showed up? She was a fucking monster. She starved him, broke his arm, slammed his fingers in the car door, made him eat garbage. After all that, he was still the sweetest kid, but even if he’d been out of control, even if he was a little shit, he didn’t deserve to be treated like that. He didn’t deserve anybody hurting him, taking advantage of him. He needed help.”
Dooley shifted in his seat, crossing his arms over his chest. “The past is the past. I was a victim, too, you know. Phoebe fooled all of us,” he said. “We’re all adults now. There’s no reason for the past to be dredged up. You’re getting out, you and Nicky have…reconnected. Everybody gets to walk away happy. That’s why I’m here. I just want to make sure that you and Nicky are on the same page. He’s grown up to be a realist. He understands the ends justify the means.”
“The ends justify the means?” Cy parroted.
“You know what I mean,” Dooley spat. “The people who end up behind bars get three meals a day, a roof over their head, rec time, an education. Why shouldn’t we profit off of their labor? Why should the government have to subsidize their lives? Let’s be honest, if they weren’t in here, they’d be sucking off the welfare system. This way, everybody wins.”
“Jesus,” Cy muttered. “Listen, justify caging the poor anyway you like, but the truth is, you’re a racist, classist, piece of shit and so are they. I think this conversation is over.”
Dooley sneered at him. “This isn’t how I wanted to spend my day either. I’m just here to make sure that you’re going to play ball and keep your mouth shut like your brother. It would be a shame if he got hurt because you decided to go rogue.”
Cy clamped his teeth together until his jaw popped, forcing back the need to jump over the table and end the man who’d caused so much chaos in their young lives. “If anything happens to Nicky, your whole operation goes down,” Cy reminded him. “He’s smart. One of the smartest people I’ve ever met. He’ll always outsmart you and the people you work for.”
Dooley’s lip curled in disgust. “You think I give a tinker’s fuck about what happens to a bunch of fancy judges and politicians? Fuck ‘em. I care about saving my own ass. I have no problem putting a bullet in Nicky’s head just like I did his whore mother, and it looks to me like you’re already one appendage down. I’d hate for you to lose another. Just stick to the plan, stay out of my way, and we’ll be just fine. One big, happy family.”
Dooley stood then, signaling the guard they were finished, leaving Cy in the now empty room doing his best to control the raw, seething fury pumping through him. Dooley had cost Cy twenty fucking years of his life, but the idea of him hurting Nicky… He’d been so little. So small for his age. If it wasn’t for the cast on his hand, Cy probably would have punched something.
He hardly remembered the walk back to the day room. Once the cuffs were off, he didn’t go to his cell but to the bank of phones on the wall, finding the one farthest from anybody who might overhear the conversation.
Nicky picked up almost immediately. “Cy? What’s wrong?”
What was wrong? That was a good question. What the hell was he going to say? All he could say…was the truth. “Dooley came to see me.”
There was a long pause on the other side of the line. “What?” Nicky asked, voice raw.
“Dooley came to see me,” Cy repeated, doing his best to keep from raising his voice. None of this was Nicky’s fault.
Nicky swallowed audibly. “What… What did he want?”
“Seems like he wanted to remind me to keep my mouth shut. Wanted to make sure I was on board with your plan, I guess.” There was a sound like a chair squeaking in protest and a door shutting. Fuck. Nicky was at work. “I didn’t mean to bother you while you were working, but I just needed to talk to you, make sure you were okay.”
Once more, there was a long pause. “You’re not bothering me. You’re never bothering me…but why wouldn’t I be okay?”
That was a great question. Cy was reeling from a secret Nicky had been keeping since he was a little boy. One Cy wasn’t supposed to know