Page 2 of Convict's Game
My brother’s throat slit or accepting the terrible deal?
I had no choice but to enter the game.
Chapter 1
Convict – several weeks earlier
Coming back from the dead was for heroes, not assholes like me.
The drip, drip, drip of my meds soaked into my dreams, mixing with flashes of flames and sirens, the only images in my otherwise empty head.
I was in a hospital bed, that much I’d worked out.
There had been a cop, then an ambulance crew, jostling my broken frame onto a stretcher. After that, a jumble of medics and needles and the numbing drug robbing me of the chance to recall who the fuck I was.
“Sharp scratch,” they told me before stabbing me again, though I never felt a thing.
That must’ve been a couple of weeks ago. I’d woken enough to catalogue my injuries. A shattered leg. A burned arm. A crack in my skull that a nurse informed me left a scar.
Maybe that’s what stole my memories. I couldn’t summon a name, and the medical bracelet on my wrist gave me nothing. ‘Roscoe Locke’ it read. If I’d ever been that man, I had no recollection of him.
Unconsciousness sent my world to black once more. I woke to nurses changing the dressings on my arm.
“Prison tattoos,” one hissed to her co-worker.
The second woman tutted. “Gang, more like.”
Agang. That felt right. I was heavy on the inkwork, from the skin that wasn’t under white bandages, including a snake that wound around my uninjured forearm, its head peeking onto my wrist. My body told my history with muscles, old scars, including on my knuckles, and so much black ink. No shit that I was bad news.
If I saw me coming down a dark alley, I’d run, too.
No wonder they were keeping me docile.
The first nurse eyed me. In her hands was a syringe of clear liquid, the shit that knocked me out each time they gave it.
“Hey,” I tried. My first word in weeks was barely a rasp. “Lay off the KO juice.”
The nurses exchanged a glance.
“Please?” I tried. “Doc said I could start making my own bad decisions again. I don’t need it.” A lie, but I had to get a clear head.
The second woman flattened her lips and spoke to her colleague. “Imagine what he’ll be like off it. Screaming the place down in an hour.”
I passed out the second the drug entered my system.
I couldn’t tell the length of time until I surfaced next, maybe hours or days, but it was to a certainty that spiked my adrenaline and stirred my broken body. I had to get out of here. Even if I crawled and dragged my busted leg behind me. Except I needed clothes. The damn cast removed.
To be off their drugs.
Bribing a medic was out of the question with zero possessions to my name. Threats could work, but I didn’t love the idea of hurting people who’d helped me, even with the side of judgement. Sweet-talking might be better.
My door swung open, and a cop entered my room, a big fucker with his hands in his pockets and a smug-as-fuck smirk on his miserable mug.
He inspected me. “Still alive, then.”
Instinct shut me up. Whoever he was, he knew me. I’d been desperate for that recognition, for one person to walk into my hospital room and ugly cry over me or say my name. But not someone like him. I didn’t know much, but I was certain cops and I weren’t on bro-hug terms.
The officer picked up my chart and perused my injuries list. “That leg will keep you out of trouble, though the turf war appears to be over for a while. A skull injury? Possible amnesia? You’re shitting me, Con—” He cut off his sentence and dropped the chart. “Amnesia. Just hilarious.”
