“I’m not here to fight,” Blake said quietly.

“I know that too.” Walter leaned in. “That’s why they think you’re weak. Out there, that restraint made you a champion. In here, it’s getting you killed. Slow.” He paused. “What’s your plan?”

Blake was silent a long moment.

“Keep my head down. Do my time. Get home to my mother.”

“And if they don’t let you?”

Blake’s jaw tightened. He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

Walter nodded slowly, the way a cornerman nods when the bell is close.

“Then you don’t start it,” he said. “But son—you finish it.”

Outside, the count whistle blew.

It happened on the seventh night.

Blake should have seen it in the small things. The crew went quiet at dinner. Hartley didn’t take his food. He just watched Blake across the hall with the patient look of a man who has set a trap and only has to wait. And near the end of the tier, when the lights dimmed for the night count, Officer Dale Pruitt walked his slow walk toward the far desk, sat down, and turned his back to C Block.

The shower room was the blind spot. Everyone knew it. The camera at the end of the tier could not reach inside that tiled corner. No lens. No witness. Just water and concrete and whatever a man could do there in the dark.

Blake went to wash before lockdown. He heard the door swing shut behind him. He heard the bolt. He turned.

And there they were.

Four of them. Hartley in front. Two of his crew flanking. A fourth by the door. The fourth man had something in his hand, low, half hidden. Blake’s eyes went to it on instinct, the way a fighter clocks a threat, and he saw it was a phone.

Recording. They wanted this filmed. A trophy. A lesson for the whole block to pass around.

“No more pets,” Hartley said. He cracked his knuckles. “Time you learned what happens to quiet boys who don’t break.”

“You don’t want to do this,” Blake said. His voice was even. “Open the door. Walk out. Nobody has to get hurt.”

Hartley laughed. They all laughed.

It was the last easy breath any of them would take.

The first man came from the right, swinging wild, a haymaker telegraphed from a mile off. To everyone watching the video later, it looked like the man simply fell. To Blake, time slowed the way it always had—the way it had since he was sixteen and first stepped through the ropes. The punch came in slow, a lazy arc, and Blake slipped it by an inch. He didn’t even step back. He just moved his head, let the fist pass his ear, and answered with one short left hook to the body.