Kyle said nothing. The silence between them stretched, thin and brittle as spun sugar over a pit of vipers.
"The warden must dote upon you like a favoured lapdog. Is it the charm, I wonder, or the generous family tithe that keeps the facility's coffers so agreeably full? It must feel positively divine, waking each morn' in sheets spun from the dreams of lesser men, strolling your manicured garden while the world imagines you shackled in some concrete oubliette, tipping the guards as they deliver your dawn repast like courtiers at Versailles.
"One day you shall regale your grandchildren with tales of that dreadful year you 'paid your debt'—all while they sip their inheritance from crystal that never knew the touch of prison glass."
"Phei."
