Capturing Hearts - Faleena Hopkins Page 0,16
us? We noticed you keep to yourself and we were wonderin’ if you might be lonely. Maybe you need some friends.”
I blink. He doesn’t. I glance at the three guys flanking him. I look at Antonio again. I know this little speech of his means he’s got a job for me. If I don’t do it, I’ll be headed to the infirmary the second after I close my eyes to sleep. That’s what happened to the last guy. He didn’t make it back on his own two legs.
The truth is, I’ve got no one to turn to in here, and I need a friend. He’s offering me what he considers friendship, which is really thinly veiled indentured servitude. But if I take it and join them, I might have some protection. Either way, it’s a horrible life.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Can we talk in private?” he asks, pretending like there is such a thing as privacy in here.
“Sure.” I back into the cell and he walks in, but his ghouls stay back and turn around as though faced away they can’t hear us.
Antonio lowers his voice and his chin, looking at me from underneath his eyebrows. “There’s a guy who’s not treated me with the respect I deserve.”
My chest tightens. “Yeah?”
He stares at me. After a few charged seconds, he finally says, “Yeah.”
My knuckles itch, ready to defend myself as best I can. I'm beginning to sweat and I hope he can't see. But I’d lay odds he can. “Well, this guy must be a fuckin’ moron, then.”
At this, Antonio’s eyes dance with amusement, but that could mean anything from he thinks I’m funny to he thinks I’m dead. He nods a couple times–just short, slow jerks of his head.
“He is.” It seems like hours go by before he adds, “You know Morales?”
I blink again, which pisses me off. “Lenny Morales? Yeah.”
“You know how you missed with that gun of yours?”
I don’t bother to tell him I didn’t miss, I just didn’t kill Brendan when I shot him. “Yeah.”
“Don’t miss again.” He holds my eyes with meaning, and turns to walk out, casual as can be.
“I don’t have a…” I start to say gun but he stops me.
His hand goes up and he looks at me around the over-developed mound of his shoulder. “Get creative.”
“Hey Tony, guards are comin’ this way,” one of his ghouls whispers.
“We were just leavin’,” Antonio says. “And don’t fuckin’ call me that.” He walks past the guy and the ghouls all share a look. I watch my doorway empty again, wondering how I’m going to kill a guy with my bare hands. I don’t want to do that. I’m not a murderer. I’m a thief. Yeah, I shot my ex-friend, but we’re all capable of everything given the right circumstances. It’s not like I walk around thinking of ways to take people’s lives. Their belongings, yeah. Their lives? No.
Before I have a chance to soak in exactly how screwed I really am, my doorway fills with a guard’s surly glare.
“You’ve got a visitor, Pretty Boy.” The second he says that nickname, I realize he's working with Antonio, and the sense of foreboding deepens. A frown involuntarily appears and I try to hide it before he sees he’s gotten a rise out of me, but I fail. Ignoring his slimy, victorious smile, I walk out and he follows me, headed toward Visiting. As we pass Dinon’s cage, I glance over and lock eyes with him. We’re on okay terms, which means only that we don’t want to rip each other’s throats out. He just stares back at me, not showing any sign of his thoughts.
The guard barks, “What are you staring at, Washington?”
Dinon looks away, and witnessing it, a part of me dies inside. We’re all just trained dogs.
In Visiting, I pick up the phone and watch my cousin pick up his on the other end of a bulletproof, fingerprint splotched, thick plastic window. He’s the only one who visits me ever since I spilled the beans to reduce my sentence for the shooting as my little fuck you to my father, the sonofabitch. With what the detectives found during the search of their home, it forced both of my parents to go deep into hiding. Over two hundred robberies have now been linked to us, and even more stolen property recovered that was thieved by my ancestors, dating all the way back to 1582.
The place was gutted.
I wasn’t a complete traitor with my