Gavin’s stomach knotted up. “Aryan Brotherhood?”

Gideon smiled—a teacher pleased with a slow-learning student. “Remember how they sent me up for beatin’ that spic some years back? Well, it put me in good with some mighty particular folks. They asked me to pass on a message to you.”

“Wait—you knew what they were going to do to me?”

Gideon pursed his lips in disappointment. “You don’t get it. What happened today ain’t nothin’. You’re a marked man.”

“Why?”

“What you did—raping that white girl and throwin’ her in the river? I mean, that by itself’s gonna get you hard time. But you fucked up. That girl—she’s connected. They say her uncle’s inside, and he’s put the word out on you.”

“What…” Fear swallowed Gavin’s words.

“I’m sorry, buddy, but you’re fucked.”

“What’ll they do?”

“Not much till you get sent up. They’ll mess with you a bit here in County, but the real stuff won’t start until later. That little tussle in the hallway was just to show you how far they can reach. The guy that hit you, he’ll do some time in seg for it, but he did what he was told to. We’re just—you know—like soldiers following orders.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“We are, but that don’t make no difference.”

Gavin’s brain clamored—fear bouncing off the walls of his skull. “Are they…going to kill me?”

Gideon leaned back in his seat, his desolate features bringing to Gavin’s mind an executioner. “They’re gonna have a high time with you. It pains me to say this, Gavin, but there’ll come a day when you’re gonna wish you was dead.” Gideon shook his head. “You done fucked up.”

With that, Gideon stood and left.

* * *

After dinner, Gavin headed straight for his bunk. On his way, he passed a cell that had its door open, and a large hand reached out and pulled him in. A man—different from the man who attacked him in the corridor—punched Gavin in the stomach three times, fast. Then he drove a fourth blow into Gavin’s ear and shoved him back out the door. Gavin stumbled to his cell, the pain so intense that he could barely walk.

He didn’t leave his cell for the rest of that day, remaining on his bunk, his back to the corner, his legs and feet ready to fend off any new attackers.

That night, he fought to keep thoughts of failure from poisoning his mind. He had a plan—and a backup plan. They would work. But if they didn’t, these men would kill him, a slow, torturous death that would take years. Gavin would do the hardest time a man could do.

Chapter 53

Lila’s memory sometimes seemed like a quilt that she could never quite stitch together, the patches lying around her, visible to the eye, tactile against her fingertips, but forever disconnected. As she lay in bed that night, she stared at that picture of Gavin Spencer sitting in a chair at the party in Uptown. He was looking at her the way a lion watches a fallen wildebeest.