Chapter 17 Lucian
LUCIAN
There are strange comforts to being caged.
When everything’s stripped away, you learn what really matters.
The itch of grass under your feet. The smell of apple pie cooling on a chipped plate. The sacred freedom of choice; doing what you want, when you want.
I don’t have that anymore. What I do have is time.
Time’s a cruel lover. She gives you nothing but herself and demands everything in return.
I spend hours dissecting the past, bleeding over every mistake.
Days building blueprints for the future.
The system branded me never to be released.
But I don’t buy it. One day these walls will crack.
And when they do, the world won’t know what hit it.
Twenty minutes. That’s how long it takes before he finally walks across the yard.
Mason Ironside.
The name’s a warning - heavy, deliberate. He doesn’t move like prey, doesn’t posture like a predator either. He’s something else. Confidence stitched into every quiet step. Underboss of the Moreno family. Right hand to Kanyan De Scarzi.
If De Scarzi is the storm, Ironside is the lightning. He’s precise, lethal, inevitable.
He’s part of the new mafia. Not thugs with guns and gold chains, but boardroom wolves in thousand-dollar suits. They don’t spill blood, they own it.
Which makes me wonder: why the hell is a man like that shackled in my courtyard?
He stops a few feet away, hands in his pockets, eyes steady. He studies me like he’s studying a painting. I let him look. Let him see what the world made of me.
Ghost.
The nightmare they invented.
The current count is fourteen women. Fourteen accusations. The devil you’d die to fuck. And yet - he doesn’t flinch.
He looks curious. Like he’s been looking forward to this meeting.
I already know his story. How he carved an empire one body at a time until Dante Accardi himself took notice. Accardi - the man who bends cities. The gravity men like Ironside, De Scarzi, and I orbit around.
Ironside exhales, eyes sweeping the yard. When he finally speaks, his voice is quiet steel.
“You’re not what I expected.”
My mouth curves. “That so? And what exactly were you expecting?”
He shrugs. “Not what I found.”
“A monster?”
A flicker of a smile. “Mercy.”
That earns him a laugh. “Mercy. Cute. Ask the press - they’ll tell you I’m Satan in a suit. Ask the guards - they’ll swear I’m one breath away from execution. Reputation builds kingdoms, Ironside. Mine just makes me untouchable.”
He doesn’t argue. Just studies me in what I recognise is a test. Although I’m not sure what I’m auditioning for.
Across the yard, a young inmate sits rigid on a bench. Clay Ford. Clean-cut, too soft for this place. He watches us like a deer that’s wandered into a den of wolves.
“What’s his story?” Ironside asks, nodding his way.
“He didn’t do it.”
That earns me a raised brow. Everyone in here says that.
“You of all men should know,” I say. “Not everyone in here is guilty of the thing stamped on their record. Maybe guilty of something - but not that. You understand that, don’t you, Ironside?”
The words hang between us. Razor-thin. He doesn’t blink. I respect that.
Then, softly, he says “The same way you’re not a serial killer?”
I let his words sit with me for a bit. Let the tension stretch until the air tastes like metal.
Then I smile. Slow. Dangerous.
“I never said I wasn’t a killer. I just didn’t kill those fourteen women.”
Something flickers in his eyes. Understanding. Recognition.
Clay still watches. Desperate. Like proximity to monsters might keep him safe.
Ironside follows my gaze. “Will he make it out of here in one piece?”
I shrug. “Depends who’s asking.”
What I don’t say: he reminds me of someone. And I’ll make sure nothing touches him.
Ironside’s mouth twitches - half amusement, half approval. He hides his tells well. But not well enough. He wears his power like a second skin. I wear mine like a haunting.
“Why the interest in the kid?” I ask. “Don’t tell me you got yourself thrown in here just to do a welfare check.”
He studies me. “You don’t talk like the men in here.”
“That’s because I’m not like the men in here.”
“Fourteen women would say otherwise.”
I laugh, low and sharp. The wolves on the yard glance over, then look away again. No one interrupts Ghost.
“Tell me, Ironside,” I say, folding my arms. “Do you really believe what you read? Or do you know better than to trust the stories they sell the sheep?”
Something shifts in his expression - small, but real.
“Everyone’s guilty of something.”
“No.” I meet his eyes, then look back at the kid. “Not the kid.”
Understanding passes between us. Not pity. Not belief. Just two men who’ve both buried truth under a mountain of lies.
The siren blares. Lockdown. The yard begins to empty. Guards shout our names.
Neither of us moves.
We stand there, watching each other through the noise, until the last of the crowd is gone and the silence swallows the yard whole.
In prison, hope is a poison.
It seeps into the cracks, kills men from the inside out. You see it in their eyes - the ones waiting for parole, for appeals that never come. They die faster than lifers because hope strangles slower than any shiv.
I cut that rope years ago. No appeals. No mercy. Just time. Time thick as cement, pressing on your lungs until you forget how to breathe. Until you’re a ghost long before you’re dead.
And then Ironside walks up and dangles something I haven’t tasted in a decade.
A chance.
He doesn’t posture. Doesn’t waste words. He just lays it out between us - clean, sharp, lethal.
“There’s a transfer coming,” he says, voice low. “I need him taken care of.”
I don’t blink. The cage doesn’t change what you are; it just strips the lie away.
He studies me like a gambler sliding his last chip across the table. Confident. Dangerous.
“What makes you think I’m your man?”
“Because you’ve got nothing to lose,” he says. “And everything to gain.”
A slow grin cuts through me. “Such as?”
He drops it like a match into gasoline.
“A way out.”
Freedom. A word I buried long ago.
Ironside says it like it’s already written.
The plan is brutal, beautiful, perfect. Old wiring. A staged fire. Auto-locks disengaged. Smoke, chaos, screams. Me slipping out while the world burns behind me.
There’s a nurse - Wanda. She starts tomorrow. I’ll fake sick, meet her, discuss the logistics. She’ll ensure that when the smoke clears, my body is “recovered” - charred, unrecognizable.
The world will mourn Ghost. Or maybe they won’t. Either way, Ghost will be dead.
And what comes after? Surgery. New face. New name. A rebirth. It’s not desperation. It’s precision. And it’s perfect.
I don’t ask if I can trust him. Trust is for men who still believe in saints.
I look at Mason Ironside and see myself reflected back. We’re two predators built from ruin, both tired of the cage. For the first time in ten years, I look at these walls and taste the chance of possibility. And I don’t hesitate. Because monsters don’t ask why. We only ask when.
After that, we keep our distance.
Two predators cutting through the herd. Never circling the same carcass. Never drawing suspicion.
He walks his path. I walk mine.
The silence between us is worth more than any promise. Because in here, everyone’s watching. Every glance is a weapon. Every word is a noose. So we pretend we’re strangers orbiting the same sun.
The Underboss and the serial killer.
It’s been ten long years, and even in those ten years, the body count rises and I’m slapped with another historical murder.
Ten years, and they still feed on my bones.
They play my trial like theater, my mugshot like pornography. Every new body found, every girl gone missing, my name gets dragged through the mud.
But here’s what they don’t know.
I wasn’t born a monster. I was made.
The plan is alive now. Rooted deep.
He gives me resurrection. I give him silence. I don’t speak of it. Don’t even think it too loud. But when the lights go out, I can feel it in my chest - the hum of open air, the promise of a life stolen back from the grave.
Ironside’s bail goes through in days. He’ll walk free. The world will think the story ends with him. They’ll be wrong. Because my story doesn’t end here. It starts when the fire catches. That’s when Ghost dies. And what comes after - the world isn’t ready for.