Gangster Moll (Gun Moll #2)
Bethany-Kris & Erin Ashley Tanner
“Wake your lazy asses up,” a male voice said.
Melina opened one eye and stared at the peeling gray ceiling above her head. A large piece of paint clung desperately to the ceiling. She was sure if she breathed too hard, the old paint would hit her in the face.
Death by lead poisoning.
Melina was sure that was what the pigs who ran the jail were hoping for. Too bad for them; she had other plans.
“Melina, are you awake?”
She opened both eyes, yawned, and stretched before she eased herself from the top bunk and down to the hard concrete floor. Melina did her best to ignore the guards walking up and down the block outside her cell.
“Does this answer your question?” she said to her roommate.
“Damn, girl. You don’t have to be so hostile. You should be happy.”
Folding her arms, Melina stared at the brown-skinned woman sitting on the bottom bunk. With black hair done up in thick rope twists that hung midway down her back and a permanent warm smile, Erika’s morning cheer grated her nerves. It had from the moment they’d been assigned as cellmates.
“And why is that, Miss Sunshine?” Melina asked.
“Because tomorrow, you’re getting out of this dump.”
Melina opened her mouth and then promptly closed it.
Erika was right. Tomorrow she would be a free woman.
“How could you have forgotten about something as important as that?” Erika asked as she stood and moved to brush her teeth.
Melina shrugged nonchalantly. “I guess because I stopped counting the days a long while ago.”
At least that was what she was saying out loud. Privately, the truth was a whole different matter. Five and a half months may not have been much time to Erika or some of the other women here, but to Melina it seemed a lifetime had been taken away.
A lifetime of burning kisses.
A lifetime of passionate lovemaking.
A lifetime of Mac.
Mac.
The boyfriend she hadn’t seen or heard from since her sentencing.
Melina swallowed the hot bitterness that threatened to well up in her. It wasn’t his fault. She knew enough about Cosa Nostra to understand why Mac had stayed away.
As a newly minted Capo of the Pivetti crime family, it wouldn’t look good for Mac to be putting money on her commissary account, much less coming to see her on visitation days.
It didn’t matter that they were in love.
It didn’t matter that Melina would rather slit her own wrists than betray the man she loved.
She wasn’t Mac’s wife and to Cosa Nostra, that made her a liability.
Honestly, Melina was more than surprised that there hadn’t been a warning delivered for her to keep quiet or another less than subtle threat. No doubt, she owed the fact that she was still breathing to Mac sticking his neck out for her.
It surely wasn’t because Luca Pivetti felt like being merciful.
The man didn’t like her and the feeling was mutual.
“Good thing I’m keeping up with it for you, then,” Erika said.
She came close and placed her hand on Melina’s shoulder.
“I guess so. I don’t know how you do it.”
“Do what?” Erika asked.
“Stay so upbeat.”
“What good is being depressed or upset going to do? I did the crime and I have to do the time. Besides, maybe my good behavior will get me out of here earlier. You never know.”
Facing three and a half years for marijuana possession with intent to sell, Erika’s glass-half-full mentality truly worked Melina’s nerves sometimes, but her cellmate was making some valid points. After all, Erika’s stellar behavior had kept her from being sentenced to one of the harsher women’s facilities and had gotten six months knocked off her initial sentence. There was even talk that the rest of her sentence could possibly be commuted down to strict probation. Perhaps if Melina had employed the same mentality, she’d have had some time shaved off her own sentence.
In what universe?
Melina wasn’t like Erika. She had a rap as a prostitute connected to Cosa Nostra and for that reason alone, she’d been made an example of. What the hypocrites who’d imprisoned her hadn’t realized was that she came from strong stock. Nothing was going to break her.
Not this incarceration.
Not even being separated from Mac.
“I guess you’ve got a point,” Melina finally said.
“But you’re not buying it.”
“Let’s just say life has rarely worked out for me the way that I’ve wanted it to. You learn the easiest way to survive is not to have expectations.”
“Seems like a sad way to live,” Erika said.
“It is.”
Melina moved around Erika in the tiny cell to brush her teeth before the guards would come to escort them to the cafeteria for breakfast. If you could call it that. The food was terrible.
“You miss him, don’t you?”
Melina stopped brushing and spit. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”