The Return of the Mafia Boss

Chapter 8

~Prison Saga~

Andrès went to jail. For a crime he had not committed, and every single day, he was reminded of this grave injustice that was done to him.

He felt like ripping the heads of the so-called high and mighty people in power who had wanted him down so bad they were willing to go as far as implicating him and then having him dumped in jail. But fifty years?!

That was too much for a crime that he had not committed.

Andrès felt like he was slowly losing his mind in the prison every day. And it did not help that the inmates all seemed to enjoy behaving like psychopaths.

He had been assigned to toilet duties one morning, and he was going about his work faithfully when he heard the sounds of coarse laughter and grunting.

He was not new to these things. The prison was a dangerous seedy place where people were constantly being beaten and bullied and abused in one way or the other. And according to the stories of his cellmate, some people had even died a certain year due to the inmate riots.

Andrès had not wanted anything of such sort at all. He was only staying here, biding his time only and simply because he could not do anything outside of the law. He prayed daily that no one would take special notice of him and instigate anything that might stain his otherwise clean record.

Andrès was still holding out hope that the judge was going to be lenient with his case and look into it again after all, granting him a pardon or early parole. Andrès was confident that if his case was reopened again, there might be new evidence to show that he was not at all the perpetrator or criminal in the case, but the victim. 

A completely innocent person with nothing at all to do with the death—or rather, murder—of his boss.

Andrès did not know what made him head in the particular direction. He knew what that coarse laughing meant. Somebody was getting beaten up. But he was not so strong himself, so he was baffled when he found himself staring at a young man, not much too different from himself.

“You know you’re not supposed to fight here, right?” Andrès said, surprising himself and everyone there.

The attackers turned to look at him. One of the attackers was a very big man with a bald head and a scar running down the left side of his face. Andrès immediately felt like he should not have spoken at all.

“I don’t think I heard you. I was coughing the other time.” The big bald man said as he advanced on Andrès. Andrès took a step back, but he was not going to back down.

“I have to clean the toilets.” He said, the squeak in his voice betraying how much fear he truly felt.

The bald man looked at his partner who looked equally roguish and they broke into laughter. They laughed for what seemed like a full minute, doubling over and clutching their abdomens. They slapped the young man on his back several times as they laughed their rib-cracking belly-rumbling laughter.

“Well, of course you’ve got to do the toilets. Lord! Why didn’t you say something earlier?” they guffawed and made room for Andrès to pass through. Andrès was glad that they had forgotten about the young man they were beating.

He picked up his bucket and moved past them, apologizing. 

“Oh, there’s no need to apologize, man. It’s all good. You should do the toilet. We got it. Go on, go on. We’ll finish up over here and leave you be.”

They laughed again as Andrès went into the toilet. Andrès had only put the bucket down when he felt himself lurch forward.

He slammed his face right on the toilet seat, breaking his nose. He groaned audibly. 

The men behind him laughed their raucous laughter again and pulled him away from the toilet.

“We’re so sorry, man. You gots to watch out for the tiles, you know it be slippery and all that.” The man who Andrès suspected had kicked him said. “But we legit thought you said you wanted to do the toilets. What do we do?”

They let the young man go and concentrated instead on Andrès.

“I got to teach you something about these floors, man.” the smaller man said and punched Andrès in the stomach. Andrès fell to the floor, vomiting everything he had eaten before.

“Ugh!” The big, bald man groaned. “Sick.” He kicked Andrès in the mouth, then roared, “look what you did to my shoes! You got your stupid blood and vomit on it.”

They began to kick at Andrès until Andrès could neither move nor make a sound anymore. One of his eyes had been beaten in and Andres could not see a thing, even after he was rushed to the infirmary.

For the longest time, he had no idea where he was. Then slowly, his eyes opened and he regained consciousness. His vision was almost totally obscured but he thought he saw a man in a suit leaving. Using his eyes hurt like hell. He closed his eyes and lay back down on his bed with a groan.

“You’re awake.” Somebody said. Andrès opened his eyes again.

“Who?”

“Damn. They really did a number on you, didn’t they? I’m the doctor. You’re in the infirmary. Can you see at all?”

“It’s all very blurred,” Andres struggled to say.

“That’s alright, then. Don’t push yourself. You’re lucky to be alive. I wish you would have stayed unconscious for a few more days, though. Now you have to return to your cell. Don’t worry, nothing can happen to you in your cell. It’ll be alright.”

Andrès nodded but was not very reassured.

When evening came, he was helped back to his cell. But he had scarcely sat down when his roommate told him that somebody had been stabbed to death just before he arrived.