Italian Mafia Boss, My Cell

Chapter Five: A Debt Owed

Morning in Blackrock arrived with a siren instead of sunlight.

Isabella jolted upright, heart pounding, momentarily disoriented by the concrete ceiling and the metal frame digging into her spine. Then the events of the previous night came flooding back the unlocked door, the confession about Vantage Logistics, the way Salvatore's expression had gone dark and calculating in a way that still made her uneasy hours later.

Above her, she heard him already moving, methodical and unhurried despite the chaos of the wake up siren still blaring through the block.

"Up," he said. "Now. They dock privileges for slow risers."

She scrambled off the bunk, still wearing yesterday's ill fitting scrubs, and followed him toward the cell door as it slid open along with every other door on the block in a synchronized mechanical groan.

The corridor outside filled instantly with bodies, and Isabella felt Salvatore's hand close briefly around her elbow, steering her into the flow of foot traffic at a precise angle that kept her slightly behind him, slightly shielded.

"Stay close," he murmured. "Don't make eye contact with anyone unless they're a guard. Don't stop walking for any reason, even if someone drops something in front of you. Especially if someone drops something in front of you."

"Why especially"

"Because it's usually a test to see if you'll bend down. Bending down makes you an easy target." He didn't look back at her as he spoke, eyes scanning the crowd ahead with the practiced awareness of someone who had spent his entire life reading rooms for danger. "You bend down for anyone in here, you've told them you can be pushed."

They reached the mess hall, an enormous room filled with long metal tables bolted to the floor, the smell of reheated eggs and burnt coffee thick in the recycled air. Conversation dipped noticeably as they entered together, heads turning, a ripple of attention following them toward the food line that made Isabella's skin crawl.

"They're all staring," she whispered.

"They're cataloguing," Salvatore corrected quietly. "Figuring out what it means that Cosa got a woman in his cell. Figuring out if it makes me weaker or if it means something else."

"Does it mean something else?"

He didn't answer, taking a tray and moving down the line with the same unhurried authority he seemed to carry everywhere, guards and inmates alike stepping subtly out of his path without seeming to notice they were doing it.

They sat at a table near the back, and within moments a man slid onto the bench across from them uninvited, broad, shouldered, heavily tattooed, missing a section of one ear that looked like it had been removed deliberately rather than lost to accident.

"Cosa," the man said, voice pitched low and pleasant in a way that immediately set Isabella on edge. "Heard you got yourself a new roommate."

"Reyes." Salvatore didn't look up from his tray. "This doesn't concern you."

"Everything in this block concerns me, you know that." Reyes's eyes slid toward Isabella, slow and appraising in a way that made her want to disappear into the wall behind her. "Pretty thing. Word is she's got some kind of connection to the Varela shipping business. That true?"

Isabella's blood went cold. How could this man possibly know that already, she and Salvatore had only discussed it hours ago, in the privacy of their own cell.

Salvatore set down his fork with deliberate slowness. "Where'd you hear that."

"Word travels." Reyes smiled, showing a gold tooth. "Walls in this place aren't as thick as people think."

"I think Reyes wanted to leave without either of us watching him do it." Salvatore stood, pulling her up by the arm with more urgency than he'd shown all morning. "Come on. We need to get back to the block before headcount."

They moved quickly through the thinning crowd, Salvatore's grip on her arm firm but not painful, steering her through corridors she hadn't fully memorized yet. As they turned a corner near the laundry facility, a figure stepped directly into their path, younger than Reyes, wiry, with nervous eyes that darted between Salvatore and Isabella like he was trying to decide something important.

"Cosa," the man said, voice low. "Got a message. From the outside."

Salvatore's entire posture shifted, becoming instantly guarded. "Not here."

"Can't wait. They said it couldn't wait." The man glanced over his shoulder, clearly anxious about being seen. "It's about your brother."

Something flickered across Salvatore's face, the first genuine crack in his composure Isabella had witnessed since arriving. "What about him."

"Varela people made a move. Two nights ago. Your brother's fine, they didn't get to him, but it was close." The man's voice dropped even lower. "They're saying it's a message. Saying they know exactly where you are and exactly how long you're gonna be here, and they're not waiting for your appeal to figure out what happens next."

Isabella felt Salvatore's grip on her arm tighten unconsciously, his knuckles going white.

"Anything else," he said, voice deceptively calm.

"Yeah." The messenger's eyes flicked toward Isabella, uncertain. "They mentioned her. By name. Said to tell you they know exactly who's sharing your cell, and exactly what she knows about Vantage Logistics."

The blood drained from Isabella's face entirely. "How could they possibly know that. We only just found the connection last night, inside a locked cell, in the middle of the night"

"That's the question, isn't it," Salvatore said grimly.

The messenger shifted his weight, clearly wanting to be finished with this conversation. "That's everything I was told to pass along. I gotta go before anyone notices I stopped moving."

He disappeared down the corridor without waiting for dismissal, leaving Salvatore and Isabella alone in the narrow hallway, the distant sounds of the mess hall fading behind them.

"Someone inside this facility is feeding information to the Varela family in real time," Salvatore said quietly, almost to himself. "Which means somewhere in this building, right now, there's a listening device, or an informant close enough to hear everything we say inside that cell."

"That's not possible," Isabella whispered, though even as she said it, the cold logic of it was settling into her bones. "Nobody could have gotten a recording device into a supervised cell overnight."

"No," Salvatore agreed, his eyes dark and calculating in a way that frightened her more than Reyes had. "Which means it's not a device."

"Then what"

"It's a person." He turned to look at her fully, something shifting behind his expression, suspicion flickering across his features for one brief, devastating second. "Someone who already knew about Vantage Logistics before either of us said a word about it out loud."

The accusation hung unspoken but unmistakable in the space between them, and Isabella felt the floor tilt beneath her feet as she understood exactly what he was suggesting.

"You think I'm working for them," she said, voice barely above a whisper.

Before Salvatore could answer, an alarm began blaring through the corridor, red lights flashing along the ceiling, and a guard's voice crackled over the intercom system with words that made every hair on Isabella's body stand on end.

"Lockdown. All inmates return to cells immediately. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill."