Free with You

Chapter 2: Hangin’ a Wire

Vito POV

Ya’ll might be wondering why I’m here.

In the middle of the woods during a rainstorm.

And without a shirt…

Aight so…first of all, it wasn’t my fault as to why I’m here.

You see, before I ended up in this situation, a detective was on my ass about Rocco’s death. Again, it wasn’t me, but the guy had that look in his eye. The decision was already made up even before I walked in that room.

I was doomed, to put it mildly.

*Six months before*

“Do you recognize this man?” the bald headed f**k asks me, rubbing his nasty bulbous nose before he slaps a photo on the steel surface.

I look down and see Rocco’s face covered in blood, his nose crooked from the brutal beatings. His eyelids swollen and bruised shut and his lips ripped at the corners like they were trying to gag him.

“Umm yeah, we were…old friends,” I say balling my fists under the table, but keeping a straight face. I can tell the detective is pumping himself up for the finale.

Something about this detective screamed corrupt. He’s a bald white dude, probably in his 60s with crooked yellow teeth. His breath wafted to my senses, the smell of tobacco making me cringe. Didn’t seem like the guy groomed himself well with his patchy overgrown beard, and guts spilling over his belt.

Fat hairy fingers grip the paperwork in front of him, as he taps the stack a couple times on the table.

“How ‘old’ are we talking? See, I have a photo that was taken only a month ago,” the detective says with a shadow of a smile behind his sharp dark eyes, “it’s of Rocco here, a couple of NFL players, and…” he says throwing down the second photo, “you.”

At that point, there was no use in hiding s**t from the detective. They had everything they needed to pin his murder on me. The bank statements, all of the wire transfers, random cash deposits summing up to $1 million into his and my scattered accounts. It looked bad.

At first it was meant to be low risk.

The scams.

I had this grand idea, pitched it to my guy Rocco. We could pass for a couple princes of Dubai with our darker complexions and fully groomed beards. Use real surnames from the royal family, but mix them up a bit for credibility.

Our usual clientele were dumb bitches with deep trust funds. We would sell the idea that we’re rich with nothing to do except invest in projects. Then we’d work the angle of seducing them. Eventually ease in the idea that they could invest with us.

Spoil them with chanel bags and diamonds —using their own money of course.

Keep the rest of the money.

Move onto the next client.

Easy.

Except then Rocco decides to chase the tail of an Italian brunette with a small waist and a big ass saying that he’s found The One.

Too bad, The One, happened to be the daughter of some head honcho of the Italian mob.

Idiot.

Rocco wouldn’t dare scam her, he was too smart for that. What he didn’t anticipate was for her father to look into his activities, background, talk on the street and all that B.S.

Then one night Rocco and I are on business in the club, buying rounds for all the “potential clients”.

Ladies on his lap and mine. Let’s just say things got heavy, and everyone is toppling over each other, wasted.

At that moment, The One happens to swing by our table and misreads the situation of a b***h straddling Rocco —his face buried deep in the her hoochies.

The One goes crying out the door, Rocco too unconscious to know what the f**k just happened.

Once we’re back at our place and he’s sober, I try to tell him what he missed, but before I can finish, he’s already out the door on a mission to apologize.

I tried to warn him that he was making a mistake. To meet a death sentence over a woman?

Please. I told him we needed to start in a new city.

New names.

Let the games begin, but no.

Rocco didn’t even look back.

“See you around bro.” Those were the last words he said to me.

I tell my side of the story to the bald f**k, a pathetic attempt to at least get murder off my record. But for some reason, “killing your best friend to keep all the money,” seemed more believable than “killing for cheating on a mob boss’s daughter”.

He kept asking me the same questions over and over and all the while insinuating that I was jealous of Rocco. I wouldn’t say anymore without a lawyer. If he didn’t want to listen to me, then I didn’t have to answer s**t.

*Six months later*

“Vito Osorio, the jury finds you…guilty of 1st degree murder, money laundering, and wire fraud. You are sentenced to…” I can’t hear what’s being said after that. My mind is reeling at the fate I was coming to terms with.

Life in prison.

Never to live freely again.

I’m nauseous when they walk me out of the courtroom. Sweat beading on my forehead, heart beating fast, but my hands are cold and frozen like I’m going through rigor mortis.

Shackled at my wrists and with my head down, a short lanky guard walks me out to the van outside.

Poor kid looks like it’s his first ride along. He’s barely old enough to even have facial hair. A newbie assigned to escort a murderer.

Hah.

Either these guards are real lax or they know I didn’t do it.

This kid keeps poking me in the side with his baton to keep me in line on the way to the van.

Growing beyond annoyed, I lowly growl at him, flexing my arms and chest and lunging at him with a bit of force. He immediately ceases his prodding and cowers away.

When he opens the back doors of the van, I look up to the rear view mirror and see an older female guard sitting in the drivers seat.

I can tell she’s a veteran officer by the aged face, but she seems like a decent milf. With her blonde hair tied up in a tight bun, she looks back at me through the mirror and winks.

Interesting.

The drive is peaceful with the heavy rain. I can see we’re on some windy road through a mountain pass from the windows upfront.

The kid keeps his hands on his taser, avoiding my glare, but the female upfront is playing with the radio hoping for more than just the static. She’s occasionally stealing glances at me like she’s amused. I smile back.

“I need to drain the main vein,” I blurt out to the kid in front of me. His eyes widen and he shakes his head.

“Sorry can’t pull over for that, you will have to wait until we reach the next rendezvous point,” he says.

“I didn’t ask,” I say threateningly just for fun, “—unless you want to sit through my piss for the rest of the ride?” I smirk at him and he puts his hand on his dumb baton on his other side like he’s preparing to strike me.

“Now now…” the female guard looks to the kid through the rear view, “—look kid, I know it’s your first time and all, but we do this all the time. I, for one, won’t sit in a car full of piss. I have once and vowed never again,” she chuckles to herself shaking her head.

I do my best to hold back a smile because she called him a “kid”.

“But the Sarge said no breaks or stops during the drive” the kid angrily mutters to himself, his knuckles turning white on the baton. His eyebrows knitted together with hesitation.

“Fine then, I’ll escort him myself,” the female guard says with irritation laced in her voice as she pulls the van over to the side of the road.

“No, it’s alright, it’s my job,” grunts the kid as he opens the van doors and grabs me by the arm with a little force.

The kid awkwardly follows me over to the highway bumper, our feet sinking in the wet marsh as the rain pummels us deeper.

I try my best to move, as far away as I can from the van, to drown out our voices in the rainstorm.

“Stop there! Just hurry up,” says the kid nervously and I see that he’s facing me, his hands fidgeting over his mouth like he’s cold.

He’s literally about to watch me do my thing. I lift my eyebrow at him, waiting for him to turn around.

“Don’t ya know never to watch a man while he’s hangin a wire?” I say to embarrass the s**t out of him.

He gives me a bored look and turns his back with a frustrated grunt.

This is it.

It’s now or never.

I lunge forward and grab a weapon from his strap and hope to God it’s a gun.

It is.

I point it at the kid’s face as he quickly turns around and he pales. His hands are up immediately, his mouth open but speechless.

“The keys!” I demand, and the boy fumbles to look for them in his pocket and tosses the keys to my cuffs.

I catch them in the air and start making my way backwards slowly, hoping the female guard hasn’t caught on.

Never lowering the gun, I crawl over the bumper until I’m safely on the other side.

Then turning around, I sprint for my life.