Chapter Nine #2
Long story short, they would pray for prison when I got through with them. And then, if they got in there, they’d regret that too.
The room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. You could hear their old pervert minds working like a rusty crankshaft, bewildered by this new woke mafioso, who cut people’s ears off when they failed to listen properly, telling them that they were fucking sickos.
It was actually pretty funny.
I left the office, giving them two days to shut it all down and come up with a solution to make up the deficit in my percentage.
They called me back only twelve hours later.
“Mr. Blanco,” The older Russo greeted me first as I waltzed into the conference room at their lawyer’s office once again, my personal security in tow. “Thank you so much for coming back in.”
“Please, call me Ivory.” I smirked, taking a seat and folding my hands on the table.
Russo blinked. “Of course. Ivory… We may have found the perfect solution to your—our problem.”
I glared, silently, until he cleared his throat, nodding at his lawyer. The lawyer handed me a folder.
“There’s an island,” he went on while I opened the folder, eyes scanning the pages.
“Five miles off the coast of Long Island. Due to its… checkered past, it’s technically outside of US jurisdiction.
But we’ve owned the rights to it for many years.
It’s been passed on for generations, but we’ve never been able to find quite the right… purpose for it. Until now.”
My eyes lifted, from the papers to his, and I cocked a brow. “Is this for real?”
“Commissioner Levy and I have been in talks about opening a new prison for a while,” he said, fully serious, despite the insanity he was spewing.
“Something like Rikers, only not so close,” the commissioner added. “Less prying eyes. And less… regulations.”
I couldn’t help the way my lashes were fluttering. A puff of incredulous air gusted from between my lips.
“Perdóneme.” I shook my head. “Let me see if I’m getting this right. You want me to… what? Build you a prison? On some island in the middle of nowhere?”
“No, no, don’t be silly,” Russo chuckled, and I was glaring again.
“Trust me, silly is never what I’m being,” I growled.
“We would provide the prison,” he explained nervously. “In fact, there’s already a facility there, on the island. I’m sure it’ll need some sprucing up… But basically, we’d be giving you this island. As a gift. So long as we can also open the prison, and use it to house prisoners.”
I stared for several seconds. “What kinds of prisoners…?”
“Bad ones,” the younger Russo jumped in, like a child trying to involve himself in the grown-up conversation.
“Ones we don’t want getting out on parole, or having their convictions overturned due to juror misconduct,” the district attorney said, sounding like he had a vested interest in this plan, which made sense.
My baffled gaze fell to the file once more as I continued leafing through it. A map of the island, as it stood, and where it was located in relation to the rest of civilization. There was also a proposal, detailing the stipulations of their offer, budget, and salary.
“You realize I already have a job.” I aimed another snide look their way.
“You could run the facility however you see fit.” Russo Sr. shrugged. “We assume you would hire a staff to manage the day to day. All you’d really be doing is overseeing it.”
“So then why do you need me at all?” I muttered. “Just hire your own team…”
“We need someone with your… skill set,” he rumbled. “To ensure things are being properly handled.”
I didn’t want to admit it, but part of me was highly intrigued. It sounded completely loco. But then loco is… kinda my thing.
“What if we made it more like an… asylum?” I asked, finding my gaze magnetized to the papers. Namely, the map.
Alabaster Isle…
“You can do whatever you choose with the inmates,” Russo said, blasé even for the room. It quirked my lips. “But we would want it to hold the outward appearance of a maximum security prison, or—”
“Penitentiary,” I murmured. “Alabaster Penitentiary.”
The room went quiet, and when I looked up again, they were all radiating some excitement.
“So, do we have a deal?”
“Not so fast, companero. After all, this is a negotiation…” My smirk widened as I cracked my knuckles. “And I have demands.”
An hour later, I walked out of that office with a new property, and a new title.
Warden.
It’s still funny sometimes when I think about it. I mean, what cartel leader in the world would ever say yes to being a warden?? Isn’t that generally like, a terrible job?
But in all honesty, I was excited about it; the island more than anything. Adding it to my collection of territories…
And building my castle.
That was the one demand I wasn’t willing to budge on.
From what I could tell, the island was about two miles across.
Comparatively, the prison itself was quite small, just based on how large I knew prisons like Rikers, Sing Sing…
Hell, even Alcatraz to be. But for these special circumstances, they felt that it worked, and I agreed.
Regular Supermax prisons could hold up to ten thousand inmates at a time. They anticipated sending in only a few inmates a year.
The point being that this was no ordinary prison. It wouldn’t be functioning like a correctional facility…
It would basically be an alternative to a hole in the ground somewhere.
Hence my suggestion to make it an asylum. I had no interest in rehabilitation. That was boring, and so not my style.
I wanted the worst of the worst, the monsters under your bed. I wanted the creeps, the freaks, your favorite Netflix documentaries come to life.
I wanted to trap evil under glass and watch what it did.
But we could revisit that.
Anyway, the facility was at the south end of the island, and the rest was untapped land. The way I saw it, why not take advantage of all that space and build something new? Something that was just mine.
Like a mansion for me to live in while I was there.
The board agreed to let me design my very own Ivory mansion, with no cap on budget. Because they didn’t really have a choice.
The funding to operate the prison would come from a few avenues that they would work out. But as I explained, getting Alabaster Penitentiary off the ground would take extra expenses, which they begrudgingly accepted.
On top of this offer, they also adhered to my demands and ceased all child trafficking connected to my business operations.
This included a club Arturo had acquired in Hell’s Kitchen called The Fall, which I reclaimed.
Fired everyone, hired all new staff to manage it, and renamed it Club Edge, which now has a strict eighteen-plus policy.
I was never able to locate the girl… The little bird’s twin sister. It was incredible how quickly she vanished.
I’d heard from Pablo—before I killed him—that she was simply given to a family who wanted a child and couldn’t afford to adopt. I sure as shit hoped that was the case, but you never know.
It’s been nearly six years. She could be anywhere.
But I won’t stop looking. Just like I won’t stop anticipating a potential future retaliation from the boy. That is the risk you run in letting people live, after all.
Look, I’m not saint—sin duda. But who says sinners can’t have their own fucked-up brand of morality? A code of ethics, no matter how warped or sinister, is still a code.
There’s no honor among thieves, but there are many different layers to honor. And thievery.
So there you have it. Only six years on the throne and I was already diversifying.
It took barely eighteen months to clean up the island and build my mansion. I remember my first visit to the island…
I’d taken a charter plane there, and decided in that moment that helicopters and boats, or ferries, would be the preferred method of coming and going moving forward.
It was one of the first things I told my architect, who thankfully, was a lot less loco en la cabeza than the one who designed the prison.
But I didn’t care about that. I wouldn’t be living in there…
I would be living in my own alabaster palace, officially dubbed The Ivory Mansion.
Unfortunately, it couldn’t actually be made out of ivory. I checked.
They said there aren’t enough elephants in the world, and even if there were, the idea of slaughtering a whole mess of elephants for some bullshit made me sad.
We went with white marble instead. Just as cool looking.
Not to mention almost unbelievably expensive when you need, like, two hundred metric tons of the stuff.
Great detail and precision went into every inch of my new home. I designed it to be my castle, because it was. Fit for an evil king…
Yet still big enough that I could share it with several people and never even have to see them.
Alabaster Isle was unlike any place I’d ever seen before, or could have ever imagined, and that made the decision to own it an easy one.
When my castle was complete, and I took my first step inside, I looked around at the lavish monstrosity, my grandiose palace of bone and brass.
Clacking through the foyer, I tipped my chin upward, to a ceiling in the sky. Pulled in a deep breath, and grinned.
The King had arrived.