Shank

Before

So, the kid wasn’t good at math. I didn’t see that as a problem because his old man wasn’t good at it either. At his age, the only things I’d cared about were how many milligrams of oxy I was transporting and how long of a prison sentence I would get if I got caught.

What the kid was really leading to was how I’d gotten his mother pregnant, especially since I’d been with Toy at the time.

I was sure he didn’t know the whole story, and the version he’d been told was toned down.

I had no problem with telling him the truth. I just didn’t know if he could handle it. Even Toy had had a hard time with it, and Toy had handled almost all of my shit. But, when everything with Tyler had gone down, Toy had started using more and mixing drugs to get a stronger high.

Eventually, he’d OD’d.

Regardless, if the kid wanted an answer, I’d give him one.

Not the basics. He’d get every goddamn detail.

Some of the inmates in here, the ones who had found God, would get on their knees right now and pray. With their fingers clasped and their eyes closed, they’d ask that their written confession be forgiven. For it not to ruin the relationship with their child.

I wasn’t like my fellow inmates.

I’d done nothing wrong.

Still, I couldn’t help but laugh as I looked down at my lap. The hand that had wrapped around his mother’s throat was the same one that was going to write him a letter, explaining how he had been conceived. Now, that was fucking irony.

To tell that story, kid, I would have to back up a bunch of years, so you could hear it all from the beginning.

You see, your mother was part of an organization called The Achurdy. The Achurdy found girls—hot ones, like Tyler—to target wealthy men with high limits on their credit cards. The girls would get these men all doped up and bring them to an underground auction where they’d get them to spend thousands. The girls would get a healthy cut, the men would be driven home, and The Achurdy would make bank. So, your mother was nothing more than a high-end con-artist whore.

For the girls, there was one crucial rule that they couldn’t break. Breaking it would cost them their lives.

There was no dating outside the organization.

Tyler, that cunt, didn’t listen, and she broke the rule with Beard.

They’d met while Beard was back home in San Diego. Fucking Beard couldn’t get enough of her, and he returned to the States every chance he got, so he could spend time with her. He didn’t know she was in The Achurdy, nor did he know the deer skull she had tattooed on her finger was the way they branded their girls.

But I knew.

My father had been selling drugs to The Achurdy for a long time. And, once we’d opened the prison, they’d hired us to get rid of the girls who were caught breaking their rules. Some had tried to run off, some had gotten pregnant, and some were just fucking weak and needed to die.

Beard didn’t like killing women, so when The Achurdy girls came in, I was the one who got to play, relentlessly torturing them, listening to them scream until I couldn’t take another second, and I ripped out their tongues.

Beard never saw the girls come in, never laid his hands on them, so he didn’t make the connection with Tyler’s tattoo. But Beard knew she was into some shit. Hell, she wasn’t able to see him that often. She couldn’t spend the night at his place, and he wasn’t allowed at hers. You’d think he would have pushed your mother to find out what she was into. He didn’t.

Dumb motherfucker.

But that was my boy, always leading with his heart. Always letting pussy determine his next move. Always letting women turn him weak.

When I found out your mother was part of The Achurdy, I didn’t tell Beard. There was no use. Nothing would have changed had he known. A girl like her, involved in something that deep, couldn’t maintain a double life for too long. So, I listened to Beard talk about her non-fucking-stop, and I waited for it all to crash.

It happened quicker than I’d thought.

One night, after a short trip home, Beard returned to the prison, completely strung out. His clothes were covered in blood. He was crying, and he wouldn’t stop shouting. I’d never seen him that way. He hadn’t even been that emotional when his mother was missing for months.

Diego and I made him talk, and it took hours for him to get it all out. We eventually learned that he’d found your mother dead. She’d slit her wrists inside his apartment. She’d left a note and arranged for some dude to pick her up and everything.

It all sounded far too orchestrated.

With running my father’s drugs, I’d been around shady my whole life. I knew how people schemed and fucking weaseled their way out of things, and most of the time, I caught them.

Tyler’s suicide felt so fake to me. Why the hell would she want the man who loved her to find her dead? She could have just sent Beard a text and killed herself at home. But, at his place, even scheduling someone to pick up her body? Now, that felt staged.

My theory was that she needed Beard to see her dead, so he wouldn’t go looking for her. And, until I was shown proof, she was still very alive in my mind.

I didn’t tell Beard that.

Instead, I hired a guy my father used back at home when he needed to find someone who had disappeared off the radar. It only took a few weeks before the PI located her. She had moved to the East Coast in a place that she paid for in cash. That part didn’t interest me as much as the tiny belly she had.

That cunt was pregnant with Beard’s kid.

But, if The Achurdy had found that out, they would have sent her to my prison. She didn’t know that. She just knew some of her coworkers had gone missing, and she never heard from them again. So, your mother was faced with a decision—have an abortion or fake her own death.

Too bad I was smarter than her.

Smarter than Beard, too.

That fucker really thought she was gone. He cried about her cold body and her dead eyes and how she had been silent when he tried to shake her back alive.

He’d always been weak.

Your mother made him weaker.

And she made him soft.

He was hurting so fucking badly because of her.

I was going to make sure that cunt never got near him again.

Then, some way, I’d crawl into the drug hole that Beard had fallen into, and I’d drag his ass out.

“Prisoner,” someone barked into my cell.

I looked up from the letter, and there was a guard standing in front of me on the other side of the bars. He was the one with the good-tasting cum.

“What?”

“It’s time for your shower.”

“I had one this—”

“Is that back talk, I hear?” His mouth moved between the iron rods, and the yelling caused his skin to turn red. “Showers are a privilege that I can easily take away. Is that what you want? To rot in this fucking cell with the smelliest balls in this prison?”

He wanted his cock sucked.

I understood the message.

And that was what this prison life was all about—working for privileges, ones that made life in here a little more bearable. Still, all this asshole had had to do was ask, and I would have put his perfect dick in my mouth, swiveling my tongue around the tip until his cum burst through the tiny hole.

His theatrics weren’t needed.

“Let me put my things away,” I told him. “I just need a minute.”

“That’s a better answer.”

I turned my back to him and quickly finished the letter.

All I had to do was kidnap your mother before anyone else found her.

It wasn’t hard.

At that time, I was the only one looking for her.

I got her, kid.

And I gave her a gift.

You.

I tossed the letter into an envelope, swiping my tongue over the glue to seal it just in case someone came into my cell while I was gone. Whenever I got back from the shower, I’d put his address on the front and stick it in the morning mail.

I’d barely touched on the story.

And I hadn’t even gotten to the good part.

“Let’s fucking go!” the guard screamed.

I’d have to continue it another time.

I turned around and stuck my hands through the opening, so the guard could put me in cuffs.

Then, he yanked my back against the bars and whispered, “My cock is tired of waiting for you.”

I smiled to myself. I loved it when I was right.