Chapter Forty-Five
Vane
Rikers Island at night sounds like a fucking beast breathing—a rhythmic, mechanical grinding of steel on steel, punctuated by screams that the thick concrete walls almost, but not quite, swallow.
The transition from the sixty-first floor to Cell Block C is a violent stripping of the soul. They took my bespoke suit. They took my Patek. They took the shoes that had walked the marble halls of power and replaced them with shitty plastic sandals that slip on the damp, piss-stained floor. I am wearing the same orange jumpsuit Sloane wore. It smells of someone else's stale sweat and cheap, industrial detergent.
"Sterling! Moving! Shut your mouth and keep your eyes down!"
The guard is a man half my size with twice my bitterness. He pushes me toward a cell in the "General Pop" wing—a direct, lethal violation of the protective custody order my overpaid lawyers had filed. Arthur's reach didn't stop at the boardroom; his influence has seeped into the Department of Corrections like black oil. He didn't just want me in prison. He wanted me erased.
The door slides shut with a final, echoing thud.
I am not alone.
There are three of them. They are perched on the bunks like vultures, their eyes reflecting the dim, sickly yellow light of the hallway. In the center is a man I recognize from a decade-old liquidation—Mace, a former union leader whose pension fund I had gutted to save a failing steel mill.
"Vane Sterling," Mace says, standing up. He is a wall of scarred muscle and a decade of fermented resentment. "The man who turned my life into a fucking spreadsheet."
"I don't remember the name," I say. My voice is steady, a low, lethal rumble, though my pulse is a jagged rhythm in my throat. "I only remember the numbers. And yours was a net loss."
"Well, tonight, the numbers are three against one, you arrogant prick," Mace growls.
The attack isn't a business negotiation. It is raw, primitive, and fueled by a decade of stored hatred. I am a man of the gym and the boxing ring, but I am not a man of the shiv and the concrete.
The first blow catches me in the ribs, a sickening crack that steals my breath. The second slams my head against the steel bunk. I taste copper—real, hot copper, not the metaphorical taste of profit. I am on the floor, my face pressed against the cold stone, the plastic sandals sliding in my own blood.
Sloane. Her name is a mantra in my mind as Mace's boot connects with my stomach, turning my insides to liquid fire. I took the hit. I took the fucking coercion charge. I am in this hellhole so she is not.
But as Mace leans down, a sharpened piece of toothbrush plastic—a shiv—aimed at my throat, something in me snaps. The "Ice King" dies, and the predator that built the empire takes the wheel.
I don't feel fear. I feel a dark, jagged surge of adrenaline.
"Is that all you fucking got?" I spit, blood spray hitting Mace's face.
Before he can react, I drive my thumb into his eye socket with a sickening squelch. He screams, a sound like a wounded animal, and I don't stop. I vault off the floor, my shoulder slamming into his chest. I am a machine of momentum. I grab the second one by the throat, slamming his skull into the bars with a crack that sounds like a falling gavel.
The third one lunges with a blade. I don't dodge; I take the cut on my forearm to get inside his guard. I break his nose with a headbutt that sends white spots dancing across my vision, then I rain down blows until my knuckles are raw and the "General Pop" hero is sobbing on the floor.
I stand over Mace, my chest heaving, blood dripping from my jaw onto my orange collar. My vision is blurring at the edges, the world going grey, but I look at the three broken men at my feet and I feel a twisted sense of victory.
I saved the asset, I think, as my knees finally buckle. I closed the fucking contract.
And if Arthur wants me dead, he's going to have to come down here and do it himself.