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William laughed. Maddox had been right. He did look cute when he laughed.
“Really. Three years into this sentence, and the spooks send a recruiter in a cheap suit?”
The barb nearly struck home. Maddox’s suit was not cheap. Not by any measure. It was a bespoke piece of tailoring, using fabrics unattainable by most people. If William had any concept of the materials used in the jacket alone, he would not be making smart remarks of that nature. But he was innocent of that knowledge, and for the moment Maddox let the attempted insult slide. There would be plenty of time to teach him manners later.
William looked at the man in front of him and felt flushes of hatred rushing through his body. He saw a suit with authority sneering at him quietly, treating him like a pawn. The man was older than him by a few years, maybe a decade. William had a problem with authority. The man across the table knew that, no doubt. He had the expression of someone who thought he knew everything. The file was probably full of what people considered to be facts about him. But if anybody knew the truth about Will, they would have bled him out, not sent him to prison where his hunger ran almost entirely out of control.
But the smirking expression, the fancy clothes, and the irritatingly incorrect file were not all that was sat before him. The man, Maddox, was also handsome, muscular, and rich. He was everything people were supposed to aspire to be. He had smooth dark blond hair swept back from his forehead, and noble, Nordic features. His eyes were dark and knowing, full of calculations. His hands were large and well manicured. William had a mental flash of those hands gripping his ass. He pushed the thought away. The last thing he ever allowed himself to indulge in were thoughts of men. Especially not in this place.
“I can’t tell you where you’ll be going, or what you’ll be doing. I can tell you that you will be handled by, and answer to me.”
“That’s it? That’s all the spiel you’re going to give me?” William snorted. “That tells me absolutely nothing.”
“It tells you enough if you think about it.”
The man sitting across from him was clearly a master manipulator. William was suspicious and mistrustful, but he was also curious — and an opportunist. With a choice between rotting behind bars for the rest of his life and having a chance at something that might be closer to freedom, the choice seemed clear. Then again, this could easily be a frying pan/fire sort of situation.
He already knew what his answer was going to be. But he wasn’t done asking questions.
“You think you can walk in here like you own the place, and your sheer force of personality is going to make me agree to whatever it is you want me to do? You think you’re that fucking charming?” Will swore and noticed Mad flinch as he did. There was everything Will needed to know. His interrogator was a prude, stuck up, too good for what he’d probably refer to as the F word.
“I think the possibility of leaving prison is all the reason you need.”
“Will I be leaving prison?”
“You will. Sign the paper, and tonight you will be as free a man as you have ever been. Hot, private shower. Freshly cooked food. A bed made with Egyptian cotton, and a room without bars on the windows or locks on the door.”
It sounded good.
Too good.
But the man was right. Will had no choice, not really. Escaping prison on his own was unlikely. Maximum security was almost impossible to breach without allies and significant funds, and increasingly, William had neither.
Maddox flipped the file open to the front page, produced a fountain pen and slid it into William’s cuffed hand. It was a high quality piece of equipment, with a machine-milled steel barrel. A piece of equipment that could be entirely dangerous here.
“Sign here," he said. “And your new life starts.”
“Easy as that, huh?”
Maddox smiled at him, but there was no warmth in it. It was the expression of someone who knew how to mimic human expressions but didn't really understand them. There were several men like that in this prison. Some of them wore prison uniforms. Others occupied offices.
There was no choice, really. William didn’t bother reading the text on the paper. He did as he was told and signed his name.
“Good. Now we can begin.” Maddox motioned to the guard. The guard entered the room and unlocked Will’s handcuffs, just as Maddox had instructed him to previously. It was a pleasure working with such compliant people. It was also a pleasure to break those who were less compliant.
Will stood up, rubbing his wrists. There were marks on them not just from the most recent pair of cuffs, but from all the cuffs that had come before. Incarceration left grooves in a man, and not just on his flesh.
A second later, all hell broke loose. William had clearly been waiting for an opportunity like this one. He whirled and turned on the guard who had taken such pleasure in shoving him around when he was still cuffed. He wasted absolutely no time in driving his fist into the guard’s nose. It burst in a hot red flash of blood and screaming. Not satisfied with having decked his captor, Will knocked the guard to the ground and was in the process of beating him to death until the cold barrel of a pistol at the back of his head stopped him. Will froze, still crouched over his victim.
He took one deep breath, then turned his head to look back at Maddox with a questioning pale gaze.
“You did all this just to shoot me like a dog?”
“I did this because you’re an impudent pup,” Maddox replied, inwardly smiling. The boy had no idea how pleasing he truly was, even inside those ridiculous prison clothes which did nothing to present his body well. What Maddox would have given to see the younger man’s back and biceps flexing with every vicious movement. “Get up.”
Will smirked, and in that moment, even with a gun still trained on him, he was adorable. The same things that were written in his file were now written in his eyes. All that delicious dark tendency for violence was pouring forth. Maddox drank it in, tasting the energy, reveling in it. It nourished him so deeply.
Mad looked from Will’s wild, flushed face, down to his victim. The guard was insensate on the floor, but still breathing. He might survive if he was treated soon, but for the moment Mad had greater concerns.
