Chapter 6: Visitation Hunger
The words hung in the air between them, a different kind of violence. Dom’s body went rigid, a statue carved from sudden, awful understanding. Thompson wasn’t just looking for a connection to Pierce. He knew. He knew Sarah was pregnant. Sarah’s secret, their fragile, impossible hope, was now a weapon in Thompson’s hand.
He stared at the polished wood of the table, forcing his face into an expression of weary confusion. “Smuggling? Contraband?” He let his voice sound dull, bruised. “She’s my celly. I look out for her. Makes the time quieter.”
Thompson didn’t buy it. He laughed, a dry, hacking sound. He straightened up, pacing slowly behind Dom’s chair, the rubber soles of his shoes squeaking on the linoleum. The electric prod, a slim black baton, rested on the edge of the table, its tip a dull, oily metal. Thompson picked it up, not threateningly, almost idly.
“Let’s not waste each other’s time, Toretto. I make it my business to know things. A guard on the medical line reports an inmate experiencing persistent nausea. Refuses examination. Makes friends with the laundry hag, Rivera, who suddenly seems very protective.” He stopped pacing. “Even a blind man could see the girl is sick every morning. She looks pale. Tired. Women get that way for a reason.”
He tapped the prod lightly against his own palm. Thwap.Thwap. “A little bird told me she had a visit, recently. Two visitors. Security flagged it as unusual. And now there are ripples in my pond.Information leaks. Rumors spread. Contraband channels get ambitious.” He leaned down again, his voice a confidential whisper that reeked of coffee and mint. “You’re trying to build something.A little rebellion. You think I don’t see it? But you made a mistake. You got her pregnant. That’s a vulnerability. A big one.”
Dom remained silent, his mind racing, cold and clear despite the storm in his gut. He had to keep the focus on him. The ledger. The outside contact. Brian’s friend. Those could not surface. Sarah and the baby were the shield now, the only thing Thompson thought he understood.
“What do you want?” Dom asked, his voice flat.
“I want my prison back under my control,” Thompson said, his face hardening. The façade of the reasonable businessman fell away. “I want the names of every inmate involved in your little information network. I want to know how you’re communicating with the outside. And I want to know who she saw in that visitation booth.”
He circled back to the front of the table, placing his palms flat on the surface. “Give me that, and the girl goes to a hospital. Proper prenatal care. Someplace… gentler. Until the brat is born and adopted out to a nice family. She might even get time off for good behavior.” He let the offer hang, watching Dom’s eyes for a flicker of hope to exploit. “You could see her sometimes. From a distance.”
The image was its own torture. Sarah, alone in some state facility, stripped of her child.
“Or,” Thompson continued, picking up the prod and thumbing a switch. A low, angry buzz filled the small room, a sound of pure malice. “You stay stubborn. You protect your little crew. And I personally ensure her pregnancy is the most uncomfortable, terrifying nine months of her life. I’ll have guards search her cell daily. Strip searches. Solitary for minor infractions. The food will be worse. The work detail harder.” The buzz intensified. “And if, by some miracle, she carries to term in this environment, the child will be a ward of the state born inside a prison infirmary, and its mother will be shackled to the bed during delivery.”
He stepped closer, the buzzing prod now just inches from Dom’s chest. “And you, Dominic, you will watch. From solitary. You will hear about every indignity. And when it’s all done, when she’s broken and empty, I will transfer her to a maximum-security facility upstate. You will never see her again. You will have nothing.” He leaned in. The static from the prod made the fine hairs on Dom’s arm stand up. “So choose. The easy way, where she gets a shred of mercy, or the hard way, where I take everything. Starting with her dignity.”
Dom looked from the buzzing tip to Thompson’s eyes. There was no bluff there.
There was no bluff there.
Dom let his shoulders slump, the picture of a defeated man.
The buzzing prod hovered, waiting.
Thompson leaned back, a slow, smug satisfaction spreading across his face. He believed he had won.
Dom looked at the floor, his voice a low, reluctant mumble. “She saw her aunt. And a friend of her mom’s. Old ladies. They brought photos, that’s all. Tried to give her a bible. The CO took it.” He let that sit, a boring, useless truth. Then he lifted his gaze, letting a flash of raw, personal anger show. “But the smugglers… You wanna know who’s feeding her? Look at your own payroll. It ain’t an inmate network.”
Thompson’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”
“Pierce,” Dom said, spitting the name like it was poison. “The nurse. She’s been using Sparrow. Using the medical line, the laundry, to move stamps, information. Sparrow’s just a mule. A scared kid trying to survive.” He sold the lie with a thread of real fury, because Pierce was using her. “You want your control back? She’s your leak. She’s ambitious. Thinks she can carve out her own piece.”
It was a perfect deflection. It implicated a real problem for Thompson, it explained the contraband, and it protected the real ledger, the ghost license, the outside contact. It painted Sarah as a pawn, not a player.
Thompson’s smugness flickered, replaced by cold calculation. Pierce was a plausible threat. “Proof?”
“Sparrow’s got nothing,” Dom said, his voice tired. “Pierce is careful. But watch her. Watch who she talks to on the outside. The traffic citations, the parking tickets in the visitor log for her ‘cousins’—that’s not family. That’s business.” He was weaving speculation into the fabric of reality, giving Thompson a real thread to pull. “Sparrow’s just trying to get through the day. She’s terrified. Of you.Of her. Of this.” He gestured vaguely, encapsulating the pregnancy, the prison, everything.
Silence stretched. The buzzing stopped as Thompson thumbed the prod off. He placed it gently back on the table. The sudden quiet was louder than the noise.
“You’ll work for me,” Thompson stated, his decision made. “You’ll be my eyes on Pierce. You confirm this. You bring me evidence. You keep the other inmates off her back while I deal with her. And you keep that girl in line.”
Dom gave a single, grudging nod. It was the deal he’d pretended to consider, now forced upon him with new, horrific terms.
“And the medical care?” Dom asked, the words sharp.
Thompson waved a dismissive hand. “She’ll see the doctor.Once. To confirm. After that, her health is a reward for your good behavior, Toretto. You deliver Pierce to me, and I’ll consider a hospital transfer. Fail me and I fuck sarah before your eyes toretto to see if her pussy is still tight enough for you
Dom didn’t flinch. The explicit threat was just another layer of the same brutal calculus he’d known for years. The meaning wasn’t in the ugly words, it was in the unblinking eye contact, the absolute certainty that Thompson would do it, and would enjoy it. He absorbed the violence of the statement like a body blow, letting it settle into a cold, hard knot behind his ribs.
“Understood,” Dom said, his voice a gravelly monotone. He met the warden’s gaze and held it, a silent transmission of terms accepted.
Thompson smiled, a thin, humorless stretch of lips. He believed he’d broken something. “Good.Now get out. Your first report is due in forty-eight hours. Use your yard time. Watch. Listen.” He pressed a button on his desk, and the door behind Dom unlocked with a heavy clunk.
Dom stood, his muscles protesting, the ghost of the prod’s buzz still tingling on his skin. He didn’t look back as he walked out, past the stone-faced guard, down the sterile administration hallway. The perfumed air from the warden’s office clung to his clothes, a sickening trail. He kept his breathing even, his face a blank wall, until he was back in the cell block, the familiar sounds of slamming doors and shouted insults washing over him.
Only when his cell door closed behind him did he allow himself to feel the cold fury simmering in his veins.
Later, under the cover of the ventilation system’s rumble, Dom told Sarah everything. He kept his voice low, the words stripped down to brutal facts. He omitted Thompson’s specific, graphic threat, summarizing it as “leverage.” He didn’t need to spell it out. The dread in her eyes showed she understood the currency Thompson dealt in.
“He knows,” she whispered, her hand instinctively going to her stomach.
“He suspects,” Dom corrected, a necessary lie. “He’s using it as pressure. We have to move faster.” He glanced at the mattress where the book was hidden. “The plan hasn’t changed. We need the ledger, and we need to get it to Brian’s contact. But now we have a deadline. His deadline.”
Sarah pulled her knees to her chest, a tight ball on her bunk. “He wants you to give him Pierce. What do we do?”
“We give him Pierce,” Dom said, his voice flat. “Just not the way he expects. She’s the path to the ledger.” He laid it out, the pieces clicking into a dangerous mosaic. Thompson’s office was on the second floor of Admin, a short corridor past the staff lunchroom. It had a solid door, a good lock, and a camera in the hall. The safe was likely a floor model, heavy and old. “We can’t get in. But she can.”
Sarah’s eyes widened. “Pierce? How?”
“She has access. Nurse’s station is on that floor. She moves freely. Thompson trusts her enough, or tolerates her, for now.” Dom leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “We convince her the heat is on her because of Kavanaugh. We convince her that Thompson’s looking for a fall guy for the whole operation. We tell her the only way out is to get proof of Thompson’s corruption first. To steal the ledger and use it as her own insurance.”
“She’d never believe us,” Sarah breathed.
“She will if the threat feels real enough.” Dom’s gaze was relentless. “We make it real. You talk to her tomorrow at med line. You tell her Kavanaugh gave you up as your runner for stamps. That Thompson grilled me about you, about contraband to you specifically. That Thompson mentioned a ‘medical staff connection.’ You watch her face. You sell the fear.”
He paused, letting the idea take root. “Then, in a day or two, I tell her I have a way for her to protect herself. An outside channel. Someone who can take evidence and make it disappear for the right people. The ledger is the only thing that implicates her directly in the money side. She gets it, we get it to the contact, it burns Thompson and she walks away clean. She’ll be desperate enough to consider it.”
It was a high-wire act with no net. They were manipulating a manipulator, using Thompson’s pressure to force Pierce into the one act that could destroy them all.
The next morning, in the slow shuffle of the med line, Sarah’s heart was a trapped bird against her ribs. Pierce stood behind her little cart, her posture stiff as she doled out pills. Her eyes, usually flat and assessing, darted to the CO standing watch more than usual.She was scared.
When Sarah reached her, she accepted the vitamin pack, her fingers brushing Pierce’s. She leaned in, just slightly, her voice barely a whisper under the general din of coughs and clattering cups. “He knows about the stamps. Kavanaugh told him I was getting them. Said they came through medical.”
Pierce’s hand, holding a water cup, went perfectly still. Only a tiny twitch at the corner of her jaw betrayed her. “So?”
“Thompson questioned Dom. Wanted the connection. Pressed him hard.” Sarah met her eyes, letting her own fear show, raw and unchecked. “He mentioned a medical staff leak. Dom didn’t give you up. But Kavanaugh’s still talking. They moved him to protective custody this morning.”
It was a guess, but a good one. Pierce’s face paled two shades beneath her institutional makeup. The rumor mill had been buzzing with exactly that news. Her knuckles whitened around the cup. “Get your pill and move along, Jones,” she said, her voice clipped and professional, but her eyes held a genuine, animal panic. The seed was planted.
In the yard that afternoon, Dom watched Rollins. The man was holding court, but his bravado seemed thinner, strained. News of Kavanaugh’s cooperation was a chill wind for everyone. Dom made a point of nodding at him, a gesture of neutral acknowledgment. It wasn’t friendly. It was a statement: we’re both in the storm.
Two days later, after a deliberately loud and antagonistic conversation with one of Rollins’s lieutenants near the weight bench—a conversation Dom knew would be reported to Pierce—he timed his approach perfectly. He found her alone for forty-five seconds in a supply closet off the medical wing, restocking bandages.
“They’re closing the circle, Pierce,” Dom said, his bulk filling the doorway, blocking the light.
She jumped, a roll of gauze clattering to the floor. “Get out of here, Toretto. Now.”
“Rollins knows you’ve been cutting into his action on the east block,” Dom continued, his voice low and urgent. “He thinks you’re weak. He’s planning to offer Thompson a deal: you, for control of the whole pipeline. He’s got names. Dates.”
It was a lie woven from plausible threads. Pierce’s ambition was well-known; Rollins’s desperation was real.Her defiance cracked. “What do you want?”
“A way out for both of us,” Dom said. “You’ve got access Thompson doesn’t monitor. He keeps a book.A ledger. It’s in his office safe. It has everything. Everyone. Including you.”
Her breath hitched. She knew exactly what he was talking about. Her own participation was in that book.
“It’s your only insurance,” Dom pressed. “You get it. I have an outside channel. A way to get it to someone who can use it. The right people. Feds, maybe. It burns Thompson. It buries Rollins. You walk away a whistleblower, not a conspirator.” He let the fantasy dangle, shiny and complete. “You get the book. I handle the rest. It’s the only move you have left.”
He saw the conflict warring in her face: deep-seated corruption against an even deeper instinct for self-preservation. Greed against fear. Fear was winning.
“I can’t just walk into his office,” she hissed.
“You’re a nurse. You have a master key for the medical lockers. The maintenance chief owes you favors for the Oxy you’ve slipped him for his bad back.” Dom had done his homework, listening in laundry, in the yard, piecing together the prison’s economy of favors. “You get a key impression. You wait for a shift change. You do it when he’s in a budget meeting off the floor. Five minutes is all you need.”
He was outlining her own escape route, and it was terrifyingly specific, terrifyingly possible.
“And if I get caught?”
“Then you’re no worse off than you are now,” Dom said, with brutal honesty. “Rollins is giving you to him anyway. This way, you have a chance. Get the book. Bring it to me in the laundry utility room, tomorrow night, during the third shift change. The camera on that corridor is broken. Has been for weeks.” Another piece of true, useful intel.
He didn’t wait for an answer. He stepped out of the doorway and melted back into the corridor, leaving her alone with the bandages and the enormity of the decision.
The following night was a tight coil of tension. Sarah and Dom worked their laundry detail in silence, the industrial washers thumping like erratic heartbeats. The air was thick with the smell of bleach and mildew. Every creak of the floor, every distant shout, felt amplified.
At 22:30, during the guard shift change, the main laundry lights went off, leaving only the dim security bulbs glowing. The heavy door to the utility room, where they kept broken mop buckets and spare parts, opened a crack.
Pierce slipped through, a shapeless shadow in her nurse’s scrubs. She clutched a thick, worn ledger against her chest. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated in the low light. She looked from Dom to Sarah and back, a trapped animal ready to bolt.
“It’s all there,” she whispered, her voice hoarse.“Dates. Amounts. Codes for the guards. Inmate accounts. Everything.” She held it out, not quite releasing it.“Your end. Now. How do you get it out?”
This was the critical moment. Dom reached into his waistband, beneath his jumpsuit, and pulled out the broken-spine repair manual. He carefully extracted the slim ghost license and the folded phone number. He held them up.
“This goes with it. This is the contact. The license is clean. The number is the way out.” He took a step closer. “We do this together. You give me the ledger. I package it with this. It gets picked up during tomorrow’s kitchen delivery by a driver named Manny. He’s on the payroll, but he works for us now. It’s done.”
Pierce’s eyes flickered over the license, the number. A real ghost. A real escape hatch. The promise solidified the deal in her mind. She slowly extended the ledger. As Dom’s fingers closed around the heavy, faux-leather cover, the door behind Pierce burst open.
The light from the corridor flooded in, framing Warden Thompson and two hulking COs. Thompson’s face was a mask of cold triumph.
“Thank you for the demonstration, Nurse Pierce,” he said, his voice smooth as oil. “I always appreciate initiative.”
Pierce froze, her arm still outstretched, her face collapsing into pure horror. She’d been played from both sides.
Thompson’s gaze slid to Dom, who still held the ledger, and to the ghost license visibly tucked into its front cover. “And thank you, Toretto, for leading me to the prize and for the delightful bonus.” He nodded at the license. “Conspiracy to escape. Possession of fraudulent documents. That’s life without parole. You’re never leaving this place.”
He smiled, then looked at Sarah, who stood frozen by a sorting table. “And as for your side of our bargain…” He gestured to the COs. “Take her. Now.”
One guard moved toward Dom, pulling a taser. The other, a giant named Russo, strode toward Sarah. Dom’s calculation was instantaneous, brutal. The ledger was in his hand. The outside contact was inside it. Sarah was three steps away.
Russo reached for Sarah’s arm.
Dom didn’t think. He moved. He threw the heavy ledger, not at the guard, but in a high, spinning arc toward Sarah. “Run!” he roared, the sound raw and tearing from his throat.
Sarah caught the book on instinct, stumbling back. Russo shifted his focus, turning toward Dom, who was already charging the first CO, ignoring the crackle of the taser. The world narrowed to violence, momentum, and one final, desperate play.
He collided with the guard in a crash of bodies, his only goal to buy her two seconds, to give the heavy book in her hands a chance to vanish into the labyrinth of pipes and machinery behind her.
Chaos erupted in the cramped utility room. The air ignited with the sharp, chemical crackle of the taser and the meaty thud of Dom’s shoulder connecting with the first guard’s sternum. Sarah clutched the ledger against her chest, its hard edges digging into her ribs. Her muscles screamed to run, but her legs were locked, her gaze fixed on Dom absorbing a half-second, stunning jolt from the prongs that glanced off his arm. The smell of ozone and sweat filled her nose.
“Jones, move!” Pierce shrieked, not to help, but in a pure, panicked instinct that shattered the frozen moment.
Sarah spun, her sneakers squealing on the damp concrete. She dove into the narrow gap between a hulking, dormant industrial dryer and the grime-caked brick wall. The space was a canyon of rust and shadow, barely wider than her shoulders. She shoved the ledger deep into a gap where a bundle of insulated pipes vanished into the wall, feeling the grease and decades of lint coat her fingers. It was a temporary hide, a desperate pause. She didn’t look back.
Behind her, Dom used the guard’s stunned disorientation as a lever. He drove him backward, using the man’s own weight to slam him into Thompson, who cursed as he stumbled against the door frame. It created a bottleneck.
“You’re finished, Toretto!” Thompson yelled, his voice raw.
The second guard, Russo, bypassed the tangle and lunged into the machinery after Sarah. His bulk made the narrow path impossible. He started throwing his weight against the dryer, the metal groaning in protest. “Come out, you little bitch!”
Dom, still grappling with the first guard, saw Russo’s attention diverted. He stopped trying to win the fight and started trying to lose it strategically. He took a brutal, short-armed punch to the kidney, the pain a white-hot flare, and used the momentum to stumble backwards, crashing heavily into Russo’s legs.