1
“Your fiancé is this way, Ms. Marrón.”
That word, fiancé, makes me startle for a second. I don’t have one, of course. Not really. But this prison guard doesn’t know that. In order to meet one-on-one with the inmate I need to speak to, I needed a viable disguise. Posing as his fiancée was the easiest and most convincing, option. That’s why Dad sent me. None of his other “business associates”—big, burly men who are more accustomed to beating the answer they want out of someone rather than negotiating—fit the bill.
So I paste a broad smile on my face. “Thank you. How much time will we have in visitation?”
“Half an hour,” the guard says with a glance over his shoulder at me, sizing me up. His eyes linger on my chest, which makes me feel suddenly self-conscious, but I don’t cross my arms or back down.
Half an hour. Half an hour to get the information I need from this criminal.
I square my shoulders. You can do this, Ashley.
“Private visitation is unusual,” the guard comments as we continue to stroll down the corridor. “You two must have friends in high places.”
You could say that. In truth, my father arranged this meeting. Pulled some strings with his friends in the prison sector. Normally even a fiancée’s visit to the prison would be heavily monitored. But we’ll be left alone. Just Damon Tell and me.
Damon Tell, the bastard who screwed my father over, and killed an innocent man in the process.
I tighten my fists even as I smile politely and nod at the guard. “We’re very lucky,” I tell him as he leads me through the hallways of Upton State Penitentiary. “Warden Andrews is a family friend. He understands why I’d like some privacy when I speak to Damon.”
“I’ll bet he does,” the guard replies with a leer that turns my stomach.
Upton State Penitentiary is home to the most notorious and ruthless criminals in the tri-state area. Full of mobsters and murderers alike.
Lucky me, my so-called fiancé is both.
I spread my arms as the guard goes through the pat-down routine.
It’s not my first visit to Upton. The last time I was here, when I was only five years old, I held hands with my mother as she got this same pat-down on the way to visit my father. Now I’m twenty-three, Mom’s seven years in her grave, and Dad? Well, he’s still up to the same business that landed him in here way back then. Mostly racketeering, fixing races at the local tracks. Some petty theft. The occasional bank heist when money gets really tight at home. It’s not honest work, no, but it’s the family business. Has been for generations. And Dad is an honorable thief, at least. He gives back—hires his thugs from our local community shelters, tries to give back where we can.
My father is a mob boss, you see—a criminal and a thief—but he’s an honorable one.
Not like the man I’m here to see.
“She’s clear,” the guard announces, and another guard buzzes open a clear glass door, then waves me through. I step into the room. It’s mirrored on one side, and that makes me hesitate, checking over my shoulder at the guard. “Don’t worry,” he replies, sensing my question as I face the darkened glass panel. “There’s nobody behind the mirror. Not today. You’ve got the place to yourself. Like I said, half an hour.”
I nod briskly.
“Have fun,” he adds with a smirk as he waves me inside. I can feel his gaze lingering on me, even with my back turned.
I dressed as demurely as I could for this, in a long pencil skirt and a blouse that hints at my assets, but doesn’t actually reveal anything. But that doesn’t stop the guard from staring. I shoot him as haughty a glare as I can muster, then enter the room to greet my target.
Damon Tell.
He worked a few jobs with Dad over the last year. Enough to earn my father’s trust. Then, a few months ago, Dad set up a big job. We’d taken heavy losses in the winter season—times were hard, nobody was gambling much, and a few of our usual fixed races decided to go straight. We were struggling to make ends meet, to keep employing all the men on our payroll, and to make enough to keep the bigger mafia bosses out of my father’s territory.
So Dad decided to rob a bank.
He took his time planning it. Found a local bank without a lot of the high-end security you need to deal with at some of the bigger corporate chains. Got to know the owner, his routine, and found a pretty easy in. Every Saturday, the owner went in an hour before opening to personally inspect his safes. That was our opening. Sneak a man in, hold him up while the bank is empty, clean out the vaults, and get out without any collateral damage. No need to put innocent bystanders in harm’s way unnecessarily.
See what I mean? A criminal, but an honorable one.
Dad’s only mistake in planning was asking Damon Tell to be his right hand man for the job. The plan was simple: Damon would go in and do the talking with the owner. Hold the gun up to his head, have him fill our bags with cash, then meet my father out front in the getaway car. Dad says he didn’t even plan on having Damon carry the gun loaded. That way, no accidents could happen.
My father’s cardinal rule no killing. We steal, we lie, we cheat, but we never murder.
Until that day. Until the morning of the heist, when everything went wrong.
According to Dad, he parked outside the bank as planned. Damon put on his mask and went into the bank to find the owner, Eric Brown. But unlike every other Saturday morning when we’d cased the place, Eric wasn’t alone.
This time, his wife and 6-year-old daughter were with him.
Dad doesn’t know exactly what happened. All he knows is that, from outside in the getaway car, he heard gunshots. He grabbed his own gun and ran inside, expecting trouble.
Inside the bank, he found Eric Brown, his wife, and his daughter, all dead. The vault had been cleared out, every last penny stolen. And Damon?
He was nowhere to be found.
Then, two weeks later, after Dad tipped off the police and started a manhunt, Damon was finally caught at the state border, trying to flee north to Canada. He was arrested, tried, easily convicted—since he confessed to everything—and thrown in here.
Now I’m here to find out the real story. To find out what happened inside that bank—why he killed that innocent family. And where he hid the money afterward. Because the police didn’t find it anywhere on him, not in the car he was driving, not in any of the motels they traced him to along his attempted escape route. Wherever he hid it, he hid it well.
My family needs that money, now more than ever. And I’m going to get it from this criminal if I have to wring it from him with my own bare hands.
But as I step into that visitation room to confront the man I’ve spent weeks dreaming about strangling, my steps falter.
Damon looks the part of mafia hit man, all right. He’s huge, at least 6’5”, with a snake tattoo curling down one arm, taking up almost the full sleeve, which I can see because he’s dressed in nothing more than a prison-issue undershirt and a loose-hanging pair of orange pants. Beneath the shirt, I catch a glimpse of his bulging muscles, a perfectly sculpted set of pecs, and biceps and shoulders to match. He wears his hair long, pulled back into a tight braided knot, and his eyes, when they meet mine, are hard and dark.