The maximum-security wing of the state penitentiary didn't have windows. It didn’t have a dayroom, it didn’t have a yard, and it certainly didn't have mercy. Down here, thirty feet beneath the concrete foundations, the air was thick with the suffocating stench of damp stone, industrial bleach, and old sweat. It was a subterranean tomb designed to break a man’s spirit long before his sentence was ever carried out. Every breath felt heavy, coated in a fine layer of concrete dust and the ghost of a thousand desperate prayers whispered into the dark.
Leo clutched the rusted iron bars of his cell, his knuckles white. His knuckles were bruised, too—the skin split open and poorly scabbed over from a fight three days ago when one of the guards purposely left his cell door unlatched during a shift
