Now you owe me a crazy story from your life. Or any story, really. I’m not picky.
Talk to you soon,
— Addy
Shaking my head at this letter which could only be described as a physical representation of my insanity, I put down the pen.
The paper rustled as I folded it, accompanied by the hum of the fridge. Getting up, I yanked open drawer after drawer — somehow, they had all turned into junk drawers — on the hunt for an envelope.
I had to dig through four drawers before I struck gold. I couldn’t remember buying a single one of those things, so frankly, I had no idea where this one had materialized from. Huh. A mystery to be solved on another day.
Stuffing the folded sheet of paper into the envelope, I sealed it shut with decisive movements.
I’d probably end up regretting this, but right now I didn’t give a single flying fuck.
Sasha wouldn’t read it anyway, and I’d rather be myself and be rejected than play it safe and pretend to be boring.
Chapter 3
Sasha
“Markov!Getyourassup. You’ve got mail.”
The order was followed by the sound of a baton banging against metal bars. Judging by the unfamiliarity of the voice, it was — unsurprisingly — one of the new guards. Fucker hadn’t figured out how things worked around here yet.
I was the king of this castle.
“You want to try that again?” I drawled from my spot on the cot, not moving an inch.
Kyrill, my cellmate and second-in-command, snickered from his bed above me.
“What did you say, boy?”
I snorted, cracked open an eyelid and peered at the red-faced fledgling attempting to assert his dominance. At least, I presumed it was what he was trying to do. It just looked ridiculous from where I was sitting, but who was I to judge?
Scratch that. Judging and fucking with these pitiful creatures was one of the only sources of entertainment I had in here.
“I politely asked you to repeat yourself.”
“Get up, you motherf—”
Newbie was about to make a colossal mistake when a hand clamped down on his shoulder. Ferguson, one of the lieutenants, had stopped him from rushing headlong into ruin.
“Problem?” Ferguson asked casually.
The new guy was breathing heavily, his brows drawn in fury. “Markov wasn’t obeying my orders, Lieutenant.”
“I see. How about I take care of this? You go ahead and see if you can give Christian a hand with the transfer paperwork.”
Ferguson snatched our mail out of his hand and dismissed him with a nod. I watched in silence as the newbie’s face flushed with embarrassment at being dismissed so plainly by his superior.
He might have been new — and probably stupid — but he was not stupid enough to misunderstand what was happening here. Newbie narrowed his eyes at me one last time before brushing some invisible dust off his uniform and stalking away from my cell.
The bed creaked as Kyrill jumped off, hitting the concrete with a thud and towering over Ferguson. My cellmate was huge, and I wasn’t exactly small.
I was six-four, but Kyrill was a whole head taller with such a bulky frame, I constantly expected his bunk to crash down on me in my sleep.
One might wonder why we had settled on these sleeping arrangements then. As it happened, Kyrill was also claustrophobic as fuck and on the verge of losing his cool when he merely had to sit on the bottom bunk.