Chapter 9: Scalped
The cafeteria noise was a living thing. It pressed in from all sides—the scrape of plastic trays on Formica, the dull clatter of utensils, the low, constant rumble of hundreds of men talking, arguing, laughing in short, sharp barks. The air was heavy with the smell of boiled potatoes, overcooked green beans, and something vaguely, unidentifiably meaty. Guards stood posted at intervals along the walls, their eyes scanning the crowd with practiced, weary disdain.
At a central table, Dominic’s family created an island of relative calm. Dominic sat at the head, his back to the wall, his black eyes taking in the room in slow, sweeping arcs. Angel was tucked to his right, small and focused on systematically dissecting his meatloaf. To Dominic’s left sat Silas, a monolithic presence methodically shoveling food into his mouth, his eyes, for once, not flat but mildly annoyed by the blond man bouncing on the bench opposite him.
Jaxon “Spark” Halloway was vibrating with pent-up energy. He’d been fidgeting for ten minutes, his fingers drumming on the table, his leg jiggling wildly under it. He’d already rearranged his peas into a smiley face, then a phallic shape that made Doc sigh and Matteo shake his head. Now, he leaned forward, his elbows on the sticky table, a gleam in his eye.
“I’m so bored I could lick the walls and try to guess the flavor of industrial paint,” Spark announced to the table at large. “Seriously. This is torture. We need a conversation. A real one.”
Doc, sitting beside him, didn’t look up from his careful cutting of a rubbery carrot. “The definition of ‘real conversation’ in here is usually which shank design has the best aerodynamic properties, Spark. I’m not sure I’m in the mood.”
“No, no, not that. Something psychological.” Spark’s grin widened. “Let’s go around. Biggest fear. No bullshit. We’ve all stared down the barrel of something. What still gets you in the dark?”
A thick silence fell over their corner of the table. It wasn’t a tense silence, but a considering one. For men like these, admitting a fear was like handing over a schematic of your internal wiring. It was tactical information. Rafael “Ghost” Villareal, sitting at the end beside Matteo, let a slow smile touch his lips, his dark eyes knowing. He said nothing.
Matteo “Brick” Santori chewed slowly, his gaze fixed on Spark. “My biggest fear is you getting a stupid idea and needing me to pull a guard off you. Again.”
Spark waved a dismissive hand. “C’mon, Brick. Play along. Doc? You’re the sensitive one.”
Doc wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “My biggest fear is an outbreak of antibiotic-resistant syphilis in this block. The logistics of containment would be a nightmare, and the whining would be intolerable.”
A few chuckles rumbled. Silas grunted, swallowing a massive mouthful. “Mine’s runnin’ out of smokes during a lockdown. Real shit.”
Dominic said nothing. He simply looked at Spark, one eyebrow slightly raised, a faint, warning smile on his face. It was an expression that said, You’re amusing, but tread carefully. The question hung in the air, unanswered by the core of them. They were all, in their own ways, masters of deflection. It was a survival mechanism as basic as breathing.
Then, a soft, clear voice cut through the muted laughter.
“Getting scalped.”
The table went still. Not a stunned, dramatic stillness, but a sudden, profound halt in the casual rhythm of their meal. Forks paused mid-air. Spark’s playful grin froze. Doc’s clinical gaze snapped sideways. Silas’s chewing stopped, his battered face turning toward the source of the statement.
Angel had spoken. He’d said it looking down at his mashed potatoes, his tone contemplative, as if he’d just recalled an item on a grocery list he’d forgotten. He took another bite.
Spark blinked. “Come again, kid?”
Angel looked up, his dark blue eyes earnest. He seemed momentarily confused by their reaction. “Scalped. Y’know…”
He set his fork down. He reached up with one hand and gathered a thick bunch of his long, white curly hair, holding it at the crown of his head. With his other hand, he formed a loose blade with his fingers. He made a quick, sawing motion against his scalp. Schick-schick-schick.
“Like that,” he said, releasing his hair. “Where they cut the skin and hair right off the top of your head. Taking the whole thing. That’s my biggest fear.”
He said it with the serene conviction of someone stating a universal truth, like being afraid of falling from a great height or burning alive. The absolute, bizarre specificity of it hung in the cafeteria air, cutting straight through the usual macho fog of fears like weakness, betrayal, or death in general. Not death. Not pain. Scalping.
For a five full seconds, no one spoke.
Then, a low, wheezing sound came from Silas. It took a moment to identify it as laughter, a deep, seismic rumble that started in his gut and shook his massive shoulders. It was a sound so rare that Doc actually looked concerned for his cardiac health.
Spark gawked, his mouth slightly open, before he exploded into a fit of giggles, slapping the table. “Oh my god. What? Why? How is that even in the top hundred? Who thinks of that?”
Angel shrugged, a faint pink tinge coming to his cheeks at the reaction. “I saw it in a movie. A western. It just… stuck. It seems like it would be very messy. And then you’d have to walk around without the top part of your head. Your brain would get cold.”
Matteo “Brick” Santori, the man of granite, let out a sharp, incredulous puff of air—his version of a roaring belly laugh. He shook his head, a genuine, wide smile cracking his stony features. “The brain would get cold. Santo cielo.”
Rafael was pinching the bridge of his nose, his shoulders shaking with silent mirth. Doc had his face buried in his hands, but his ears were red. “The clinical accuracy of that concern is somehow the most troubling part,” he muttered, voice muffled.
Dominic watched it all unfold. The initial, protective stiffness in his frame had melted away, replaced by a warm, rolling amusement. He looked down at Angel, who was now looking around at the laughing men with a shy, slightly puzzled smile, as if he was glad they were amused but wasn’t entirely sure why.
He reached over and put a heavy arm around Angel’s shoulders, pulling him close. He dropped a kiss into his white curls, his own body vibrating with suppressed laughter.
“Only you, baby,” Dominic rumbled, his voice rich with affection. “Only my boy. Afraid of hairdressers from the 1800s.”
“They were very aggressive, Daddy,” Angel said seriously, leaning into the embrace, comfortable now that the reaction was clearly positive. “And they didn’t have anesthetic.”
This set Spark off into another paroxysm, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes. “No anesthetic! He’s got a point! That’s a valid critique!”
The table’s outburst had drawn glances from other inmates nearby. Seeing the Reaper’s table in hysterics over something the tiny, pretty omega had said was a bizarre sight. It reinforced the strange, unspoken rule about Angel: he existed in a different category. He could say the unsayable and provoke laughter, not violence.
As the laughter began to die down, Spark wiped his eyes, gasping for breath. “Okay, okay. Angel wins. We have a definitive answer. The greatest fear at this table is historical frontier torture. Good to know. I’ll be sure to keep any stray Comanche war parties away from you, kid.”
“Thank you, Uncle Spark,” Angel said, perfectly sincere.
The conversation splintered into lighter, easier channels, buoyed by the strange release of tension Angel’s comment had provided. Spark started theorizing about the worst ways to die based on historical periods, which Doc countered with dry statistics about modern causes of mortality. Silas offered grunted commentary about methods he’d seen that were, in his opinion, “sloppy.”
Through it all, Angel ate his food, listening intently, interjecting with innocent questions that were either brilliantly perceptive or wildly naive—it was impossible to tell. Dominic kept his arm around him, a steady, grounding presence. His hand would occasionally rub Angel’s arm or play idly with the ends of his pigtail.
Rafael, once the laughter had fully subsided, leaned forward slightly, his voice cutting through Spark’s ramble about Renaissance poison rings. “It’s a smart fear, actually.”
Everyone looked at him. Ghost rarely offered unsolicited analysis.
“How do you figure?” Doc asked.
Rafael’s dark eyes rested on Angel. “It’s specific. Concrete. It’s not an abstraction, like ‘being alone’ or ‘failure.’ It’s a visceral, physical image. The mind latches onto those more easily when the bigger, vaguer fears are… otherwise occupied.” He didn’t elaborate on what those bigger fears might be—the vast, yawning terror of a life sentence, the memory of past trauma, the constant, low-grade threat of prison violence. He didn’t need to. “It’s a manageable fear. You can watch for it. You can avoid westerns. You can keep your hair very clean and well-guarded.” He gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod to Dominic. “It’s a child’s fear. Precise and literal.”
The table absorbed this. It made a dark kind of sense. Angel’s mind, having confronted and enacted the ultimate violence upon his abusers, had perhaps shied away from formless dread and settled on something bizarrely tangible.
Angel was watching Rafael, his head tilted. “Do you have a specific fear, Uncle Ghost?”
Rafael’s smile was thin and professional. “Of course. Losing my place in a book. Infuriating.”
Another round of soft chuckles. The mood had settled into something comfortable, almost domestic, despite the grim surroundings.
The moment was shattered by a tray slamming down on their table, right next to Spark.
A large alpha with a shaved head and a spiderweb tattoo on his neck loomed over them. He smelled of aggressive pheromones and cheap hooch brewed in a toilet tank. His eyes, bloodshot and gleaming, were fixed on Angel with a wet, possessive hunger that made Dominic’s arm tighten instinctively.
“Well, well,” the man slurred. “The Reaper’s little prize. Heard you got a unique fear, pretty thing. Don’t worry. I ain’t got no knife for your hair.” He leaned closer, his breath foul. “I got other plans that don’t involve cuttin’.”
The air at the table changed instantly. The casual comfort vaporized.
Silas didn’t stand up. He simply turned his head and looked at the man. The flat calm had returned to his eyes, now with a chilling, anticipatory glint. Matteo went perfectly still, a statue of impending violence. Spark’s playful energy condensed into a coiled, dangerous focus. Doc’s hands went still on the table, his mind likely already assessing the angles of injury.
Rafael watched, a passive observer logging data.
Dominic didn’t shout. He didn’t even raise his voice. He slowly turned his head to look up at the intruding alpha. The warmth was gone from his eyes, replaced by a black, bottomless void. The shift in his energy was so potent it felt like the temperature dropped.
“You have three seconds,” Dominic said, his voice a soft, conversational scrape of gravel, “to take your tray, and your breath, and get them the fuck away from my son’s air.”
The drunk alpha, emboldened by his brew, puffed out his chest. “Or what, old man? You and your retirement home crew gonna—”
He never finished the sentence.
He didn’t see Silas move. One moment the giant was seated; the next, his left hand—a hand the size of a dinner plate—was clamped around the back of the alpha’s neck, fingers digging into the pressure points beside his spine. It wasn’t a violent lunge. It was a seamless, almost gentle-looking motion of terrible, effortless power.
Silas pulled the man down, not roughly, but with inescapable force, until his ear was level with Silas’s mouth. Silas didn’t whisper. He spoke in a low, clear monotone that carried just enough for their table to hear.
“The kid’s fear is gettin’ scalped,” Silas said, his breath stirring the hair by the man’s ear. “My fear is havin’ to explain to the Reaper why I let a stain like you make his boy smell your rot. But you know what? I think I can get over my fear. Wanna see?”
The drunk alpha’s bravado drained away, replaced by the primal understanding of prey in an inescapable grip. He gurgled, his eyes wide, fixed on Dominic’s impassive face.
“Tray,” Dominic said, not looking at the man, but at Angel. He was covering Angel’s nearest ear with his hand, a small, shielding gesture.
With a trembling hand, the alpha fumbled for his tray. Silas released his grip just enough to allow it. The man stumbled back, his face ashen, the spiderweb on his neck pulsing with his frantic heartbeat. He turned and nearly ran, disappearing into the crowd without a backward glance.
The table was silent again, but this was a different silence. Sharp. Satisfied.
Spark let out a long, low whistle. “Well. That was a teaching moment.”
Dominic removed his hand from Angel’s ear. He turned Angel’s face gently towards him, searching his eyes. “You alright, baby?”
Angel nodded, his expression more thoughtful than scared. “He smelled bad, Daddy. Like the drain in the showers.”
“He won’t smell near you again,” Dominic promised, his thumb stroking Angel’s cheek. He looked at Silas and gave a single, slight nod. Acknowledgement. Thanks.
Silas grunted, returning to his meatloaf as if he’d just swatted a fly. The crisis, potential and abrupt, was over.
The bell for end of meal clanged, a harsh, jarring sound. As they stood, gathering their trays, Spark slung an arm around Angel’s shoulders, mimicking Dominic’s earlier pose.
“Don’t you worry, kiddo,” Spark said, his voice back to its bright, manic cheer. “Your hair is safe with us. We’re your personal, federally-funded anti-scalping task force. It’s in the charter.”
Angel smiled up at him, trusting and bright. “Thanks, Uncle Spark.”
As they filed out in their usual formation—Dominic and Angel in the center, the others a protective perimeter—the ordinary dread of the prison evening felt a little lighter. The echo of laughter still seemed to hang around them, a fragile shield against the concrete and steel. They walked back to the cells, a unit bound by strange loyalties and stranger fears, the youngest among them leading them all, unwittingly, by the sheer, bizarre force of his unvarnished truth.