last, drop of my blood to be spilled. My skin felt tight, and my mind was jumpy while waiting and handcuffed to a hard bench seat. I wondered what would happen to the alley cats I fed scraps and dry bits to behind my shitty apartment building while I was gone. Who would fill in at the bar where I waitressed? How would I finish my college courses behind bars? My mind was going to have a lot of free time to wonder and wait. I leaned my head back against the window, likely the last time I’d be this close to the outside world as I breathed the hot humid air through the cramping pain that threatened to bend my body to the floor. Right now, I would have taken anything for a c
hance at oblivion, but an over-the-counter pain reliever would have graciously fit the bill.
My thoughts were interrupted when a woman with long, ropey dreadlocks sat down across from me. “Hey, so what the fuck you do, chiquita?”
Dark brows slashed her forehead while a colorful tattoo peppered her neck against smooth ebony skin. She was a contradiction in beauty and rough patches that made her unapproachable at first glance. Taking a breath, I thought about my answer, there was another woman on the bus. She was quiet, eye fucking me up and down as I’d heard other county inmates describe the particular look. A shiver coursed through me wondering what had her looking so pissed. I wondered if the rumor that Grant’s mother had paid someone inside to get me was true or another scare tactic to torture me.
Nervously I pushed the thoughts down breaking eye contact. I was a prison virgin. Shit, I’d never even had a parking ticket prior to this. I’d heard the stories in county lock-up after my initial arrest. Apparently, because my parents had immigrated here, I had been a flight risk for the border, and there was no one who would pay the bond and guarantee I wouldn’t flee when given the chance. As if I had any desire to go back to a country I didn’t know and meant nothing to me. I knew what would happen to a girl like me, and I was not looking to become some woman’s prison bitch or anyone’s bitch for that matter.
I turned, looking her in the eyes, trying to not shake as I let the words slip from between my dry chapped lips. “I killed a man.”
Not really, but once the words left my mouth and I watched her eyes widen a fraction, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders. I could have been honest, said it was all a mistake and that I’d been shawshanked, but that hadn’t won me any favors so far. Maybe I could use the charge to look tough and save my ass from a pounding.