Chapter 32 - THE PRISON YARD AT LEWISBURG
The winter wind swept across the concrete exercise yard of the Lewisburg federal penitentiary like a razor blade, kicking up small whirlwinds of dry snow against the chain-link fences. Inmates in orange jumpsuits huddled near the steam vents by the laundry blocks, their breath pluming white in the freezing air.
Dominic Valente walked alone along the perimeter fence, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his heavy gray prison coat. He wore no hat, and the freezing sleet plastered his iron-gray hair flat against his skull. He didn't look at the other inmates, and they didn't look at him. Men who spent decades building empires learned early that a fallen king was either a target or a ghost; Dominic had chosen to be neither. He was simply a man waiting out the arithmetic of his sentence.
A guard approached him, crunching through the crusty snow with a clipboard under his arm.
"Valente. Mail call came through the annex. Special delivery from Harrisburg."
Dominic stopped. He turned slowly, his boots grinding against the frozen slush. He took the thin white envelope from the guard's gloved hand. There was no return address, only a Pennsylvania postmark dated two days prior.
He walked back toward the concrete overhang of Cellblock C, sat down on a scarred green bench out of the direct wind, and slit the envelope open with his thumbnail.
Inside was not a letter. It was a photograph—a glossy snapshot taken through a rain-streaked window, showing a small hardware store sign partially covered by snow, with a warm yellow light glowing from the second-story window above it. Through the glass, two figures could be faintly discerned sitting at a wooden kitchen table.
On the back of the photo, written in that familiar, immaculate schoolteacher hand:
May you like
The snow is deep this year, Dominic. The shop stays warm.
Dominic stared at the handwriting for a long time. The wind howled against the steel corrugated roof above him, but for a moment, he could almost hear the sound of a marble fountain running in the middle of a Philadelphia courtyard, far away and long ago. He slipped the photograph back into his coat pocket, right next to his heart, and walked back toward the cellblock doors without looking back.
