The man gives me one little taste of attention, and the next thing I know, I’m imagining exactly what it would be like to do the things he… told me he’d do to me.
I focus on the sound of my heels clicking on the concrete as I walk toward the exit.
I should give my resignation. I have to complete my residency, but there has to be another opening somewhere. Anywhere.
Being around Constantine will be my undoing.
Chapter 5
Constantine
Clare hustles out of the room, ringing the buzzer on her way out to let the guards know it’s time to take me back to my cell.
I’m back in gen pop now, my tedious stint in solitary at an end. I prefer the convenience of meeting with my fellow Bratva in person, accessing contraband cell phones and passing instructions with ease. The only problem is that the Irish are not going to be satisfied by our encounter in the yard. Roxy is dead. They’re going to demand my death in return, or at a bare minimum, severe physical damage. A little dustup won’t cut it—they’ll attack again.
That’s not the reason I need to get the fuck out of here, however.
I need to get out because the Irish aren’t the only ones who want revenge.
Roxy drove me fucking nuts at times. It was going to be an arranged marriage—we hadn’t dated so much as planned the alliance. How the Bratva and the Irish would share territory around Brighton Beach. How we’d supply them with access to our casinos and they’d sell their product with impunity to our gamblers, splitting the profits 50/50.
I liked Roxy. Respected her, even. But we were never in love, and she made me want to strangle her half the time. She was wild, irresponsible, forgetful, insane with money to the point where you would think she was deliberately setting it on fire. We fought constantly.
Still, I never laid a hand on her.
Punched holes in the wall, yes.
Threw a vase an inch from her ear once, after she slashed the tires on my Maserati.
But I never hurt her. Never harmed a single hair on her head. That wasn’t part of our agreement.
The night Roxy was killed is as much a mystery to me as it is to everyone else. I woke up on our bathroom floor covered in her blood, the wine bottle smashed on the tiles, my hands inches from her swollen throat.
It was the worst moment of my life. Not because of Roxy—I was sorry for her, but like I said, we were never in love.
The thing that ripped my guts out was the loss of the baby. She was only eight weeks pregnant. He was the size of my thumbnail. But I had heard his heart beating, strong and persistent inside of her.
He mattered to me in a way that nothing had before. He gave me something that almost felt like hope.
And then he died inside of her, snuffed out before I ever saw his face.
I may have blacked out, but I know I didn’t kill Roxy.
I know what I’d do and what I wouldn’t.
I’ve killed plenty of people in my life… never a single one by accident.
I never would have lost my temper to the point of losing my mind.
If I had any doubts on the topic, the speed with which my arrest and conviction was rammed through the legal system was all the additional proof I needed. DA Valencia attacked the case with an intent and ferocity that showed months of forethought. “Evidence” materialized amongst the police with detail and consistency that could not simply have been the result of a little money and a few twisted arms over a matter of days. There was planning in this. Skill. Finesse.
I was thrown in jail with an actual, solid, conviction. This was no slap-up job from the DA, designed to keep me in jail a couple of months before easily being overthrown on appeal. This guy really intends to put me away for life.
Obviously, I’m not going down without a fight.
If he thinks I’m going to rot in here, waiting for my lawyer to beat against the closed doors of the legal institution, he’s sorely fucking mistaken.
I’m getting out of DesMax.
I’m going to find out exactly who shoved me in here, and I’m going to make them fucking pay for it. Every minute I spend in this hole is going to be repaid with a gallon of blood dumped down their throats with a nozzle. They’ll fucking choke on the very idea that they thought they could put a knife in my back without even getting their hands dirty.
And most of all, they’ll pay for my son.
They think the Irish will finish me off before I can seek my revenge? I’ll fucking burn the lot of them. I liked Roxy but without our marriage happening, the alliance is shattered. I’ll blaze a path through every person who stands in my way, including the Irish.