Page 9 of Hart of Vengeance
“We have our informants,” Brock chimed in.
Liars for sure.No fucking way had Duke had a hand in Hector’s murder. He’d hated the guy, but he had no reason to kill him. “Bullshit.” My teeth clamped together hard. “My brother didn’t even know Hector.” He’d known of him but hadn’t broken bread with the man.
Brock cocked an eyebrow. “Are you certain of that?”
No.Doubt pricked the base of my brain. During my trial, the prosecution’s goal had been to put doubt in the minds of the jurors. “Convict beyond a reasonable doubt,” the judge had firmly ordered.
The prosecuting attorney had been giddy when he’d told the jurors in his opening monologue, “By the time the defendant’s trial is over, there will be no doubt in your mind that he is guilty.”
The murder weapon in my backpack had been the glaring evidence. But my fingerprints weren’t on the gun. The forensic analysis had only shown Hector’s on the trigger. But that hadn’t mattered. The prosecuting attorney had added the perp could’ve only done one thing—used gloves. That was the only obvious piece to support his claim. I’d had a pair of black gloves in the front pocket of my backpack.
The FBI was trying to put doubt in my mind, and they were succeeding.
Motherfuckers.
But I wasn’t about to let them see me sweat. “Duke had no dealings with the Southside Creepers.”
My brothers and I had been in a gang. But Duke had wanted no part of gangs after high school. He also hadn’t been keen on selling drugs, which was the bread and butter for gangs like the Southside Creepers, the one I’d joined my senior year of high school. The gang that Duke, Dillon, and I had grown up in had been mild—fights and territorial crap. But maybe Duke had wanted to add to his empire, which was money laundering as far as I knew, not drugs and certainly not guns.
“You don’t believe us?” Travers asked, seemingly appalled that I didn’t. “Why don’t you ask Duke yourself?”
I would put money on the fact that he was lying about Duke being at Hector’s. Still, I suddenly felt suffocated, as though Travers had clamped his fat fingers around my throat.
I knocked on the window to get Stew’s attention. “Don’t worry. I will.” I highly doubted Duke would confess to me, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to ask.
Stew opened the door.
Fresh air floated in, and I gobbled it up faster than the speed of light, hoofing it out of the room as fast I could as well, not acknowledging Travers, who was telling me they would be in touch.
Fuck them. No way am I being a pawn in their scheme.
“I need to use the phone,” I said on a growl.
Save your rage for Duke.
He was lucky I was in prison.
“Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to snarl.” If any other guard besides Stew were with me, he wouldn’t have had a problem shoving me into a wall. “So did you hear any of it?”
He swiped his badge over a panel at the door leading into the hub of the prison. “Bits and pieces.”
The sound of the lock clicking open echoed, piercing my eardrums. When we were on the other side, I asked, “Do you think my brother would set me up for murder?”
“Can’t say. But people do all sorts of unbelievable things to family.” He sounded as though he’d experienced being burned by a family member.
Stew banked right, and I went left.
“Hart, no phone privileges. It’s time to get back to your cell. We have a shift change in thirty minutes, and that means you need to be in your cellblock.”
It was probably best. The prison phones were heavily monitored, and I had another idea anyway. So I followed Stew back to my cellblock.
Inmates—tall, short, fat, skinny, and in-between—lounged around on chairs and butted their bellies up to tables. Some played cards. Some read. Others talked and laughed.
I searched the room up and down until I spotted Rudy Brown. He was our cellblock’s gang leader and quite savvy in finagling deals with contraband.
Rudy and four of his men were playing cards as I approached. The burly guy next to Rudy, who was famously known on the block as Munster, jumped up to block me.
I raised my hands. “Rudy, can we talk?”
