There’s nothing innocent about what those cops are doing. Corruption runs deep in our part of the Bronx, and I know that this means trouble. And if they’re already going after Serena, that means they really aren’t going to leave us alone.
Even if I try to stay out of trouble in here, they’re not going to leave Serena alone. Trueba’s words ring in my ears truer than ever. If it were only me, it would be one thing... but this is more than just me. This is more than just the mafia. This is the one I love, the one good thing through all this misery.
This is Serena. And there’s nothing I can do from inside this place.
I read over the letter one more time, and I crumple it in my hand. My jaw is set, and my eyes are resolute. Trueba looks at me with a concerned face. “You alright, man? What’s on your mind?”
I look back at him, but I don’t answer, because I know exactly what I need to do. I have no other option.
I have to break out. Soon.
BRUNO
I got one letter out to Nico. One letter encoded with brief but specific instructions. A little time later, I got one back confirming that he got my message. Nothing more. A prison break has to be organized, detailed, coordinated, and needs a lot of planning.
Those aren’t luxuries I have. All I can do is make sure I can come through on my end and hope that everything else falls into place.
And today is the day. But I have one hurdle to get over before then.
I’m being led down the dreary halls of the prison to an interrogation room that I’ve been to many times before. My face is stony. If you show any emotion going into these types of meetings, the people around you start to suspect you of talking to the police.
Not that it will matter after today. My biggest worry in this meeting will be resisting the urge to tear the interrogator apart.
My hands are cuffed in front of me. Two guards march me forward, and as we approach the door at the end of the hall, another guard opens it and lets us in. They sit me down at a simple table in the gray, depressing room with nothing but a light hanging from the ceiling and a one-way mirror on the wall in front of me. Once I’m seated, the guards leave, and I’m left alone.
Time passes. He’s keeping me waiting, trying to let my thoughts eat at me before he takes his shots. It’s never worked with me before, and it won’t work with me now. I don’t talk to police.
Least of all Will Price.
After what feels like an hour, the door swings open, and he strides in, hawkish eyes watching me with smug satisfaction.
“Good morning, Bruno,” he says candidly, as if we were good buddies meeting up for a beer. I glare at him.
He pulls a chair out and takes a seat, beaming at me, showing off lively energy. Price has seen a lot of me over the past couple of years. I haven’t given him a word, but that doesn’t stop him.
The worst thing about seeing this pig all this time, though, is that I’ve seen him doing better for himself, watched him grow happier, more confident, and more wealthy. When you’re a child, you’re told that the worst people in the world always get what they deserve.
I always knew that was a lie, but Price is living proof.
“It’s been a bit since I saw you last,” he says, opening a folder in front of him and thumbing through a few pages idly. “Sounds like you’ve had a busy week.” His eyes flit up to me, watching me for a reaction. “Two fights for a guy who says he just wants to keep to himself tells me something’s up.”
My stony stare doesn’t shift. I might as well be a statue. Anything I say would just be fuel for him. He lives for shit like this.
After a moment of silence, he gives a thin smile and says, “You don’t need me to tell you this is one of the most violent prisons in the country, Lomaglio. And so I hope I don’t have to tell you that when the inmates cooperate with us in getting that violence under control, we’re a lot more willing to help them out in turn.”
He’s lying. The last prisoner Price got to start ratting to him got hauled off to solitary and locked away in there when the other prisoners caught on and stopped talking to him. Price is cold. He doesn’t keep friends.
When I don’t reply, Price leans forward, dropping some of the pretense of being polite. “Are you worried about them, Bruno?” he asks. “This report says the men you attacked have gang connections outside the prison. You know this is my ballpark, Bruno, I can help you out here. I just need you to help me first.”
Prisoners get desperate, and this kind of talk sways many of them. But I can smell the threat through his words. I say nothing.
“You’re kind of a puzzle, Bruno,” he says, sitting back in his seat and looking through his files again. “You do more for the Costa crime family than just about anyone I’ve seen in, god, ten years. But if what the warden’s telling me is right, you’re practically a ghost in here. What happened? Costa’s been busy since you’ve been in here—why aren’t you on speaking terms anymore?”
That much is true. Nico has been my only point of contact with my old comrades, save for the other Costas in here with me, and we hardly talk. When we do, it’s never about business. I’m not in here to be a pawn for anyone. Price glares back into my eyes before he crosses the line he’s been dying to cross this whole time.
“Is this about Serena?”
Just hearing him say her name makes me furious. He doesn’t deserve to speak it.
“That’s understandable,” he says, leaning forward in his seat, “a lot of inmates worry about their loved ones while they’re inside.” He smiles an empty smile. “Well, I can promise you, she’s fine. I saw her just the other day, in fact.”
I can’t control myself, not in the face of such a blatant threat.
“This is between us, you coward,” I growl, even as his smile splits into a grin. “Keep it that way, if you can call yourself a man.”
“I’m sorry, what exactly am I keeping between us?” he asks, a mocking tone to his voice. Speaking at all was a mistake. I clench my fist and sit back in my chair, narrowing my eyes at him. “I’m just doing my job, Bruno, you need to understand that. You’re a high-profile offender, and you obviously have some enemies around here,” he says, taking out photos of the men I’ve fought over the past few days and setting them on the table.
“Then why don’t you tell the cameras why you’re stalking some woman?” I say, nodding up to the camera in the corner of the room, hanging from the ceiling. These meetings are always recorded, and I’m sure he has a recorder on him to capture our conversation in case I say anything incriminating.
“I’m not stalking anyone,” he says, half-laughing. “Bruno, I don’t have to remind you that Miss De Laurentis has mafia connections of her own. Quite a complicated past, in fact,” he says, crossing his legs and folding his hands. “That’s all in the past, of course, but as you know better than anyone, the past can come back to bite you.”
My fists are tight, but I say nothing.
“It’s in the interests of her safety that I keep an eye on her,” he says, dropping his tone to a still, chilling one. “Just like it’s in your interests to help me. Look, Bruno, if I’m flying blind here for too long…”
He takes back the photos and closes his folder, standing up from his chair. “... then I can’t guarantee that the people who want to hurt you won’t make life hard for her on the outside.”
“Don’t threaten me, Price,” I say in a low tone. He smiles back at me, but my eyes bore into him, memorizing every detail of his face, as if it isn’t already seared into my memory. I’m going to make him pay for this. And I’ll make him remember me.
“I don’t make threats, Bruno,” he says as he turns his back on me to leave the room, his voice dripping with smug satisfaction “I’m just doing my job.”
Back in my cell later that night, I’m reading over the letters Serena sent me one more time.
Trueba is over on his bed, hands folded on his stomach. His eyes are on me, but he knows to give me space right now. My hands
go over some of the words that Serena scribbled out on her letters, places where she tested her pen with little squiggles of ink.
It’s the imperfections that remind me most of all that she’s still out there, the same Serena, the same face, the same person I fell in love with. And it’s all for her that I’m doing this.
I might not make it out of this alive. And if I don’t, I want her words to be the last things in my mind.
“You’re sure you’re willing to do this?” I ask Trueba once I’ve finished reading and I tuck all the letters back under the bed. I’m speaking quietly enough that nobody can hear us outside our cell, and I don’t look over at him when I do speak.
We have a plan, and we can’t look suspicious on camera for this to have any hope of working.
“I’m an old man, Bruno,” he says, and I can hear how tired his voice is. “I hardly leave my cell as it is. Some time in solitary will give me room to think. Maybe pray, I don’t know yet.”
“It has to look real,” I say. We’ve gone over the plan before, but I’m not taking any chances.
“It’ll be real,” he says.
Sterling Correctional Facility is on a small island just off the coast, one long bridge connecting it to the mainland. There’s some woodland on the island, then nothing but icy waters and a couple other smaller islands not far off, all of them uninhabited and off-limits to the public. This prison feels as remote as it can, despite being so close to the city.
Nobody could make it through those woods on the island without getting picked up by the patrols, and they sure as hell couldn’t hide out there. That means there is only one way off the island: the bridge.
And the only way a prisoner can get taken over that bridge is in the back of a police car... or in an ambulance.
The prison has its own medical wing, but they can’t handle anything more than basic injuries. The news has been criticizing the prison for years, but they haven’t lifted a finger. Even the guy I fought in the bathroom had to be driven to Emerson Hospital on the mainland, just a block away from the other side of the bridge.
The matter of me getting a serious injury is where Trueba comes in.
“Alright,” I say, flexing my fists as Trueba swings his legs over to stand up. “Showtime.”
“You wanna say that again, you Italian son of a bitch?” Trueba says loudly, strutting in the cell in the way the young men do when they’re about to start a fight.
“I said you East Harlem fuckers are a dime a dozen,” I snap back, standing up myself. Despite his age, Trueba is a tall guy, and he’s got muscle under that fat. It doesn’t look too out of character for a guy like him to square up with me. “I’ve fought punching bags with more fight than you chickenshits—no wonder the Cleaners moved into our turf!”
“You wanna see a punching bag, my friend?” he snarls, and he starts forward at me, pushing me in the chest with a firm hand. I barely budge, swatting his arm away, but then he reaches behind his shirt.
He pulls out a shank.
For an old guy, he moves fast. He brings the shiv around, and I brace myself. The pointed tip cuts through my hardened muscles and sinks into me, deep.
We’ve both been around violence long enough to know what wounds will cause some damage without killing a man, but that doesn’t make it any less tricky to pull off and make it look real. The pain is the least of my worries.
I act like I’ve been taken off-guard and let out a grunt of pain. When he pulls the shank out and stabs it in again, I can already hear the boots of guards on the ground. We don’t have much time.
I move as if trying to defend myself, but Trueba pops me in the nose with a quick, solid jab before he grabs hold of my shirt and drives the shank in again, and again, and again. I lose track of the stab wounds I’m getting, but the pain is incredible.
The last thing I see before falling to the ground are the prisoners across from us staring wide-eyed while guards appear at the door, getting it open and shouting to each other to call an ambulance.
Trueba gets one last good stab into me before three guards wrestle him off, pepper-spraying him in the eyes as he cries out in pain and gets tackled to the ground.
I’ve let myself take more of a stabbing than I got in some of the real fights with the Cleaners. My torso is on fire, and as I cover my wounds with my hands, I feel warm blood pouring from them.
In the confusion, I can hardly tell what’s happening around me through the pain of the stab wounds. More guards come in. I think Trueba gets taken out, and when paramedics arrive, I hear bits of them shouting to one another: multiple stab wounds. Losing blood fast. Needs attention, stat.
Then come the golden words: “Get him to Emerson, now!”
I feel a twinge of pain in my side, and I have to fight to stay conscious as I’m loaded onto a stretcher.
What happens over the next few minutes is a blur. I feel myself getting rushed down some hallways in the prison. I try to move my arm, and I feel a clink of resistance. I manage to turn my eyes down to my hand, and I see it both covered in blood and handcuffed to the stretcher. There’s some first-aid bandaging applied to my torso for the trip.
Fuck, I have to stay awake.
For a moment, I feel fresh air on my skin, the cool night breeze on the hot blood staining my clothes when they roll me across asphalt. I see the top of the ambulance above me as I’m loaded up into it.
I feel my body contracting, pain almost unbearable. It’s like fire in my stomach. Just as much as Trueba was taking a risk in doing something like this for me, I knew I was taking a risk. There’s no really safe way to get stabbed in the gut.
But this is my one shot. No matter how much pain I go through, no matter how much blood I lose, it’s worth it for Serena. The words of her letters are in my thoughts when I hear the ambulance doors close, and the engine starts.
I can make out the paramedics above me, saying things I can’t quite make out to each other before hooking me up to machines. I feel a needle go into my wrist, and a few moments later, I feel warmth rushing up my arm and into my whole body.
It’s morphine. The pain starts to subside, and I let out a deep breath in relief as it gets into every part of me. I hate drugs, but if Nico pulls through for me, that morphine is going to be the only thing that keeps me going for what comes next.
And with the way things are going, I can only hope that Nico can pull through for me.
I can’t tell where we are or how close we are to the end of the bridge. Now that I have something keeping the pain at bay, though, I don’t feel like I’m about to drift into blackness anymore. I look down at my wounds, or try to. I can’t see my bare flesh, so I can’t see whether any of the shanks missed their mark and hit something vital.
If they did, I’m in trouble. No time to worry now, though.
“Jesus, who’d this guy piss off?” one of the paramedics mutters to the other.
“Wouldn’t wanna meet the guy who’d pick a fight with this beast,” he muses, checking something on a machine before turning to me. “How you doin’, buddy? Try to stay awake, you should be feeling the good stuff right about now.”
I give him a weary smile and lift my thumb.
The next moment, the whole ambulance lurches forward, then to the side as the vehicle comes screeching to a halt.
“What the fuck?” one of the medics cries, turning to the window to the driver. “Hey, what’s going on?!”
“Fucking Christ, they’ve got guns,” the driver says, and I see him raising his hands over his head. There’s shouting outside.
One of the voices is Nico’s.
“Hey,” I say to the medics, who look from the road to me, wide-eyed. “You two seem alright. Keep your heads down and do what they say.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” one of them says, but the back of the ambulance opens, and I look up to see Nico flanked by two other Costa boys with guns raised.
“Alright!” he shouts, stepping forward as the medics put their hands
up. “I want his cuffs off now! Make this easy on us, we’ll make it easy on you, let’s go!”
The medics comply, and in a matter of seconds, Nico is unhooking me from the machines and helping me down from the ambulance while the other men hold guns on them, moving up to get them to their knees and handcuff them there. The paramedics in prisons are trained to deal with violence, but they know when they’re outgunned.
And none of them were expecting to be held up at the prison’s doorstep by four cars full of mob enforcers armed to the teeth. Hell, I wasn’t even expecting Nico to bring that kind of firepower.
“You good, man? Holy shit, what happened?” Nico says as we step onto the street. I can’t describe the feeling the moment my feet touch the ground.
Free ground.
I breathe the night air in, and I smile at him. “Ran into a friend’s knife... a few times. I’ll be alright.”
“Not if you don’t get help,” Nico says, “you look fucked up, man! Come on, forget the next part of the plan—let’s get you into the car and go see one of our docs.”
“No,” I say firmly. “Someone will find me.”
“But-”
“Nico, we’ve got about a minute before this block is crawling with feds. You need to move, and fast. We’re going through with the plan, the whole way.”
“There’s no way, Bruno,” Nico says, looking at me like I’m insane. And maybe I am. I haven’t tasted freedom in two years, and it’s almost as strong a drug as the morphine in my veins. “You’ll die out there.”
“Nico,” I say, clasping his hand and giving a cocky smile. “I owe you more for this than I’ve ever owed anyone in my life. But now’s not the time. Remember what we planned, and get your ass out of here, got it?”
Nico frowns, then shakes his head with a laugh. “Shit, man, you beefed up, but you haven’t changed at all, have you?”
“I had something good to keep my mind on,” I say as I part from him, walking away.
I’m walking toward the coast.
Back toward Sterling.
Bound to the Mafia (Bound to the Bad Boy Book 2) Page 9