And somewhere in the back of my mind, a terrible voice whispers that maybe Marco was right all along.
Maybe prison is exactly where I belong.
Chapter thirty-seven
Carlo
Dante’s warehouse feels like the center of the universe right now, all concrete walls and industrial lighting and the absolute privacy that lets a man plan the impossible without interference. I’ve been pacing for the better part of an hour while Dante sits calmly at his desk, making calls and taking notes like we’re planning a business merger instead of a jailbreak.
“Transport route is confirmed,” he says, hanging up his latest call. “Prison van takes the A40 to the Old Bailey every Tuesday and Friday for court appearances. Single escort vehicle, two guards plus driver. Standard procedure.”
I stop pacing long enough to look at the crude map he’s sketched out on the whiteboard behind his desk. Roads marked in black, potential intercept points circled in red, escape routes highlighted in blue. It looks simple. Clean. The kind of operation Dante could probably execute in his sleep.
“Traffic patterns?” I ask, forcing myself to focus on the technical details instead of the growing panic in my chest.
“Rush hour works in our favor,” Dante replies, consulting his notes. “Convoy moves slowly, plenty of cover vehicles. We can position ourselves at this roundabout here.” He taps a red circle on the map. “Natural bottleneck, easy to create a delay that looks like normal traffic congestion.”
“Security response time?”
“Depends on the nature of the incident. If it looks like an accident, mechanical failure, something non-threatening, they’ll probably wait for backup before moving. That gives us maybe ten minutes.”
Ten minutes to extract Ginni from an armored prison van and disappear into London traffic. It sounds impossible when he puts it like that, but I’ve seen Dante pull off operations with tighter margins and higher stakes.
But it’s not happening until Friday. Four days away.
Four days of Ginni alone in that hellhole with God knows what kind of animals circling him like vultures.
“We can’t wait that long,” I say for the tenth time in the last hour. My voice is getting more strained with each repetition, the words feeling like gravel in my throat.
“We don’t have a choice,” Dante replies with the patience of a man who’s used to dealing with irrational colleagues. “The courthouse transport is our only viable option. Trying to break him out of the prison itself would be suicide.”
“There has to be another way.”
“There isn’t.” Dante’s voice is flat, final. “I’ve looked at every angle. The only time he’s reachable is during transport. Friday is the earliest we can move.”
I resume pacing, my hands clenched into fists at my sides. The warehouse floor is going to start showing a path where I’ve been wearing it down with my restless movement. Four days. Anything could happen in four days. Ginni could be hurt,brutalized, broken beyond repair while I’m sitting here making plans and waiting for the perfect opportunity.
“What about inside?” I ask desperately. “Someone we can buy, threaten, whatever it takes to keep him safe until Friday?”
Dante shakes his head. “Already checked. None of our people are in his wing. Different classification, different security level. The guys we know are all in the high-security blocks with the serious criminals. Your boy hasn’t been sentenced yet, so he’s in remand with the petty thieves and drug dealers.”
Which should be safer, in theory. Less violent, less organized. But it also means less predictable, less controllable. At least with professional criminals, you know the rules. With desperate amateurs, anything can happen.
“I’m working on it,” Dante continues, his voice gentler now. “Got feelers out to see if anyone has connections in that wing. Guards we can lean on, inmates who owe favors. But it takes time to establish contact, longer to build trust.”
Time we don’t have. Time Ginni might not have.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m sitting here worrying about Ginni’s safety when I was the one who put him in danger in the first place. If I’d acted sooner, if I’d gotten him away from his awful family and into that lovely institution I had lined up. If I had gotten him proper help instead of letting him spiral into whatever desperate state led to that stabbing...
I sink into the chair across from Dante’s desk and bury my face in my hands. The rational part of my mind knows he’s right. Knows that rushing in without proper planning will only get us all killed or arrested. But the rest of me is screaming that every minute we delay is another minute Ginni is in danger.
“Tell me about him.”
Dante’s voice cuts through my spiral of anxiety. I look up to find him studying me with those dark, unreadable eyes.
“What?”
“Ginni. Tell me about him. Help me understand why Carlo Benedetti is willing to risk everything for one boy.”
