Total pages in book: 74
Estimated words: 75193 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75193 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
I didn’t act like his news affected me, only kept walking and keeping my eyes in the direction of the weight machines that I was walking to.
“Yeah?” I said. “That’s cool.”
It wasn’t.
When the time came, I’d make sure Bull knew to keep his eyes open.
Not that he’d really need to be told.
The man had been doing this for a good twenty years, and he wasn’t a green trainee. He knew to keep his eyes open, and also knew not to turn his back on potential danger.
This Rick-Rack, who happened to be another shithead who was in for rape, only this one being a child, rarely saw any time at all when he wasn’t hurt.
There was a rule in prison.
You didn’t rape, and you didn’t do anything to kids. Period.
That was the reason that Jeffrey thought this was so funny. For once, it wasn’t him getting the bad end of the stick.
“Yeah,” Jeffrey confirmed. “Supposed to happen at high noon.”
Then he was gone, spreading his cheer and love to the other inmates that hated him.
I gritted my teeth and walked to the lone open weight bench, loading it up with two more plates on each side before I sat down, leaned back, and did ten reps.
“Most people work up to three hundred and twenty pounds, and sometimes never attain that goal, you start at it. Why?” Tasty wondered, bringing my attention to him.
“Work out a lot,” I lied. “Gym rat.”
He snorted.
“You get all those scars working out in the gym, too?” he persisted.
I gritted my teeth, pumping a few more reps, and then replaced the bar.
My heart was pounding, not just because of the exertion, but because Tasty was near.
I wasn’t stupid.
The man was my size, so at least six foot four in height. He was built like a brick shithouse, and could easily bench exactly what I was benching.
He may be older, in his early fifties, but he wasn’t a slacker like some of the other older inmates.
No, this guy was just as jacked as the rest of them.
Meaning he was a bigger threat than most.
And the look in his eyes didn’t really bode well.
“Got the scars from having to fight for food when I was a kid,” I murmured, purposefully being evasive.
It wasn’t totally a lie, either.
I’d been the provider for my family since I was sixteen years of age and my grandmother finally passed from her fight with cancer.
It’d been just me, Connor, and Kitt for as long as I could remember.
With Kitt being three years younger than me, she hadn’t been able to do much more than watch herself.
Connor was just a dickhead who didn’t help because he couldn’t be bothered to.
That didn’t stop him from helping himself to whatever was available though, and damning everybody else in the meantime.
“Your brother, the cop,” Tasty said.
I loaded another ten-pound weight on the bar, then waved my hand in front of the bench.
Tasty shook his head, offering the bench back to me.
I took it, acting for all I was worth like a man who could give one less of a fuck as I went about with another full set of reps.
All the while, Tasty watched me.
“What about him?” I wondered between breaths.
“I saw he didn’t have any tattoos,” he started.
I shook my head, re-racking the weights, then laughed.
“My brother’s a stuck up, uptight asshole who’d never let the ink of a needle mar his skin,” I informed him. “He’s a pussy, plain and simple. Hates my tattoos, too.”
“Is he scared of ‘em?” he asked.
My brain started to whirl as I searched for the trap, but I didn’t see it until it was way too late.
“No,” I said, hoping that was the answer he was looking for.
“Good,” he said. “You wanna go get tattooed?”
Fuck.
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
I looked over to where Tasty was pointing, and my heart almost beat out of my chest.
“You want me to get one of those…from him?” I asked, sounding slightly grossed out, but definitely not scared.
Good.
“T-low won’t hurt you…too bad,” he grinned. “This is what every man gets when they get into the big house. This is your first time in here, so I was just letting you know tradition.”
I could see where this would go if I didn’t do it.
Downhill.
So I did what I had to do.
“Fine,” I called his bluff. “Let’s do it.”
Luck was on my side, though, because the fight that Jeffrey told me about earlier suddenly broke out, leaving the area in chaos.
Thirty minutes later, Bull and I were both bleeding.
“Thanks,” Bull breathed heavily, taking a white towel that the nurse had handed him.
He placed it on his forehead, then we both watched as the nurse busied herself with the front of the room, cleaning up the mess she’d made when she’d treated both Bull and me.
“You’re welcome,” I waved him off. “Fuck, my face hurts.”