Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 39540 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 198(@200wpm)___ 158(@250wpm)___ 132(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 39540 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 198(@200wpm)___ 158(@250wpm)___ 132(@300wpm)
Dad was pissed as shit. I think he knew something was up, but I wasn’t saying anything and, just like I’d instructed her, Hannah didn’t either. When she’d visited me and could get me away from Mom and Dad, she’d plead with me over and over to change my mind. To let her tell Dad what happened and have him sort out the whole mess. I’d refused and she’d respected my wishes, but I knew what her decision cost her. She felt doubly guilty. Hannah would never survive incarceration of any kind. She was too gentle and empathetic. The juvie population alone would eat her alive. I couldn’t even contemplate her in an adult female prison.
My mother said Hannah cried a lot for no apparent reason. She asked me if I thought she loved that bastard enough to mourn. I told her I had no idea. I let them think Hannah was mad at me and she likely was. Just not for killing her boyfriend. She was angry because I was going away to prison, running headlong like I was looking forward to it. The reality was, I was fucking terrified.
“Son, I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s goin’ on.”
“What’s goin’ on is I killed a man who threatened my sister. I did the crime. I’ll do the time.” I didn’t mean to be belligerent, but it was either that or break down and give it all to him straight. Along with a lot of tears and snot. I knew what the consequences of this were. My childhood ended today.
Deep down, I knew I needed to tell Dad. He could take care of all this. You know. If I’d told him to begin with. Looking back, keeping him out of this might not have been the best decision of my life. Oh well. Done was done. I’d do this for my sister because she deserved to be happy and to not be punished for killing the son of a bitch trying to rape her. I absolutely would not take a chance on some overzealous prosecutor painting her as the victim. She’d been through enough. I’d do this, because I wanted to be the man Dad raised me to be.
As someone once said, if you pray for the rain, you have to deal with the mud too.
“They’re talking about sentencing you as an adult which means twenty years, Gunnar. More if they decide to sentence you on murder instead of manslaughter. You didn’t even negotiate what you were fucking confessing to!” Dad stood abruptly and paced across the room before returning. In what was probably a fit of frustration and anger, he smacked the chair over so it skidded across the narrow strip of floor between the table and the wall. “Christ! Have you even thought about what that means? You’ll get to do your first couple in the juvie camp, but the day you turn eighteen, they’ll put you in with the big boys.”
“Yeah, Dad. I thought about it. I went over everything with my lawyer.”
“Did he also tell you this prosecutor is going for the maximum sentence? You killed an unarmed man with a knife. You did it in private so it looks like premeditation, and no one can dispute your account of the story.”
“I know.” I was starting to feel like a kid. My dad was a bit overprotective, even with us boys. Though I was only sixteen, my dad had raised all his kids to be men and women. I’d come this far so it was time to man up.
After this, I’d never make my father proud, but maybe he wouldn’t be ashamed of me.
Chapter One
Gunnar -- Present Day
“This the day?”
I glanced at my cellmate, now a close friend. I was packing up my personals in our cell, getting ready to leave prison after serving fifteen years of a twenty-year sentence. “Yep.”
“Thought you had a few more years left.”
I shrugged. “I did.”
“Interesting.” Knuckles leaned against the end of the bunk. I paused in my packing to find him watching me intently.
“Yeah,” I drawled slowly. “Thought so myself.”
“You think it was your old man?” Knuckles knew about Cain and ExFil and Bones. He knew my dad had some pull and was likely thinking I’d held out on him.
“If you’re implyin’ I’ve been down-playin’ people I know, I haven’t been. This is as much a surprise for me as it is you.”
“I know.”
OK, now I stopped what I was doing altogether and took a step toward Knuckles. “What’s goin’ on?” Clearly, I’d missed something important.
“You’re a solid guy, Gunnar. I had an… opportunity.”
“What kind of opportunity?” I was preparing myself for a fight, but I had no idea who’d I’d be fighting. Knuckles didn’t usually play politics inside, but one thing I’d learned while in USP Terre Haute was that there wasn’t much men wouldn’t do for a few amenities.