Chapter 20: Cannibal
The yard smelled of hot concrete, faded sweat, and the faint, metallic hint of the chain-link fences baking in the afternoon sun. The usual rhythms were in play: men pacing the perimeter like caged tigers, games of dominoes slapping on stone tables, knots of inmates trading in whispers and cigarettes. In one corner, a basketball thumped a lazy, arrhythmic beat against the backboard.
Then the circle formed. It happened fast, a silent contraction of the yard’s social muscle. One moment, loose clusters; the next, a tight ring of denim-clad backs, a wall of focused attention. Shouts erupted, not of alarm, but of encouragement, a guttural chant. “Get him, Crusher!” “C’mon Crook, you stupid bastard, move!”
From his usual spot in the shade of the upper walkway, Dominic saw the circle tense. He didn’t need to see inside to know. The rhythm of the shouts told him. Silas was involved. It was the sound of a spectacle, not a riot.
He pushed off the wall, his movements deliberate. Doc, leaning beside him, sighed and fell into step. Rafael materialized from the shadow of a support pillar, his dark eyes already assessing the crowd. They moved as one entity towards the commotion.
By the time they shouldered their way to the inner edge of the circle, it was over.
Silas ‘Crusher’ Wooledge stood in the center, breathing evenly through his nose, his massive hands hanging loose at his sides. His knuckles were raw and smeared with a color that wasn’t his. His face, that landscape of battered flesh and old rage, was utterly calm, his deep-lake eyes placid.
At his feet lay Crook. He’d been a big man, too, all swagger and sneer. Now he was a broken arrangement of limbs on the concrete. His head was turned at an angle fabric wasn’t meant to achieve. One eye was swollen shut; the other stared at the searing blue sky, seeing nothing. A dark, glistening pool was slowly widening beneath his torso, seeping into the porous ground.
The circle was buzzing, the energy shifting from violent excitement to satisfied commentary. “Told you he’d get his neck snapped.” “Five cigarettes on Crusher, pay up.” “Damn, that was quick.”
Angel was right at the front, of course. He’d been watching the whole thing, his dark blue eyes wide with fascination. He wasn’t scared. He’d seen worse. To him, it was just a thing that happened, like a sudden rain shower. He clutched a stolen packet of sugar in one hand, absently pouring grains into his palm and licking them.
Dominic’s large hand landed on the back of Angel’s neck, not yanking, just claiming. “You stay right here, cuore mio.”
“Okay, Daddy,” Angel said, his attention still on the body. “Silas was very fast. It went crack. Like a big stick.”
Doc was already moving, not towards the body, but to stand slightly behind Silas, a subtle barrier between the giant and anyone stupid enough to think the fight might not be over. Rafael had melted back to the crowd’s edge, listening.
The guards arrived not with urgency, but with the weary gait of men clocking in for overtime. Two of them, Higgins and Monroe, pushed through the ring. They took in the scene: Silas standing quietly, the dead man at his feet, the crowd waiting.
Higgins, a man with a perpetual sour expression, put his hands on his hips and let out a long, slow breath through his nose. He looked at Silas. “Again, Wooledge?”
Silas said nothing. He just looked back.
Monroe shook his head, pulling his radio. “Medical to the yard, northwest quadrant. Clean-up. Another administrative issue.” His voice was flat, bored.
“Administrative issue,” Higgins repeated, almost to himself. He nudged Crook’s outstretched leg with the toe of his boot. The leg moved with a dead weight. “What was it this time?”
A voice piped up from the crowd. “Crook said Crusher’s mama knit socks for the Aryan Brotherhood. Didn’t go over well.”
A low chuckle rippled through the inmates.
Higgins didn’t even look for the speaker. He just pinched the bridge of his nose. “Poetry. Always with the poetry in here.” He looked at Silas. “Solitary. Two weeks. You know the drill.”
Silas gave a single, slow nod. He was already turning to go with them, his compliance absolute. The fight was over. The consequence was a known quantity. An equation balanced.
It was then, as the guards were waiting for the medical cart, as the crowd began to dissipate now that the main event was concluded, that Angel spoke.
His voice was soft, gentle, cutting through the leftover murmurs. “Excuse me, Mr. Guard?”
Higgins glanced over, saw the small Omega boy with the shocking white hair and innocent eyes. His expression softened a fraction. Everyone’s did with Angel. “What is it, Emberly?”
Angel took a small step forward, pointing a delicate finger at Crook’s body. “If you don’t want to take all of him… I can take care of it. I don’t mind.” He offered a sweet, helpful smile. “Or maybe just an arm? Since he’s dead anyway. It wouldn’t be stealing. It could be a snack for later.”
The yard didn’t go silent. But the quality of the sound changed. The murmurs paused, then returned as low, incredulous whispers. A few men laughed, not unkindly, but in sheer disbelief. That’s Reaper’s kid. Always says what he’s thinking.
Dominic closed his eyes. A deep, world-weary sigh shuddered through his broad chest. He lifted a hand and dragged it down his face. When he spoke, it was a low, pained rumble directed at the uncaring sky. “Jesus fucking Christ, Angel.”
Angel blinked, looking up at his father with genuine confusion. “What? It’s just practical. They have to carry him, and I’m still a little hungry. The steak was good but it wasn’t…” He searched for the word, his nose scrunching. “…loud enough.”
Higgins stared. Monroe’s radio crackled with static, forgotten in his hand.
Doc stepped forward, his pragmatic, doctor’s demeanor a wall of sanity. “He’s proposing a form of waste management, Higgins. Morbid, but logistically sound. However, given disease vectors, decomposition rates, and the sheer paperwork a dismembered corpse would generate, I’d advise against it.”
“You advise against it,” Higgins repeated, his voice hollow.
“Strongly,” Doc nodded.
Rafael spoke from the sidelines, cool and analytical. “It would also set a problematic precedent. Every yard fight would end with a bidding war for limbs. It would destabilize the barter economy.”
Angel’s shoulders slumped in disappointment. He looked down at the body, then at the guards. “Not even a little finger? They’re small. You wouldn’t even miss it.”
“No, Angel,” Dominic said, his voice firm, final. He moved then, closing the distance between them. He didn’t yell. He didn’t scold. Instead, he bent slightly, hooked his hands under Angel’s arms, and hoisted him up onto his hip as if he were a toddler. Angel instinctively wrapped his legs around Dominic’s waist and an arm around his neck, settling there with practiced ease.
Dominic patted his backside, bouncing him lightly. “We do not ask the guards for snacks from their crime scenes. It’s rude.”
“But Daddy—”
“No.” It was the voice that brooked no argument. The Reaper’s voice. But the hand patting Angel’s backside was gentle, rhythmic. “You had your special beef. That’s your snack. This,” he nodded towards Crook, “is garbage. You don’t eat garbage.”
Angel rested his cheek on Dominic’s shoulder, pouting. He watched over Dominic’s shoulder as the medical cart finally clattered through the gates, two bored-looking orderlies hopping out with a stretcher. “It doesn’t look like garbage,” he muttered, but he said it to Dominic’s neck, where his claiming bite—a faded, silvery scar of interlocking teeth—was visible. He nuzzled it, taking comfort in the scent.
Higgins finally found his voice. “For the love of… Just… get him out of here, Reaper. Take your… your kid and go.”
“My pleasure, Officer,” Dominic said, his tone even and polite. He turned, carrying Angel as if he weighed nothing, and began to walk towards the bleachers. The crowd parted for them without a sound.
As they walked, Angel played with the hair at the nape of Dominic’s neck. “Silas was very good, wasn’t he, Daddy?”
“He’s efficient.”
“Is he in trouble?”
“He’s on vacation. A quiet vacation.”
“Oh.” Angel was quiet for a few steps. The medical cart rattled past them, the body bag zipped up. He watched it go with a look of faint longing. Then he brightened. “Can we have spaghetti for dinner? The kind from the commissary?”
“If you want.”
“And can I sit with you while you play cards?”
“Yes.”
“And will you tell me a story later?”
“Yes, angelo mio.”
“Okay.” Angel snuggled closer, his earlier request forgotten, replaced by the simple comfort of his father’s arms and the promise of spaghetti. The dead man was already a fading image, less important than the next meal.
They reached the bleachers. Jax was there, having missed the fight but hearing all about it. He grinned as Dominic deposited Angel on the bench. “Heard you tried to start a take-out service, little brother.”
Angel swung his legs. “They said no. Daddy said it’s rude.”
“It is incredibly rude,” Jax agreed, his eyes sparkling. “You gotta let the cleaners do their job. They got a union and everything.”
Doc sat down, rolling the tension from his shoulders. “The guard’s expression was worth a month of therapy. I believe he short-circuited.”
Rafael settled beside them, a silent addition. “The request has been logged, however. In the guards’ minds and in the yard’s lore. It strengthens our position.”
Dominic lit a cigarette, the smoke curling in the still air. “How does my son asking for a corpse part strengthen our position, Rafael?”
“It reminds everyone that the most unpredictable and legally irrevocable element in this yard is not your enforcer’s strength, or my information, or Jax’s ingenuity.” Rafael’s dark eyes rested on Angel, who was now trying to braid a strand of his own white hair with sticky sugar-fingers. “It is his… unique perspective. They fear Silas because he will kill them. They are unsettled by Angel because they cannot comprehend him. Fear of the unknowable is a more potent deterrent than fear of a known quantity. The guards now have to factor in not just stopping a fight, but preventing a… spontaneous culinary event. It complicates their job. It makes them want to avoid scenarios that bring Angel into proximity with fresh mortality.”
Angel looked up, beaming, having caught only the last bit. “I like culinary events!”
“See?” Jax said, laughing. “He’s a deterrent wrapped in an enigma, wrapped in a jumpsuit.”
Later, in the cell after lock-in, Angel was in his cot, curled on his side. The faint smell of bleach from the yard cleanup still lingered in the air. Dominic sat on the edge of his own bunk, rolling a set of knuckle bones in his hand, a habitual, soothing motion.
“Daddy?” Angel’s voice was sleepy.
“Yes, piccolino?”
“When Silas comes back from his quiet vacation… will he have to fight again?”
“Probably. It’s the nature of this place.”
“Will you let me watch from closer next time?”
Dominic stopped rolling the bones. He looked at his son, a pale, sweet-faced boy in the dim security light, asking to watch a man die like another child might ask to go to the zoo.
He knew what Rafael said was true. Angel was a force, precisely because he wasn’t a force. He was a consequence that made no sense. He was Dominic’s greatest weakness and his most terrifying strength, all in one fragile, blood-obsessed package.
“We’ll see,” Dominic said, which was what he always said when he meant ‘no’ but couldn’t bring himself to shatter Angel’s world with the word.
Angel smiled, content with the non-answer. He closed his eyes, his breathing slowing. “G’night, Daddy. I love you.”
“Buona notte, mio angelo oscuro,” Dominic whispered into the dark. “Sleep well.”
He listened until Angel’s breaths were deep and even. Outside, the prison hummed its eternal, concrete lullaby. Somewhere, in an isolation cell, Silas sat in perfect silence. In the infirmary cooler, a body bag lay on a slab. And in his cell, Dominic Ricciardi guarded the most dangerous thing he had ever known: a child’s heart, beating in time with a monster’s gentle dreams.