I’m in a bind.”
“How so?”
Cyrus sighed, staring as Nicky tipped his head towards the sun, closing his eyes. The other inmates noticed, too, but they kept their distance. “If I don’t do the things they want, they’ll just find somebody else who will.”
“And? Why’s that your problem? The kid cost you twenty years of your life. I get not wanting to go all eye-for-an-eye on him, but the kid’s not yours to protect.”
But he was, though. He just was. Nicky had been Cy’s to protect since the moment he laid eyes on him almost twenty-two years ago. Cy had failed him back then in every conceivable way. This was Cy’s chance to right his wrongs, to protect Nicky the way he should have done when he was a little boy. “That’s the thing, I can’t sit back and let the wolves have him.”
Preacher gave a noncommittal grunt. “Well, they smell blood in the water, friend, especially with you having hit him in the face. Thor hasn’t taken his eyes off him since we hit the yard. If you want to keep him from getting turned out in the showers, you better do something to stake your claim, or they’ll be fighting over him like the last piece of Thanksgiving pie.”
Cy dragged his gaze from Nicky to where the man in question held court, sitting on a different set of risers closer to the basketball hoops. Thor was a career criminal, a monster who’d spent his life committing all manner of depraved acts as the main enforcer of a racist biker gang, no different than the ones who’d run the small California town where Cy’s troubles started. On the inside, Thor ran the Aryan Brotherhood and most of the drug supply that came into the prison. He also liked to collect new fish and pimp them out to the other inmates. He thought of himself as an entrepreneur. The idea of Nicky being on the receiving end of that abuse made Cy want to smash something.
“How exactly do I do that without making myself the monster they keep telling me I am?”
Preacher sniffed, his gaze wandering between Thor and Nicky. “I didn’t say you wouldn’t be a monster, but you know that saying about the devil you know versus the devil you don’t? If given the opportunity, who would your boy choose? My guess would be you.”
“That doesn’t exactly make me feel better.”
“It’s not my goddamn job to make you feel better,” Preacher reminded, his tone as calm as the sea. “I’m just speaking the truth. Your boy got thrown to the wolves, and you better do something to let them know you’re the alpha or it will be open season on him. If you really give a shit about this kid, and again, I don’t know why the fuck you do, then you better make it very clear to the others to stay away or become this kid’s shadow, ‘cause the moment they get him alone, all bets are off.”
Cy kept Nicky close for the rest of the day, keeping him by his side at chow time and then inviting him to play cards with the boys until lights out. The boys ragged on Nicky about Cyrus punching him in the face, but they also seemed impressed he could take a punch from somebody Cy’s size. Nicky didn’t tell them that Cy had pulled his punch, and he felt no reason to enlighten them. The more dangerous Nicky seemed, the better. Honestly, if Nicky had the skills he said he did, it might be worthy of a show of force to keep them at bay, but that might also land Nicky in the hole with nobody to watch his back. Besides, Nicky was too new. The hole could make a newbie go crazy straight from the jump.
Once it was lights out, that was when the chaos truly began. Except, the lights never went out because inmates couldn’t be trusted in the dark. Before overcrowding, nights were almost peaceful. Cy hadn’t thought so back then, but the brick walls and steel doors had provided some level of insulation to the constant noise. Now that they were overcrowded and inmates were left free to roam the main room at night, it was overwhelming. Inmates running around the main room, slamming on doors, howling, whooping out war cries that echoed off the concrete, made it impossible to sleep for those who hadn’t learned to tune it out over the years. The guards didn’t