Chapter 5: Blackmail in Broad Daylight
The nurse’s name tag read PIERCE. Her fingers, thin and strong like steel cables, dug into the soft flesh of Sarah’s upper arm. She’d steered them not toward B-block, but into a short, dead-end corridor housing fuse boxes and a janitorial closet, away from the river of guards flowing toward the yard.
The blaring lockdown klaxon provided a blanket of noise. Pierce pushed Sarah against the cold concrete wall, the impact knocking a gasp from her lungs. The woman’s face was inches away, her eyes a flat, institutional gray.
“The test,” Pierce hissed, the words slicing through the alarm’s wail. Her free hand went to the radio clipped to her belt. “Two lines. Rivera’s an idiot, but she knows how to read. Now you answer quick, before my thumb hits this button. Whose is it? Toretto’s? Or did the warden finally get what he wants from you?”
Sarah’s mind went blank, wiped clean by pure animal fear. She saw Pierce’s thumb resting on the radio’s call button. She saw Dom’s plan, the ledger, their fragile future, all about to be incinerated before it even had a chance to breathe.
“Toretto’s,” Sarah choked out. The truth was the only shield she had, a desperate gamble that this woman’s loyalty was to blackmail, not to Thompson.
Pierce’s smile was a grim slit. “Interesting.” She didn’t remove her thumb. “So you’re carrying the baby of a man with a life sentence.A violent man. That’s a tragedy for the child. The state would see it that way.”
“What do you want?” Sarah spat, finding a sliver of defiance in the terror.
“The same thing everyone wants in this shithole. A way out. Toretto has weight. He has stamps. He has people who owe him. You’re going to be my new pension plan.” Pierce leaned closer, her breath smelling of mint and stale coffee. “You’ll tell him. Starting today, you both work for me. Information, stamps, favors. You’re my little pipeline into B-block. And in return, Dr. Mellman’s bloodwork form gets a nice, official stamp that says ‘all clear.’ Your little secret stays between us. And Rivera.”
The terms were laid out with bureaucratic coldness. Sarah was a vessel, now carrying two futures: one hidden in her womb, another held hostage by this woman with flat gray eyes.
“And if we say no?” Sarah’s voice trembled.
“Then I press the button right now. I report a confirmed pregnancy, illicit contraband test, and my strong suspicion of sexual assault by inmate Toretto upon a vulnerable female prisoner. They’ll drag him to solitary, shank him in the showers before the week’s out, and you’ll spend the rest of your sentence in psych, waiting for a state-mandated termination you don’t want.” Pierce’s gaze was devoid of any empathy. It was a simple equation. “Do we have an understanding, Jones?”
The alarm cut off abruptly, leaving a ringing silence that felt more oppressive than the noise. Distant, shouted orders echoed. The lockdown was stabilizing.
Pierce raised an eyebrow, waiting.
Sarah had no cards to play. Only a devastating truth and a ticking clock. She gave a single, stiff nod.
“Good girl.” Pierce released her arm, leaving deep, aching impressions. She smoothed her uniform. “First payment. What started the yard fight?The real reason. Not the gossip. Toretto will know.”
“I don’t—”
“You’ll find out. You have until the end of lockdown. I’ll be at the nurses’ station after dinner.” Pierce turned and walked away, her shoes squeaking on the polished floor, disappearing around the corner as if the transaction had never happened.
Sarah slid down the wall until she was sitting on the cold floor, her head in her hands. The shake was back, deep in her bones.A pipeline. A pension plan. The walls weren’t just closing in; they were developing contracts.
It took her a full minute to muster the strength to stand. When she rounded the corner, a different guard—a young, nervous-looking man she didn’t recognize—was waiting.“Jones? Been looking for you. Your block’s secured. Let’s go.”
The walk to B-block was a blur. The prison was in the agitated, quiet hum of post-incident lockdown. Cell doors were sealed, faces peering through the small reinforced windows. The air smelled of sweat, ozone from the stun guns they must have used, and the coppery tang of blood not fully cleaned.
Her cell door was open. Dom was inside, standing by the sink, shirtless. A fresh, angry bruise was flowering across his ribs, and his knuckles were raw and split. He was washing blood—his or someone else’s—from his forearms. He looked up as she entered, his eyes scanning her for injury first, then for news.
The new guard locked the door behind her with a final clang.They were alone.
“Did it work?” she asked, her voice hollow.
He gave a terse nod, turning off the water. “Diversion worked. Vargas and two of his boys are in the infirmary. I’ve got three days in the hole starting tomorrow for instigating. Standard.” He said it like it was a minor scheduling conflict. He looked at her, really looked, and saw the terror she was trying to lock down. “The exam?”
“Postponed. The alarm… it worked.” She hugged herself, her fingers pressing into the bruises Pierce had left. “But there’s a problem. A new one.”
She told him. Flat, rapid sentences.Pierce. The extortion. The pipeline. The threat wrapped in the cold, clinical language of a state employee.
Dom listened, his expression hardening into something volcanic. He didn’t interrupt. When she finished, he turned back to the sink, gripping the edges so tightly the cheap metal groaned. He stared at his own reflection, at the fresh bruises over the old tattoos.
“A nurse,” he said, the word dripping with contempt. “She thinks she’s a warden.”
“She has the bloodwork. She has Rivera. We have nothing.”
“We have the ledger,” Dom said, turning around. “Or we will. Miller got the page.”
Hope, sharp and painful, lanced through her. “He did?”
Dom walked to his bunk, reached underneath the loose edge of the mattress, and pulled out a single, crumpled sheet of unlined paper. He handed it to her.
It was a photocopy, poor quality, but legible. Columns of dates, inmate numbers from both the men’s and women’s blocks, and dollar amounts. Not large ones.Fifty dollars. A hundred. Two hundred. At the bottom of the list, a different notation: “SW-4, contraband premium.” Next to it, a name that made her stomach lurch: Celeste, D-Block. And a time, three days from now.
“It’s a payoff list,” Dom said quietly. “Guards bringing in contraband—drugs, phones, blades—for inmates. Thompson skims a fee. He’s not just running a prison. He’s running a concession.”
“And the women’s names?” Sarah’s finger trembled over Celeste’s name.
“That’s the ‘SW-4.’ Special detail. Celeste gets pulled for a ‘psych eval’ during that time slot. We both know what that means.” Dom’s jaw was a stone. “He’s not just skimming money. He’s arranging access.”
The horror of it was bureaucratic, mundane, and utterly evil. The ledger wasn’t a smoking gun; it was a ledger. It was evidence of a system, corruption worn smooth by routine.
“This is our leverage against Thompson,” Sarah whispered. “But Pierce…”
“Pierce works for the system. This,” he tapped the paper, “is the system. We use one to neutralize the other.” He took the page back, folding it carefully. “She wants a pipeline. We’ll give her one. A poisoned one.”
“How?”
“We feed her information. Starting with the truth about the fight. Vargas was moving product—suboxone strips—for Thompson. He was shorting the take. I didn’t start a random fight. I called him out on it, in front of his crew. I was doing the warden’s collection work for him.” A grim, dark smile touched Dom’s lips. “That’s the ‘real reason’ she wants. We give it to her. Let her think she’s getting insider gold. And we seed everything we give her with traces of the ledger.Guard names. Inmate numbers from the list. We make her curious. We make her greedy. We make her start looking at Thompson’s operation and wondering how she can get a bigger cut.”
The plan was elegant and terrifying. They were threading a needle between two predators, hoping they’d turn on each other.
“And what do we get?” Sarah asked.
“Time,” Dom said simply. “We buy days, weeks. Enough for Rivera to smuggle in another test in a month to confirm, for us to find a way to contact someone on the outside who can use the ledger. A reporter. A lawyer. Someone.” He stepped closer, his hands coming up to cradle her face, his thumbs brushing away tears she hadn’t realized were falling. “We get you and our baby out of the crossfire. That’s the only win that matters.”
The collective noise of lockdown being lifted began—a series of distant buzzer sounds, the rhythmic unlocking of cell blocks. Their brief privacy was ending.
“You have three days in solitary,” she said, the thought a new ache.
Dom pressed his forehead to hers, a solid, grounding pressure. "Three days is nothing. Use the time. Stay clear of Pierce if you can. Just keep your head down and breathe."
The main door to their block clanked open, followed by the heavy tread of multiple guards.Time was up. He pulled back, his eyes holding hers with a fierce intensity."Listen. Visitor's list got approved this morning. My sister Mia and her husband Brian are coming Friday. I want them to meet you."
The words landed sideways in her panic. "Meet me? Dom, how? I'm on lockdown, I'm—"
"I arranged it weeks ago. Special request.Family meeting. They'll allow it." His voice dropped, urgent. "They're good people, Sparrow. Solid. Brian's... got connections. He understands how systems like this work from the outside." The footsteps were getting closer, echoing down the tier. "If you come out early—when you come out—I want you to go to them. They'll help you. With everything. With the baby."
It was a life raft thrown into a hurricane. A real address, real people, outside these walls. The concept was so foreign it made her dizzy. "You trust them that much?"
"With my life." The cell door rattled as a key slid into the lock. "With yours."
The door swung open. Two guards, Vasquez and the tall one they called Gaines, stood there. "Toretto. Time to go."
Dom gave her one last look, a promise etched in the lines of his face. Then he turned, offering his wrists for the cuffs without a word. The metal clicked shut, loud and final.
They led him away. Sarah watched his broad back disappear around the corner, the silence in the cell swelling to fill the space he’d occupied. It felt colder. The lingering scent of the cheap soap he used mixed with the ever-present mildew.
She sat on the edge of her bunk, the ledger’s secrets and Dom’s plan a tangled knot in her mind. Mia and Brian. A real visit. A possible future. She picked at a loose thread on her state.state-issued pants. Pierce wanted her first payment by dinner. The truth about the yard fight.
She had to find Miller.
Lockdown was formally lifted thirty minutes later. The groan of a hundred cell doors sliding open echoed through the block. Sarah stepped out, the common area buzzing with a subdued, post-incident energy. Inmates clustered, talking in low tones, eyes darting. She scanned for Miller, the skinny kid from C-block who worked in the library, who’d copied the ledger page.
She saw him by the water fountain, hunched over, trying to look inconspicuous. He had a mouse under his left eye, fresh and purple. As she approached, he flinched.
"Miller."
He glanced around like a startled bird. "I can't talk to you. They're watching."
"Who?"
"Vargas's people. They know I was in the admin office before the fight. They think I had something to do with it." His voice was a thin whisper. "You gotta tell Dom, they're asking around."
This was the first ripple."I will. Did anyone see you take it?"No. I don't think so." He rubbed his jaw. "The copier was jammed. It made a noise. Someone might've heard."
A simple mechanical failure. That’s how walls fell here."Okay. Lay low.Thank you."
He nodded, scuttling away toward a group of older inmates.
Sarah moved toward the mess hall, her mind churning. The fight was about Vargas shorting Thompson on Suboxone. That was the gem for Pierce. It linked the guard directly to the contraband network. It was valuable. She had to decide how to wrap it.
The lunch line was a slow shuffle. The air was thick with the smell of boiled vegetables and unidentifiable meat. Her tray was slapped down in front of her, the usual gray slop.
She took a seat at the end of a long table, alone. She poked at the food, her appetite gone. A shadow fell across her tray. It was Pierce, not in her whites, but in guard greens, carrying a clipboard. Doing rounds."Jones." Pierce’s tone was officially pleasant, for the benefit of anyone watching. "Everything settling back down?"
"Yes, ma'am."
Pierce leaned down, pretending to check something on her clipboard. Her whisper was for Sarah alone."Well? The yard. What was it really about?"
Sarah kept her eyes on her tray. "Suboxone strips. Vargas was distributing for a guard. He was skimming. Toretto confronted him about the missing cut."A pause. Pierce’s pen scratched a meaningless note. "Which guard?"Thompson." Sarah said the name clearly. "It was Thompson’s product. Toretto was enforcing the warden’s own debt."
Pierce straightened up, her face a mask of professional neutrality. But Sarah saw it: a flicker in her flat gray eyes.Not surprise. Calculation. This was bigger than she'd hoped."See?" Pierce said, her voice a normal volume again. "Rest and hydration. You're looking pale." She gave a curt nod and walked away, her shoes squeaking on the linoleum.
The trade was made. The pipeline was open. Sarah stared at the congealing food on her plate, feeling the first link of the chain Pierce was forging click softly into place around her neck. She thought of Dom in a barren solitary cell. She thought of his sister, Mia, coming on Friday. A real person from the world of sunlight and open sky.
She forked a tasteless bite into her mouth and forced herself to swallow.
She forked a tasteless bite into her mouth and forced herself to swallow. The next three days were a slow bleed of tension. Every interaction felt scrutinized. Rivera wouldn’t meet her eyes in the clinic hallway, just pushed a small paper bag of prenatal vitamins into Sarah’s hands during a chaotic med line before hurrying away.
Sarah slept fitfully in the empty cell, the silence a physical weight. She followed the routine: laundry detail, the yard hour under a flat gray sky, the relentless count times. She listened. The gossip was all Vargas, his broken jaw, the sudden quiet from his crew. A power vacuum was forming, and the block was holding its breath to see who would fill it.
On Thursday evening, Pierce found her returning from the shower. "Your bloodwork came back," she said, her voice devoid of any discernible emotion. She handed Sarah a folded slip of paper."Perfectly normal. See Dr. Mellman in four weeks for a follow-up."
The form was official, stamped, and signed. It said nothing about elevated HCG levels. It was a stay of execution, purchased. Sarah’s knees felt weak.
"Your next payment," Pierce continued, lowering her voice. "I need the names of any inmates talking about switching their product supplier. Anyone who seems nervous about the current... supply chain."
Sarah just nodded, the paper crinkling in her damp hand.
"That ledger you're so curious about," Pierce said, almost as an afterthought, turning to leave. "It would be worth a lot more than monthly vitamins."
The woman had taken the bait. The hook was set. Sarah stood in the humid corridor, the sound of dripping water echoing, and felt no triumph. Only the precarious sense of balancing on a wire strung between two cliffs.
Friday morning arrived with a brittle sunlight. Sarah’s palms were slick. Dom would be out of solitary at ten. The visit with his sister was at one. She’d been given a pass for the family meeting room in C-block, a rare concession. She dressed with clumsy care, smoothing her state-issued shirt, re-tying her bun three times.
At five minutes to ten, she positioned herself near the heavy door to B-block, her heart thumping against her ribs. The electronic lock buzzed, a jarring sound. The door swung inward.
He emerged, moving stiffly. Three days in the hole had left a pale cast to his skin, shadows like bruises under his eyes. But his gaze found her instantly, scanning, assessing. He looked harder, pared down to an essential wire of a man.
He crossed the short distance in a few strides. Without a word, he pulled her into him, his arms wrapping around her with a careful, solid strength. He smelled of industrial soap and the unique, stagnant cold of solitary. She buried her face against his chest, her fingers clutching the back of his shirt.
"You're okay?" His voice was a low rumble against her ear.
"Yeah." It came out muffled. "You?"
"Bored. Did you see Miller?"
"He's scared. Vargas's people are asking questions about the admin office."
A muscle in his jaw twitched. He released her, but kept a hand on her shoulder. "He'll be fine. We'll spread a rumor he was getting visit paperwork messed up. Bureaucratic. Boring." His thumb stroked the line of her collarbone. "The visit's set. You ready?"
"No."
A faint, tired smile touched his mouth. "Me either. But it's good. You'll see."
They had three hours. They spent them in the crowded day room, a paper chessboard between them. They spoke in the quiet, coded language they’d developed. He told her about Mia’s laugh, how it could fill a garage. About Brian’s calm, how he could diagnose an engine problem just by listening. He was painting a portrait of a world where things could be fixed.
At twelve-thirty, a guard called her name. "Jones.Visitor pass. Now."
Dom squeezed her hand once, hard. "Tell her I said the '69 Charger project is hers. She'll know what it means."
The walk to C-block was a blur of echoing gates and perfunctory pat-downs. The family meeting room was a depressingly cheerful attempt at normalcy: faded posters of mountains, scuffed round tables, the smell of old coffee and lemon disinfectant.
Two people sat at a table by the wall. A woman with warm, intelligent eyes and dark hair stood up as Sarah entered. She wore jeans and a simple sweater, looking utterly, overwhelmingly real. The man beside her was lean, with a watchful, steady expression.
"Sarah?" The woman's voice was softer than Sarah had imagined. "I'm Mia. This is Brian."
Brian gave a small, acknowledging nod. "Hey."
Up close, Sarah saw the family resemblance in Mia’s smile, the same stubborn set to her jaw as Dom's. "He said to tell you the '69 Charger project is yours," Sarah blurted out, her voice tight.
Mia’s eyes instantly glazed with tears. She let out a shaky laugh, covering her mouth for a second. "Stubborn jerk." She gestured to a chair. "Please, sit. Are you... okay in here?"
It was such a vast, impossible question. Sarah sat, her hands folded on the table. "Some days."
"Dom’s letters," Mia said, leaning forward. "He doesn’t say much. But the last few, he talked about you. A lot." She glanced at Brian, who was quietly observing the room, the guards, the door. "He said you might need friends. On the outside."
"I don’t even have an outside yet," Sarah said, the truth escaping before she could cage it.
"You will." Brian spoke for the first time, his tone matter-of-fact. "Parole boards like stability. A place to go. A job possibility." He didn’t make it sound like charity. He made it sound like logistics.
"He said you’re good with numbers," Mia said gently. "Brian’s shop, the legit one, always needs someone for the books. It’s not a promise. It’s a possibility on paper. Something to show them."
A concrete possibility. It was a key, gleaming faintly in the dark. Sarah’s throat closed. She nodded, unable to speak for a moment.
Mia’s hand crept across the table, not touching, just offering. "He also said you’re family. That’s not a word he uses lightly. So that’s what we are. However this goes."
The guard by the door shifted, checking his watch. Their time was half gone.
Sarah leaned forward, her voice dropping to a whisper. "There’s something happening in here. With the warden. Dom’s trying to handle it, but it’s... it’s bigger than a cell block fight."
Brian’s gaze sharpened. "What kind of something?"
"A ledger. Contraband. Payoffs." She gave them the bare bones, the structure, omitting her own role and the terrifying new life inside her. "He has a page. It’s evidence, but it’s trapped in here with him."
Brian exchanged a long look with Mia. "Could you get it out?" he asked, his voice low and even.
"If I had a way. They search everything."
"Not everything," Mia said thoughtfully. "Not if it's ordinary."
Brian reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a thin, battered paperback. It was a used car repair manual. "I brought this for Dom. Thought it’d pass the time." He slid it across the table. "The spine is cracked on page one-oh-seven. It’s seen better days."Sarah understood. She took the book. It felt heavy with implication. "He’s in B-block. I’m not sure I can—"
"Get it to him," Brian said. "Or don't. It's just a book." His meaning was clear. You’re the courier.You decide.
The guard cleared his throat. "Five minutes."
Mia reached out then, and her fingers closed around Sarah’s. Her hand was warm, callused from real work. "You tell my brother to keep his head down. And you keep yours down too. Just get to the gate, Sarah. We’ll be right there on the other side."
They stood. The goodbye was awkward, constrained by walls and rules. Brian gave her another nod. Mia’s smile was strained, full of a hope so fierce it hurt to look at.
Sarah walked back, the manual tucked under her arm. Its weight was a secret. A plan. A thread leading out. She passed through the gates, her mind racing with the feel of Mia’s hand, the steady certainty in Brian’s eyes.
She entered B-block just as the men were returning from their own yard time. Dom was by the water fountain, drinking deeply. He saw her, and the question was plain in his raised brow.
She walked straight to him, holding out the book. "Your sister brought you this. Said you’d find it useful."
He took it, his fingers brushing the cracked spine. He looked at her, then down at the manual, his expression unchanging. But his eyes, when they met hers again, held a new, hard glint of light. A tool had been delivered.
Around them, the block buzzed with its usual afternoon unrest. But in that silent exchange, a circuit was completed. The inside had reached out, and the outside had reached back. The wire she was balanced on now had another anchor point, solid and real, somewhere beyond the razor wire.