The Billionaire They Buried

Chapter 7: Prison Rules

The cell door flew open. Three correctional officers walked in. "Against the wall!" one of them shouted, and Daniel raised his hands and stepped back without arguing. I did the same, my shoulder blades pressed against cold concrete while boots moved past us into the small space.

They tore the cell apart. Blankets thrown aside, the thin mattresses flipped and checked underneath, every seam of every corner searched like they expected to find something sewn into the fabric itself. One of them stopped in front of Daniel. "Where is it?"

"Where's what?"

The officer grabbed the front of his shirt and shoved him against the wall hard enough that the back of Daniel's head knocked against the concrete. "Don't play games with me."

"I honestly don't know what you're talking about." For a second I thought the guard was going to hit him — his fist had already curled, his weight already shifting forward — until another officer called over from the doorway. "Leave it. There's nothing here." The first guard let go but kept his eyes on Daniel a moment longer, the way a man looks at something he intends to come back to. "If we find contraband in this cell, both of you will regret it." Then they left, and the door slammed shut behind them, the sound rattling down the corridor long after they'd gone.

Neither of us spoke until their footsteps disappeared entirely. "What was that?" I finally asked.

"That wasn't a real search."

"What do you mean?"

"They knew they wouldn't find anything. They came in to remind you they can get to you whenever they want." He said it flatly, like a fact he'd stopped being angry about a long time ago.

I crossed my arms, trying to keep my voice as even as his. "So the guards are part of this too?"

"Not all of them. But enough." That answer bothered me more than I wanted to admit. If I couldn't fully trust the inmates, and I couldn't trust some of the officers meant to keep order, I wasn't sure who was actually left standing between me and whoever wanted me gone.

The prison speaker crackled overhead. "Lights out," and the block went dark all at once, the way it did every night, like someone had simply pulled a switch off in the entire building.

I climbed onto the top bunk, but sleep wouldn't come. Every sound kept me awake — a cough somewhere down the row, metal rattling against metal, footsteps that came close and then faded again without ever explaining themselves. My mind kept circling back to my grandfather, to the letter folded somewhere I could no longer reach, to the safe deposit box waiting for me beyond these walls with whatever answers he was trying to protect.

"Ethan." Daniel's voice, quiet in the dark, more careful than I had heard it before.

"You still up?"

"Yeah. There's a few things you need to know." I could hear him shift on the bunk below, settling into something he had clearly said before, to other men, in other cells.

"I'm listening."

"Don't ever sleep too deeply. Things happen in here while people are sleeping — things you want to be awake for. If somebody calls your name in the middle of the night, don't answer. They're trying to figure out exactly where you're sleeping, which bunk, which side. If somebody offers you protection, say no. Nothing in here is free, and the price always comes due later, when you're not expecting it. If somebody offers you extra food, refuse it — same reason. And if somebody tells you a guard wants to see you, don't move until a real officer comes and unlocks your cell himself."

I tried to hold onto all of it at once, filing each rule away like it might save my life before the week was out. "Tomorrow morning they'll test you," he added.

"Who?"

"Everyone. They'll insult you, try to provoke you, maybe push you — they want to see how you react before they decide what you're worth in here."

"And if I fight?"

"You lose."

"If I don't?"

"You still lose." He must have heard the frown in my silence, because his voice softened just slightly, almost amused. "You'll figure it out."

I lay back and stared into the dark, listening to the block settle into whatever passed for quiet in a place like this. Outside prison, problems got solved in boardrooms — with money, with influence, with the right lawyer standing in the right room at the right moment. In here, people fought for respect, or sometimes just for the next twenty-four hours, and the rules of engagement were completely different even if the betrayal underneath them looked exactly the same on either side of the wall.

A loud whistle cut through the silence before I even realized I fell asleep. Morning. The lights snapped on all at once, and a guard's voice carried down the corridor. "Roll call!"

Daniel climbed off his bunk. "You ready?"

"Not even close."

"That's probably a good thing," he said, and there was something almost like a smile in it. I followed him out into a hallway already crowded with inmates lining up for count, and I could feel eyes on me — curious, amused, some of them simply waiting, patient in a way that felt worse than open hostility. It was less like morning roll call and more like something out in the wild sizing up a meal before deciding whether it was worth the trouble.

Briggs was waiting near the end of the corridor, exactly where I somehow already expected him to be. He dragged his thumb slowly across his throat and smiled when he caught me looking. I held his gaze and gave him nothing back.

"Ignore him," Daniel said under his breath.

"I'm trying."

"Keep trying."

As the guards moved down the line counting heads, one thought kept repeating in my mind, steady as the footsteps behind us. Yesterday, prison had introduced itself. Today, it was going to show me exactly how far it was willing to go to make sure I understood the difference between surviving and simply staying alive.