Читать книгу Stranded with the Prince - Dana Marton - Страница 6

Sagro Prison island, Italy

Boots slapped on the concrete floor, keeping a regular rhythm. The night security lights were on, enough to see the guard who was texting on his phone as he strode out of sight, a sly grin on his pockmarked face. A minute went by, then another. The steel door opened then closed at the end of the cell block.

The 2:00 a.m. check was complete. Nobody would be by again until morning.

Roberto, fully dressed, slid out of bed, making no more noise than his shadow as it moved across the floor. He laid his pillow lengthwise on the bare mattress then draped the bed with his blanket, creating a bulky form.

His sheets had been ripped, twisted into rope and wrapped around his waist before he’d gone to bed. Now he bent and squatted one more time to make sure the cumbersome arrangement wouldn’t limit his movement. He adjusted a tight strip under his left armpit before he stole to the door and pressed the top part of the lock hard.

Click. The sound was so soft even he barely heard it.

José had fixed the locks. The oldest of the team, José had been a locksmith before a drive-by took out his family in the godforsaken backstreets of Bogotá. With nothing to live for, he’d signed up for the rival gang. José understood revenge.

So did Roberto. It pushed him forward as he stole down the hallway, moving fast in a crouch. He listened to the snoring of the other inmates. A bed creaked now and then as someone turned over in his sleep. He listened for any indication that someone noticed him, not trusting—despite substantial bribes and dire threats—that they wouldn’t betray him and sound the alarm.

José was waiting for him at the water block, along with Marco, the third member of the team.

“Any trouble?” Roberto kept his voice to a low whisper.

Marco shook his head. He was young and sullen, still not over the fact that they’d been imprisoned. That here, on the other side of the ocean, the boss couldn’t protect them. He was ready to go, but didn’t think it fair that they had to orchestrate the escape themselves. He’d griped and whined through the preparations. Which better stop right now, right here. Roberto flashed him a sharp look that warned him to be on his best behavior.

The young thugs coming out of the slums these days were too hotheaded, only after the glory, and rarely willing to put enough effort into a job to get it done right. They wanted the fastest car and the biggest gun, wanted to build reputations overnight, which led to too much senseless killing.

“All’s according to plan,” José was saying.

Exactly what Roberto wanted to hear. His sticker, a spoon handle sharpened into a knife, waited stashed inside a showerhead. He retrieved the makeshift tool then went to work on removing a wall panel.

A hundred years ago, Sagro Prison had been the hunting castle of some Italian king. When they’d rebuilt it into a prison in the fifties, they changed just about everything. Security had been upgraded several times since, but the prison’s waste and sewer system still connected to the old castle’s cistern.

All Roberto and his men had had to do over the endless months that they’d been locked up here was dig through the wall. The cistern’s ducts, carved from stone, were plenty wide to accommodate a man.

José squeezed in first, then Marco, Roberto going last, pulling the wall panel into place behind him. By morning they’d be free men. His to-do list was simple: get food, finish the boss’s business in Trieste, then get the hell out of Italy.

But he wouldn’t go back to Bogotá, not straightaway. He had personal business in the area which he meant to see handled. He was going to Valtria, the small kingdom to the north, to gain retribution for his brother’s death.

An eye for an eye, a life for a life. He might have been too old-school to condone all the senseless killing the new gangs did these days, but revenge was part of a man’s honor. And he did believe in that. He certainly did.