Page 2 of Runaway Queen

“Laugh now, bitch.”

So, I did.

The pain was nothing to write home about. It barely registered. I lifted my hand. The shiv hadn’t penetrated that far, bouncing off the metal of the table. Now, I held my hand up before Ramirez, my smirk still firmly in place.

“Come on, Joey, it’s like you’re not even trying. Did your guard friends teach you how to play ‘just the tip?’ I prefer much, much more.”

With that, I pushed the knife further into my hand. The silence in the cafeteria was deafening. It was boring as fuck in prison, so when someone did something interesting, you drew quite the crowd.

Ramirez went pale, his eyes riveted on mine. He was clearly rethinking his life choices right now. “I’m sorry, man, I shouldn’t have done that.”

I grinned at him. “No, you probably shouldn’t have, but everyone makes mistakes, isn’t that right, Bran?”

My friend grinned widely, settling back and resting his hands behind his head. “Where are your pals now? The ones you bend over for?”

Ramirez licked his lips. “They don’t mess with thePalach.”

Bran laughed. “That’s right. They don’t. I guess they’re smarter than you.”

“It’s fine,bratan. No big deal. I don’t have scores to settle with a soon-to-be-dead man. You can go.” I gestured benevolently toward the doors, dismissing Ramirez.

The sound of the chair scraping back punctuated the silence.

I glanced down at my plate, under my dripping hand, and sudden annoyance flickered through my broken mind. My other fist banged on the table. Ramirez froze, glancing fearfully at me.

“That being said, I wasn’t done eating, and now it’s ruined.” With a fluid motion, I pulled the shiv from my hand and swept the plastic plate with the blood-spattered mash onto the floor, standing to tower over Ramirez.

“That’s unforgiveable.” Bran stood beside me. “Mash Wednesdays are his favorite.”

There was a gathering tension in the air, like the crack of electricity before a storm.

“What game are you in the mood for today, brother?” I aimed the question at Bran, although my eyes never left Ramirez.

“Hmm, maybe whack-a-mole?” Bran laughed and picked his tray up, just as another inmate, an idiot who’d just arrived the day before and was poor at reading the room, wandered past.

Bran cracked him over the head with the tray, a signal for all hell to break loose.

I launched myself at Ramirez when he tried to turn and run. The lunchroom exploded in thrown food, followed by punches. Blood spattered across the tiles, and the sound of screams and an alarm blaring in the distance was a comforting lullaby for my fractured mind. Prison might smell like shit, but sometimes, it was entertaining as hell.

* * *

The manin cell 3H actually slept with a stuffed animal. I had no idea what psychiatrist had fought for him to have it, considering who he was and what he’d done, but I had half a mind to put them on my shit list as well. The list of people who needed killing when I got out of here grew longer day by day.

He barely made a peep when we took him. I watched my men carry him out of the cell. It was dark, and the guard shift change was purposefully delayed. Bran hadn’t even had to twist their arm that hard. No matter what kind of man you are, if you have even a scrap of humanity in you, you didn’t mind turning a blind eye to some good old-fashioned justice for a man like this one.

We took him to the shower block. It was only polite to make the cleanup easier.

He whimpered when he was tossed to the floor.

“Hello, Gerald,” Bran said, approaching the cowering man. “That’s your name, isn’t it? Gerald Townsend. Local coach and do-gooder. I heard you clocked more hours of voluntary work this year than anyone else in the city. What a hero,” Bran chuckled, but there was nothing warm in his tone. “Though, I’m not sure the kids at the different foster homes you volunteered at would agree, would they?”

“I never—they lied,” he fumbled out.

Bran was quiet, and I knew he was fighting the urge to rip Gerald’s throat out.

“You’re telling me over thirty kids lied? And they all had the same details? Wow, that’s some bad luck for you, isn’t it, Gerald?”

Bran moved away, getting too worked up. I got him. Men like Gerald made me enjoy killing. I’m sure there were plenty of men like Bran and my brother, Kirill, who could be detached and unemotional, and end a man like Gerald out of necessity, so he could never hurt a child again. They’d never enjoy inflicting pain like I did. They’d never linger and watch the life drain. They didn’t have a twisting fun house of chaotic horror inside their chests like I did. The world had started its carnival spin the day I’d found out Sofia was dead, and nothing had ever had the power to stop it since. It was like being drunk, when the world blurred and your heart raced, but it never went away. The vestiges of my shattered sanity held on for dear life, as the merry-go-round spun its never-ending circles inside me.

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