Double Life of a Cell Block King novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Plea
Reed walks into his stepbrother's engagement party and punches him in front of two hundred guests on purpose. He pleads guilty and is sent to the prison where his father's bookkeeper sits, and the intake guard says Dalton wants him dead within the week.
My stepbrother lifted his champagne glass and told two hundred people he had never been happier.
I was standing by the ballroom doors in a rented jacket, and nobody had stopped me.
They hadn't looked at me twice.
The last time any of them had seen me, I was nineteen and being walked off the Westerfield estate by security.
Dalton stood on the little stage with his arm around a senator's daughter.
He was thirty-three, blond and tanned, and he smiled.
"To new beginnings," he said.
The room clapped.
His mother, Eugenia, stood at the front in cream silk and pearls, and she was clapping the hardest.
She had been my stepmother for seventeen years.
She had also been the one who stood at my father's funeral two years ago and told the room I was too unstable to attend.
I had watched it from the parking lot.
I took a breath and started walking.
The crowd opened for me without noticing.
I kept my eyes fixed on the stage.
I had pictured this moment in my head for eight months, because I only had one chance to get this exactly right.
Dalton saw me as I reached the stairs.
His smile stayed on his face for a second after the rest of him had understood.
"Reed," he said quietly. "What are you doing here?"
"Congratulations," I said. "I brought a gift."
Then I hit him.
It was a clean right hand, and I put my whole shoulder behind it.
Dalton went backward into the champagne tower, and two hundred glasses came down with him.
The sound was beautiful.
Women screamed, and somebody's phone light swung toward us.
That was what I wanted.
I wanted every phone in the room recording, because a punch nobody films is a punch nobody can charge.
Dalton rolled over, spitting blood, and looked at me with something I had not seen on his face in fourteen years.
He was afraid.
"Get him off me," he shouted. "Somebody get him off me!"
I wasn't on him.
I was standing there with my hands open, waiting.
Two security men grabbed my arms, and I let them.
Eugenia came across the stage with her heels clicking, and she didn't look at her son.
She looked at me.
"Reed Mason," she said, loud enough for the first rows. "He used to be family."
She had chosen the name carefully.
Not Westerfield, never Westerfield, because I had taken my mother's name at nineteen and she had been glad to hear it.
"He's been unwell since his father passed," she told the guests, with her voice shaking in just the right places. "We prayed he'd get help."
I almost admired her.
"Call the police," she said.
I smiled at her.
It was the first time in my life I had seen her unsure.
The police came in six minutes.
I did not resist, I did not speak, and I did not let them take the phone footage out of my head.
In the back of the cruiser I looked at my knuckles.
Two of them were split, and I was grateful.
At the courthouse three weeks later, the public defender slid a sheet of paper toward me.
"Felony assault," she said. "The groom had a broken orbital bone. The DA wants three years."
"I'll plead guilty."
She frowned.
"Mr. Mason, you could fight this. You were provoked, you had no record."
"I'll take eighteen months," I said. "Calder Ridge."
She stared at me.
"You're asking for a specific prison?"
"I'm asking for the one that has Block D."
She didn't understand it, and she didn't need to.
The judge looked at me over his glasses and gave me exactly what I asked for.
Eighteen months, Calder Ridge Correctional, ninety minutes from Columbus.
In the gallery Eugenia sat very straight.
Dalton sat beside her with his jaw wired shut.
I turned my head as the bailiff cuffed me.
Dalton looked at me, and I saw him decide that I was a stupid drunk who had wrecked himself.
Good.
I had spent two years learning one fact.
My father's old bookkeeper, Amos Carmody, was serving twelve years for stealing four million dollars from Westerfield Freight.
My father, in his last week, gripped my wrist and told me, "Amos has the book."
He died before he could say what book.
I wrote to Amos nine times, and every letter came back unopened.
I filed for a visit three times, and every request was lost.
Someone inside Calder Ridge was making sure no Westerfield ever reached him.
So I decided to stop being a visitor.
The transport van smelled like bleach and old sweat.
When it stopped, the gates rolled open.
I looked up at the gray walls with a calm that scared the other men in the van.
Intake was a long concrete room with a counter and a camera.
The guard behind the counter had a thick neck and a hard stare.
He scanned my wristband, read my file, and went still.
Then he leaned across the counter.
"Reed Mason," he said softly. "Mr. Dalton sends his regards."
I kept my face empty.
"He says you won't last the week."
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