Playing cards were dealt, checked, folded, swiped off the table in front of me. Three of clubs. Ten of diamonds. The queen of hearts blinked at me, morphing into a jack of spades. I rubbed the corner of my eyes and tried to focus. I couldn’t lose this game.

I didn’t normally gamble—I could go to SHU for it, and that’d be getting off easy. I didn’t want to owe anyone anything in here, least of all money. Lately, I needed more and more ways to burn off my nervous energy, though. Working outdoors eight hours wasn’t cutting it. I hadn’t slept more than three hours a night since reading my dad’s letter earlier in the week.

Some men shouted at the fight on TV, then at each other.

I slid three brown M&M’s into the middle of the table. “Raise.”

Officer Ludwig sauntered into the room belly first. “Hey,” he said, circling the couch to block the TV. “Settle down.”

It was the worst thing he could say. Shut the fuck up would’ve been better. At least that was man to man. Settle down was for disruptive elementary kids.

Ludwig turned his back to leave the room.

“Sorry, Lovedicks,” one of the guys watching TV said.

He looked back, his jiggly jaw tense. “It’s Ludwig.”

“That’s what we said.” Wills spoke from next to me. It was what nobody said. We all called him Lovedicks behind his back. He sometimes took it up the ass from inmates, even though he had access to outside pussy.

I glared at Wills for getting involved. “Don’t be an idiot.”

Like a predator picking up a scent, Ludwig prowled toward our table, hand on his holster. “You girls gambling?”

Sweat dripped down my temples. I wiped it away with my sleeve. “No, sir.”

“Just enjoying some Go Fish and chocolate,” Hendricks said from across the table, adding a lisp that made the guys snicker.

“You think I’m dumb?” the CO asked. “Can’t tell a game of poker when I see one?”

“You wouldn’t know a real game of poker if it poked you in the eye,” Puentes said. He’d been transferred here for having his men on the outside kill a guard in his home. “Like Hendricks’s dick did to you last night.”

The mocking only ticked Lovedicks off more. He hated that we all knew his taste for cock, but it didn’t bother him enough to stop. He jabbed his baton into Hendricks’s shoulder. “He’s dreaming if he said that.”

“So I guess that white stuff in the corner of ya mouth is mayo,” Wills said.

Lovedicks slammed his baton on our table, scattering M&M’s. “Shut up, or I’ll call lights-out early.”

The guys never learned. They just liked to start shit, even though the guards always won—no matter their size, disposition, or rank on the ladder. My knee bounced under the table. It wasn’t nerves—I had a good hand. It was the fact that it was always a million fucking degrees in this place.

CO Jameson came into the room, her brown ponytail swinging like a horse’s mane. “Everything okay in here?”

Lovedicks retreated to lean against the nearest wall, but he kept his eyes on us.

Jameson scanned the room and met my eyes. “You good, Sutter? Sweating through your scrubs there.”

“Fine. Just hot.” Jameson was the only guard I sometimes talked to. She was my age, still wanted to help around here. I hoped she’d wise up and get out of this place soon, just not before I did.

“Go Fish, cabrón,” Puentes hurried me along.

“Trout.” I matched Puentes’s bet with the code word for call. Goldfish meant money, Betta was all in, and chum signaled you were out.

“You ever get on top?” Wills asked Lovedicks but continued before he could respond, “Nah, never mind. You’re not the type.”

“Why, you interested?” Lovedicks asked. “I wouldn’t shove my baton up your ass, even if you begged.”

Wills stood up, his temples going veiny. “Beg? Me? You think I got to beg for anything? I don’t beg for shit, lardass.”

“Sit your ass down, con,” Lovedicks said.

“Yeah, sit the fuck down,” I said, “and trout or chum so I can wipe the floor with your ass, get my goldfish, and go to sleep.”

“Sutter’s gotta go jerk it to his blondes,” Lovedicks said.

I ignored him, motioning for Wills to play his hand or fold.

“Blondes?” Wills asked. “He got more than one?”

“Yeah, you haven’t seen the other one?” Lovedicks asked. “Blonde, sweet-looking thing, barely-legal pussy. She’s come by a couple times, trying to sneak in and see him.”

Every muscle in my body locked up. I didn’t even think her name, didn’t picture her so they couldn’t read my thoughts. She’d come around? Looking for me? I didn’t want her within a hundred miles of this place. The card under my thumb creased down the middle.

“Tsk, tsk,” Wills said to me. “You been holding out on us, Sutter?”

My pulse pounded against my temples. She’s seventeen. Seventeen. I would’ve told them that to shut them up except that it’d only make things worse. These fuckers would have no problem beating off to a seventeen-year-old and some of them were probably pedophiles like my dad.

Pedophile.

It was the first time I’d associated him with the word. What made me different from him? From them? I’d put my hands on Lake when she was sixteen, and I’d wanted to do a hell of a lot more than that. Her face flashed across my mind, and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to erase her from this shithole.

“Legs for miles,” Lovedicks continued. “Blonde hair past her tits. Just like Manning’s girl, but younger. Sweeter.”

“Shut—” I wheezed, my chest too tight. “Shut the fuck up.”

“What’re you gonna do, make me? You can’t do shit.” Lovedicks rounded the table, prodding the middle of my back with his baton. “Pussy that good can’t be off limits. The little bitch is straight from heaven.”

My hands shook so hard imagining Lake in the same room as Ludwig, I dropped my cards. She was too good to be talked about that way. “Stop.” I wasn’t sure if I was commanding myself or him. “Stop.”

Jameson had moved away to watch the fight, but she looked over. “Let up, CO.”

“Don’t you know?” Wills said. “Manning don’t like pussy. He’s a closet fag.”

“Come on, Sutter,” Hendricks said. “Plenty of us were in your shoes once. Trust me, the sooner you give in, the sooner we’ll get you loosened up.”

Wills knew I’d never turn, but some days, out of boredom, he went on benders, trying to get me to explode. “I told you a thousand times—my girl’s off limits.”

“I’m not talking about your girl,” Lovedicks said. “Talking about the other one. What’s it, her little sister? When’s the last time you saw her? Skinny little thing, but I’ll bet she didn’t have any tits back when you knew her.”

Time slowed. The fluorescent lights above flooded the room, turning the walls that’d held me inside for months blindingly white. Words, not truths. They want you to crack. Words meant to instigate. That was what I told myself when the guys dug in, but still, I found myself standing, my rage too big to sit on.

“You ever tasted that sweet, young cunt?” he asked.

My self-control slipped. Images that’d haunted me for days flooded in. My dad alone in the house with Madison. Lake stripping off her shirt in the lake. I hadn’t told her to stop, because I’d liked it. I’d been weak. Lake floating on her back, all breasts, pink mouth, and hair. Who knew how many nights I’d slept in the room next to Madison’s while he’d been in there?

“You should’ve seen her crying and begging the guards to let her in,” Ludwig went on. “She nearly got on her knees. Maybe if she had, they would’ve—”

When I grabbed one end of the baton, Ludwig’s mouth and eyes popped open. Instinctively, he pulled back, but I was stronger. I yanked it away from him and vaulted toward him. This wasn’t some girl they were talking about—it was Lake, my Lake who’d never be mine, an angel who’d never look over the likes of me. I saw red, and my dad’s revolting face, and then I saw black, nothing but rage. I threw the baton, and it hit a wall with a sickening thud. I’d kill this sick fuck with my bare hands.

“Holy shit,” someone said.

“Stand down, inmate,” Jameson called.

I had Ludwig by the neck. “You like little girls?” I slammed him up against the wall. “You think you’re untouchable?” I squeezed with all my strength. People pulled at my shoulders but my grip tightened and tightened, Ludwig’s blubbery face flushing purple as his eyes bulged out of their sockets.

Any will to fight drained out of him. There was just fear there, and it spurred me on. He deserved to be shitting himself for calling her what he had, for being a monster, for thinking he could get away with it, for having the nerve to ask forgiveness.

People tried to get between us, to drag me to the ground. I’d wanted to be like Ludwig once—to serve and protect those who couldn’t do it for themselves, but My dad was a pussy and a coward and I came from him. I could be just as menacing.

I let Ludwig go only to smash my fist into his face, jerk his chin forward again and clock him right in the nose so the back of his head hit the wall.

A riot had begun behind me and in a matter of seconds, I was on the floor, covering my head as a baton landed on my bicep, my hip and back. Ludwig sank down against the wall, wheezing, trying to communicate to the other guards, bloodied . . . but alive.

Steel-toed boots socked me right in the gut, then my face. The back of my skull cracked against the same wall I’d just had Ludwig up against and it all went black.