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26
Matteo
Three months in this fucking place has gotten me nothing but a skin infection, an aversion to meatloaf, and a renewed hatred for Vitale.
I’ve had way too much time to think about him in here. Every morning that I wake up, I’m forced to live with the reality that this is where I’m wasting my life while he goes and gets blowjobs in Cairo.
After being in here for long enough, I’ve lost some of my muscle tone from not eating the food. It’s been hard, but trying to swallow that bullshit was going to make me throw up, which would have led to more weight loss. It was a strange choice to have to make, but I adapted quickly enough.
Living with a bunch of other criminals has opened me up to the psychology of men who get caught. Eric, one of the guys I’ve been hanging out with, told me that he robbed a gas station at gunpoint in the middle of the day during a football game downtown.
I told him that was the dumbest fucking thing I’ve ever heard, and he was confused and a little offended that I would say such a thing.
After he threatened to kick my ass a couple of times, I got him to calm down to the point where I could explain to him that he should have strategized his approach better. He’s been in here for two years already, told his story to damn near everyone here, and not a single person has told him that.
Another guy who I wouldn’t consider a friend, but an annoying acquaintance, told me that he got busted trying to drive a few bricks of cocaine through the city and got pulled over. Apparently, he wasn’t even suspected of having drugs on him. He was pulled over for having his registration expired.
However, when the cops approached his driver’s side window, the car reeked of weed. It didn’t take long for them to figure out that he was moving weight, so they searched the car and he was fucked from that moment onward.
I’ve heard plenty of similar stories, and the only thing I’ve been able to think to myself is:
How the fuck did I still manage to get locked up?
My business practices are very clean and easy to conceal. I use every possible method of covering my tracks, even if it seems over the top or inconvenient. I’ve had close calls, sure, but the only thing I’ve ever gotten popped for was a bar fight that I started when I was twenty-five.
Beyond that, I’ve been in the clear.
And still, I managed to get framed for someone else’s crime.
My mind has been on a loop of the same bullshit all day, every day, since I settled in here. Iris is always the first thing to come to mind when I wake up, and it sucks waking up with an erection in fucking jail. I haven’t been able to shake her from my obsessive memory, and I’ve had enough dreams about her that make it feel like she’s still with me in a way.
If all I ever thought about was Iris, I wouldn’t be nearly as fucking miserable in here. But of course, Vitale’s fucking face always makes his way into my brain.
The fact that I took him off the streets, trained him, and trusted him only for him to frame me for murder has me angry beyond words. Killing Shimmer was nothing but a message from him to me, and he used her death as a means of rubbing his untouchable success in my face. He violated one of the only rules I ever had for my men – don’t ever use human capital for personal gain.
He could have had anything else that he wanted from me, but he chose to go behind my back and betray me.
I’m lying in my bed attempting to fall back to sleep when one of the guards pound on my door. It’s the ginger guard, the short, fat one with an inferiority complex. I know that the other correctional officers must have sent him down to get me because they knew how much he would hate it. He mistreats all the men who he deems more attractive or successful than him, even though we’re in prison and he isn’t. That’s a success in and of itself, dumbass.
“Hey, you’re getting out today. Your bond was posted and paid,” he says in his throaty, perpetually congested voice.
Wait.
I’m getting outright now?
“You know we’re going to have issues if you’re fucking with me, Peterson,” I say.
He shakes his head. “No, I’m not. Now get up so we can get you processed. I have a busload coming in from the next state over, and they need your bed.”
I’m euphoric, so I choose not to ask too many questions. There will be enough time to figure out the where and why of how I got let out, and I’m not going to fuck this up for myself. I’ve had so few moments of happiness or contentment in the last three months that I choose to let this remain as it is.
I’m getting out.
Some of my peers have gotten out since I’ve been here, and I remember how many of them didn’t even have a place to stay once they were released. Some of them were given a bus pass, others were set up with the homeless shelter right away.
I can’t imagine how soul-crushing it must be to not have a home to go back to. No family, no friends, no significant other to welcome you back. I wonder if some of them prefer prison. I know some of them are repeat offenders, and that might be one of the reasons why.
I’ll be going home to an empty house, at least until Leonardo decides to come check on me.
