North America / North Carolina (Butner Federal Correctional Complex, FCI Butner Medium I): January 8th, 2026.
(Robert's POV)
*BRRRRFFFFT*
"Gaaah…fucking prison food." I said while exhaling with a sigh of relief.
The cell silent.
*Thoomp*
I stared at the passing guards who glanced at me but kept walking.
The cell was silent. The atmosphere heavy.
"Status" I thought while glancing at a screen appearing beside my face.
The cell was silent
I looked around for a status screen for a moment and thought "So I really have no cheats or anything except this body and talent."
*BFFFFT*
"Ugh…fuck. It's gonna be a fat one." I said in a a very different deep bass like gravelly grunt compared to my previous nasal voice just a second ago.
*Thoomp*
I grabbed a roll of tissue and rolled some on my right hand while looking back out at the cell door.
I froze.
A petite 4'9 light skinned latina woman stood at the cell door with a baton in her left hand.
The cell was absolutely silent.
The woman stared.
I stared.
The cell was silent.
"Would you like some knee pads." I asked calmly.
"S…sorry what." Asked the woman with a stutter ash she looked behind her and back at me.
I wiped my ass a couple of times with the tissue and dropped it into the toilet while standing up, pulling up the prisoner suit and saying calmly "I'm asking if you would like some knee pads because you're looking at me like you wanna suck my hog."
The woman was absolutely silent.
"E…excuse me, do you know who I am. I am a correctional officer." Said the female officer with a scared look on her face.
The cell was silent.
I chuckled out of nowhere and asked while wiping a nonexistent tear from right eye "Are you scared."
"N…no." Said the female officer with a stutter and her knees shaking.
I was silent for a moment and said "You wanna know what I do when I'm scared."
"W…what is it." Asked the female officer with a stutter while staring at me with shaking knees.
"Fucking nothing, because I'm not a pussy." I said with a wave of my right hand while looking into the toilet and seen a fat brown turd in it.
The cell was silent.
I rubbed my bearded chin for a moment while staring at the turd and thought "Well it's useful to let me know I'm healthy"
The female officer had a shocked look on her face. It turning into anger as she sromped off.
I watched as the female officer left on the corner of my left eye and looked back down at the toilet. Specifically a object in my own fat turd and reach my right hand.
"For fucks sake" I thought with a sigh while pulling my hand back out of the toilet bowl and looked at a smeared black and gold ring in my hand with a smeared number 9 on it.
I chuckled and thought "Your a fucking beauty. I was looking everywhere for this damn ring, even got out in a holding cell for pancaking a total of 22 guards head and it was inside me the whole time, must be my age for forgetting I swallowed it"
I flushed the toilet and went over to the sink and turned it on and started rinsing the turd stains off the ring.
"That female officer must be new." I said with a mutter as my mind drifted.
I'm a mafia leader.
Yes.
A mafia leader and not just any normal type of one.
Not the one that just runs a mafia as a whole but into a structural one.
There are 11 crowns.
1. The first crown is made of political figures, corruption, judges and officials.
2. The second crown is made of port smuggling, docks and shipping.
3. The third crown is made of narcotics pipeline.
4. The fourth crown is made of both weapon and human trafficking networks.
5. Fifth crown is made of gambling, casinos and bookmaking.
6. The sixth crown is made of
prison networks.
7. The seventh crown is made of human intelligence, blackmail and surveillance networks.
8. The eighth crown is made of biker, road territories.
9. The ninth crown dante or now my empire is made of local gangs.
10. The tenth crown is made up of new orleans nightlife, clubs, and adult venues.
11. The eleventh crown is made up of old money laundering, banks and real estate.
Me being the binth crown makes me established but not untouchable .
I have power, but I'm still one crown among eleven.
That gives me instant enemies.
And for the death-row plot, it works perfectly because:
One of the other crowns framed me.
Maybe the murder that put me on death row was not random. It was a crown war move.
Now let me be honest in my benevolent option as edward.
I got too powerful, too old, too hard to control, or knew too much. So the other crowns must have let me fall because killing me legally was cleaner than killing me in the street.
No.
"I need to get out of this shithole and back to some warm fat tits." I said with a scary look in my eyes that would make any normal man shit themselves from fear.
I waved the ring slightly to get the water off of it while staring down at the ring and scoffed while thinking "Is this supposed to make me fold and start whining about how unfair life is. I already died once and now if I can't get out of here. I die and even if I do nothing to survive I will still die as a death row inmate"
"I couldn't have been more shocked than I am right now you leeching booty whores." I said with a snicker as I stared at the ring in my left hand.
The cell was silent.
I stared down at the ring for a long moment.
Black and gold, the number nine still smeared across the face of it like somebody had taken a piece of a kingdom and shoved it through a sewer pipe.
I slowly wiped the ring across the orange fabric of my prison pants.
The cloth dragged across the metal and took most of the water and shit stains with it.
I stared down at it for a moment.
The ring was heavy. Not physically.
Physically it was just some expensive looking piece of metal with a number on it.
But mentally.
Politically.
Criminally.
It was heavy.
Because in a world like this, symbols mattered more than one simple truth.
A badge was just metal until a coward wore it and people started obeying.
A crown was just jewelry until enough killers died for it.
A ring was just a ring until men started kneeling, bleeding, lying and murdering because of the finger it sat on.
I slid the ring onto my right ring finger.
It fit perfectly.
The cell was silent.
I flexed my hand slowly and stared at the number nine.
"Robert sylvester kelly."I said under my breath with a small chuckle.
The name still sat strangely in my mouth despite a whole 44 years of being inside of this body.
Like wearing another man's expensive shoes while knowing he left future blood in the soles.
I sat down on the metal bed and leaned my back against the wall.
Cold. Hard. Uncomfortable.
Prison really was just poverty with better locks and worse food.
I looked up at the ceiling and thought calmly "January 11th. Three days"
Three days until the state of north carolina killed this body.
Three days until it is decided whether I was worth keeping alive.
Three days to survive a death sentence inside one of the most watched cages in the country.
A normal man would've started praying.
I'm not religious.
A stupid man would've started screaming.
I'm no longer a pussy.
A desperate man would've started punching walls.
I'm no longer reckless reckless.
I was none of those. Not anymore.
I had already done my screaming back in 1982.
I had already done my praying when I got into the bible course program in this shithole to get out of solitary confinement while watching blood leak out of me like a busted syrup bottle.
Now I had three days. So I needed to think.
The cell was absolutely silent. A little to silent.
My eyes narrowed slightly.
"Escaping isn't about leaving." I said calmly with a muttered underneath my breath.
It was about making the people who decided you couldn't leave start arguing with each other.
Bars did not hold men.
Systems did.
Paperwork did.
Fear did.
Money did.
Reputation did.
Love did.
Shame did.
The trick was never to beat the wall.
The trick was to make the wall open itself and then pretend it was still closed.
I tapped my finger slowly against my knee.
First problem. I was on death row.
That meant movement was limited, eyes were heavier, and every guard with half a brain already knew my date.
Second problem.
I was not some nobody.
I was was the ninth crown.
That meant half the people in this prison either feared me, wanted something from me, or wanted to be known as the man who survived disrespecting me.
Third problem.
I had been framed.
And if I had been framed, somebody outside these walls needed me dead before I could talk, move, bargain, or breathe too loudly.
Fourth problem.
I only had two hundred and thirty three dollars, four cocaine packs, one ring, and a reputation attached to a body I barely still understood.
I smiled slowly.
"That's enough." I said calmly with a chuckle.
Most people thought power was having everything.
Wrong.
Power was knowing what the little things became when placed in the right hands.
Two hundred and thirty three dollars could become a favor.
A favor could become a message.
A message could become a rumor.
A rumor could become panic.
Panic could make rich men sloppy.
And sloppy men always left doors open.
I did not need to break out of this correction facility like a dumb action movie idiot and run across mud with dogs chasing after me.
No.
That was peasant thinking.
That was the kind of thinking that got men shot in the back and buried in ground.
I needed to escape my death.
Not just the prison.
There was a difference.
If the state killed robert, I died.
If I disappeared, every crown would hunt me.
If I got cleared too cleanly, the people who framed me would know I had outside help.
If I stayed locked up too long, january 11th would arrive with a needle, a strap, or whatever legal kindness these hypocrites called murder.
So the right answer was ugly.
Controlled.
Public enough to stop the execution.
Private enough to hide the hand moving the knife.
I needed leverage.
I needed timing.
I needed a witness.
I needed a fool.
I needed someone with access who was desperate enough to be useful and scared enough to stay quiet.
My mind went back to the female officer.
New.
Nervous.
Small.
Angry now.
Humiliated.
Humiliation was dangerous.
But useful.
A humiliated person either ran from the person who embarrassed them or came back trying to prove they weren't afraid.
Either way, they came back.
I rubbed my bearded chin slowly and thought "She'll be back"
Not because she wanted to.
Because pride was a leash people mistook for a spine.
Then there were the guards.
Guards were not one thing.
Never were.
Some were soldiers.
Some were bullies.
Some were broke fathers.
Some were racists.
Some were cowards.
Some were criminals wearing uniforms because the state paid better and let them go home after hurting people and even if some got sent to jail or prison they would still get a pardon from a retard president.
Everything is just business.
Money.
And every business had employees who hated their boss, bills they couldn't pay, secrets they couldn't afford exposed, and routines they were too lazy to question.
I knew businesses.
I chuckled.
I went from trying to run a drug cartel to calculating how to survive death row.
Same thing, really.
Inventory.
Staff.
Cash flow.
Security.
Customers.
Threats.
Only difference was now the customers had shanks, the staff had batons, the inventory was human misery, and the cash flow smelled like blood.
I looked down at the ninth crown ring again.
The younger me had built gangs.
Local gangs.
That meant bodies.
Street ears.
Neighborhood debts.
Young men with more loyalty than intelligence.
Old men with less loyalty but better memory.
Women who heard everything because fools always talked around women they thought were beneath them.
Children who saw things adults ignored.
I did not need freedom to move.
I needed the idea of me to move.
That was the value of a crown.
Even caged, a king could make men run if enough people still believed he could punish them later.
The problem was, belief decayed fast when a man sat in prison waiting to die.
So I had to prove I was not dead before the state killed me.
Not by violence.
Violence was cheap.
Any idiot with arms could swing.
I needed precision.
A message that said the ninth crown was awake.
A move that would make the other crowns wonder if the frame had failed.
A move that would make the one who betrayed me flinch.
Because people who framed powerful men did one stupid thing every time.
They checked to see if the body was really buried.
I smiled.
"Come check." I said calmly with squinted eyes.
The cell was silent.
I lifted my hand and stared at the ring.
Five days.
Day one was not for escaping.
Day one was for listening.
Who watched me too much.
Who avoided looking at me.
Who said robert's name with respect.
Who said it with hate.
Who said it like they had already been paid.
Every prison had a rhythm.
Meal times.
Count times.
Guard changes.
Shouting patterns.
Who joked with who.
Who moved quiet.
Who carried messages.
Who had cigarettes.
Who had drugs.
Who had phones.
Who had fear.
I did not need to know every secret.
Just the right one for the right moment.
Then I needed a pawn.
Not a strong one.
Strong pawns thought they were kings.
I needed a weak pawn with a big mouth, a small brain, and something to prove.
God loved sending those.
Footsteps sounded.
I looked toward the bars.
The cell was silent.
A male guard rounded the corner with a tired look on his face and a hand wrapped around the arm of another inmate.
The guard was a thick necked white man with a red face, gray mustache, and the dead bored eyes of someone who had spent too many years drinking beer and eating pretending life already cast him aside for not proving anything.
The inmate beside him was a skinny white boy with pale skin, dirty blond hair braided badly against his scalp, blue eyes, and tattoos that looked like somebody's cousin practiced on him during a garage party.
He had his pants sagging.
His walk had too much bounce.
His mouth had too much confidence.
And his eyes had the stupid wet shine of a boy who had watched too many rap videos, smoked too much cheap weed, and thought saying the word "gangsta" with enough bass would make the world forget he came from a trailer park with unpaid light bills.
The guard stopped in front of my cell and said with a bored voice "Kelly. You got company."
The white boy looked me up and down and immediately tried to make his face hard.
It failed.
Badly.
"Yo, what good, big dawg. They told me I'm bunkin with you, fam." Said the white boy while nodding his head too much.
The cell was absolutely silent.
I stared at him.
The guard unlocked the cell door and opened it.
*CLANK*
"Have fun." Said the guard with a scoff as he shoved the white boy inside.
*CLANK*
The guard shut and looked the door and was about to leave but glanced at me and the white boy and said with a sigh "I'll need to get ready to inform the janitor."
"Yo, big dawg, which bunk yours." Asked the white boy while holding his sagging pants.
I stood up from the bed and stared down at him while saying calmly "I like my fish wet and squirmy."
The cell was silent.
"W…what…" Said the white boy with a stutter as he blinked with with a confused look on his face a couple of times.
"Found you" I thought with the corner of my mouth curling upward slightly as I stepped closer to him with my right hand going towards his face.
The white boy took a step back and said with a stutter and a see tyttsweat trailing down his face "W…no wait a second…WAIT."
…
THE END…