Page 5 of Sins and Virtue

Officers began to shout, calling for backup, while others tried to contain some inmates.

The alarms set off, blaring to alert a lockdown.

An officer with a mad scowl comes barging at me, and as he reaches his hand for his gun, I prepare my stance, angling my body to the side, pushing off my foot, extending my leg, and kicking his outer thigh, performing a sweep kick. Knocking the cop off his feet as I stole the opportunity to grab his tie on his way down, wrapping it around his throat. Cutting off his circulation while I slipped behind him, wrapped one of my arms around his neck, and with my other arm held his head in a rear-end choke. He struggled and jerked around, his body desperatefor oxygen, control, and freedom. The same freedom he abused and mocked the prisoners of.

“Please! Please! Let me go! I swear I wouldn’t shoot. I let you go,” he pleaded like a dying dog.

As if I would ever believe his words.

“Never,” I taunted, watching him go purple.

“F-fuck… you, bastard!” he wheezed.

And in one swift, bold movement, I snapped his neck.

Immediately, he became limp, and I removed my hands off him as he dropped to the ground.

Adrenaline ran through my veins, pumping my muscles for this fucking excursion.

Taking the pistol in his dead hand since the poor bastard wasn’t going to need it anymore and it would be much more useful in my hands.

“Have a nice life in hell,” I told his corpse.

Going onward, slipping inside a staircase where more officers appeared to come to attack.

“Stop there, inmate! Stop, we tell you.”

I raised the gun, and without remorse or a thought to his miserable life, I pressed the trigger. The bullet fired and landed between his eyebrows. The blood splattered against my clothes and face as his lifeless body collapsed to the ground.

No one, fucking no one, was going to stop me now.

My eyes scoured the place for an exit, noticing how most exits were blocked or cut off completely. Dammit. What do I do now?

Heavy uncertainty roamed across my chest when a hand touched my shoulder and I turned around with my gun ready to shoot.

“Wait!” The forty-something-year-old man holding a rosary in his hand said with a strong Italian accent. He put his arms up to show no signs of being a threat. Yet there was a thin layer of deceit in his eyes.

I kept my pistol steady, gritting between my teeth. “What do you want?”

“I can help you— well, the both of us.” He smiled weakly.

“I don’t even know you. You think I’m stupid enough to trust you.”

“I’m Tomaso,” he introduced himself, as his face wasn’t one I had seen before. “I’m one of the cellmates in charge of church services. Look on the second floor; the library has a secret passageway out of the prison.”

As if I would believe that shit. Did he think, after rotting away in a cell for that long, my brain turned to shit?

“Fucking liar.”

“What would I gain from that?” Tomaso inquired, his shoulders shrugging.

“How do I know you’re telling the truth and not leading me to my death?” I trusted men before, men who I considered my brothers even when they weren’t my blood, and I paid a heavy price for it.

He inclined his head, playing novice. “You just have to trust me.” The footsteps of the officers rushing up the stairs became more prominent as with every step they lingered near. “Or you could just give up now?”

A tick in my hand shook.

Did I have a choice?