Captive Of Lies Book 2(Imprisoned in my Heart trilogy...Larry)

Chapter 7

In all his time working in a prison, Louis had never once gotten a scratch. Oh, he’d seen his fair share of bust ups, from playful whacks to full-on fights – and he’d seen the boy he loved have his face rearranged in a prison skirmish. So he knew exactly what could go on when you were in a building with about a hundred angry, bored, angsty men with very little constructive outlet. Sometimes it was accidental; he’d seen Liam turn up with a bloody lip once after a prisoner had accidentally head-butted him in the face, and the offender had been distraught at hurting Liam, who everyone saw as a mate – but the fact was that it happened. And Louis had to be on the receiving end of it some time.

He ought to have known that inviting Zayn and his ex-cellmate Tom into his office at the same time to ‘resolve their differences’ wouldn’t end well.

Since Niall’s departure, Zayn had spiralled into a lonely, moody cycle of depression which very few people could pull him out of, even for a moment. The Irish boy had been drawing Zayn out of his shell, and in his absence, Zayn had withdrawn back into it and become quiet and reclusive, worrying all of his friends and relatives. Tom and Zayn had once been very close, and so Louis had brought them together in a valiant attempt to re-establish the broken friendship. Perhaps it was an unwise decision, bearing in mind that he had no idea why they had ever begun a feud, but he felt that if there was one thing Zayn needed, it was a friend. His cell was lonely without the snoring and Irish banter.

“Come on, you guys,” he encouraged, “you were mates once!”

“Yeah,” Tom said darkly, “and that ship has sailed. Newsflash: I hate him.”

“I hate you too,” Zayn said instantly.

“Hey, hey, that’s not helping!”

“I think it is, actually,” Zayn disagreed. “Tom, you’re a –”

He spouted a stream of insults and Tom responded in kind, and Louis’ mouth fell open as he listen to the exchange of swearwords and abuse that the two men were directing at each other. At first his natural love of observation caused him to hang open-mouthed onto every word, fingers itching to scribble down every detail of the screaming match – but when his instincts started telling him that the two men were getting aggressive, he realized that he had perhaps better intervene.

He realized just a little too late that Zayn and Tom were beyond intervention.

“Guys, come on –” he interrupted, stepping between them just as the pale but heavily muscled caramel-haired Tom lunged to plant a punch on Zayn’s jaw.

The blow landed squarely on Louis’ nose, there was a horrible crunch, and then Louis yelped and clamped his hand over his nose. It had not been a soft punch. Red spurted through his fingers and they all stared at him in abject horror.

“Tom, you twat!” Zayn hissed.

“Me? What did I do?”

“You punched him! He’s bleeding!”

“He got in the way!”

“Yeah, well now you’re going to get in the way – of the exit, when I chuck your dead body out of the door!” Zayn yelled, and then he swept Louis to the side and dived at Tom.

Quickly realizing that his experiment had not been a success, Louis dodged around them, one hand still pressed against his face with his fingers swiftly growing stickier and redder by the second, and then he scrambled underneath the table and slammed his hand down on the little yellow button he had never expected to use.

There were no alarms, no sirens, and nothing changed – Zayn and Tom continued grappling on the floor with loud yells, curses and the sound of punches hitting their mark, and for a moment, Louis thought in a panic that perhaps the little yellow button had broken from lack of use. But just as he was cowering under the table with this horrifying thought running through his mind, the door burst open and Liam rushed in, flanked by John and Dean. It took them a nanosecond to analyse the scene before the two brawling men were wrenched apart, and soon the reassuring snap of handcuffs and yells of protest was filling the room. Taking a deep breath, Liam scanned the room, looking for the psychiatrist who owned it.