Page 19 of Claim

Shit.

The stairs ahead were a choke point. The only way off the landing. Everyone had to pass through them, whether headed for breakfast, the showers, or anywhere that wasn’t a cell. Men funnelled towards them in loose, impatient knots. Shoulders clipped. Elbows nudged. Voices rose and fell in jagged bursts, noise swelling, collapsing, swelling again.

The screws posted at the top and bottom of the wing barked at us to keep it moving. They watched the flow, not the faces. This stretch was about momentum, not detail. Which meant it was always where things happened. And where I couldn’t afford to miss a single shift in the room.

Someone clipped my shoulder and kept walking. No apology.

Across the gap, Ghost pushed off the rail.

I kept him in my periphery as he merged into the stream on his side of the wing, falling into step with the men heading towards the stairs opposite us. From there, it was a matter of timing. Both landings fed into the same stairwell. Everyone ended up in the same place. And he would be right by me.

Colin drifted closer again. I could feel his fear coming off him, thick and electric, like a living, breathing thing. So I stopped short before the stairwell entrance, forcing him to check his step.

“Walk behind me,” I mumbled. “Or not at all.”

He swallowed. “I just—”

“Behind,” I snapped.

He nodded, flustered, dropping back. For a second, it worked. Then the press of bodies surged again, and the gap vanished. The landing curved towards the stairwell, concrete closing in, sound ricocheting off every surface. Boots scuffed. Voices overlapped. The air thickened with sweat and impatience. And in that shifting mass, I caught sight of Ghost. He slipped sideways with the flow, riding the convergence as the two streams met at the turn. Smooth. Planned. By the time my brain caught up, we were in the blind spot and out of the guards’ sightline, swallowed by bodies and noise.

That’s when he went for it.

He came at me hard and fast, his shoulder and forearm driving me into the wall. The impact punched the breath clean out of my lungs, my back slamming into the rail so hard it bit through cloth and skin and sent my cup spilling across the floor. Which fucked me off more than the pain flaring white-hot, sharp enough to blur the edges of my vision. I needed that fucking cup.

Shouts went up immediately.

Not alarm.

Enjoyment.

Everyone loved a fight. More so when it was Ghost reminding the wing who owned it, and me being shown I was nothing. There were men in here who’d worked for Cormac. Men who’d answered to me once. But loyalty inside wasn’t inherited. It was bought. Earned. Paid for in coffee, noodles, cigarettes and, ironically, drugs traded in corners.

Ghost had all of that.

I had fuck all.

Not even my fucking cup now.

I had zero cash on my books. No leverage. No protection. I couldn’t afford to keep my former crew onside. The only currency I had left was violence. Win, and I might survive. Lose, and I got stripped bare. Win too hard, though, and my time in here stretched longer, darker.

Yeah. Fucked either way.

And the screws weren’t on my side either. None coming to my aid right now. Probably paid off the same as everyone else. Quiet transfers. Direct debits. Money landing in the account their missus used for the Sunday roast. Screws were just as easy, if not easier, to buy into looking the other way.

My life, innit?

Ghost’s mate stepped in behind me, blocking the stair, filling the space. Retreat vanished. Wall at my front. Body at my back. I was boxed in tight and Ghost slammed me again, harder. My spine jarred against the rail. Stars burst behind my eyes. But instinct cut through the pain, and I snapped an elbow up, driving it into his ribs with everything I had.

I felt it connect. Solid. Bone on bone.

Ghost hissed and rocked back, but his mate surged in immediately, thick arms grabbing my wrist, wrenching it behind me. His weight crushed in close, pinning me. My shoulder screamed, fire ripping down my arm, but I twisted anyway, bucked my hips, and drove my heel back. It hit. A sharp crack. Bone. A grunt. A stumble. Then Ghost was on me again. No pause. No warning. It was fists and fury and the certainty that this wasn’t about settling a score.

It was about erasing me.

Colin shouted, but Ghost’s mate shoved him. And in that moment, I went for Ghost’s throat, ready to strangle the motherfucker. But he caught my wrist and twisted it. White-hot pain shot up my arm, shoulder tearing, so I head-butted him. Blood burst from his nose, but he laughed as if it were nothing. As if my pounding head hurt more than his broken nose. And he drove me down the steps, shoulder first.

Colin screamed. “Officer! Officer Dent!”