The CEO of Cristo: A Secret Baby Billionaire Romance (Classic Billionaires Book 1) by Sophie Lark

Author:Sophie Lark [Lark, Sophie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-17T18:30:00+00:00

19

Ethan

October 7th, 2017

“One more, one more, come on, push it!”

Fitz uses two fingers on each hand to help boost the bar up just the tiniest bit, to allow me to get one last rep before I rack the weights.

His encouragement always amuses me, because it sounds like he’s coaching me through labor. That’s what it feels like sometimes, too. I’m grunting and sweating, pushing as hard as I can as if a life depends on it. Nothing depends on it, though. It’s just another way to pass the time.

Fitz pulls the heavy, iron-speckled plates off the bar, switching up the weight for our next exercise.

“That was 250 for five,” he says, nodding approvingly. “Not bad for a guy who could barely bench 160 when he started.”

I had never lifted weights in my life before I came here. I was more of a hiking and cycling kind of guy. That lean, lanky physique doesn’t do you any favors in prison, though. If you want respect, you need to look intimidating.

It’s a lesson I’ve learned in my time here. I never understood it in the real world. But it applies there, too. People are constantly sizing you up. From the moment they lay eyes on you, they’re deciding who you are, what you’re capable of. What they can use you for, and what they can do to you.

Out there I was weak. Naive. Trusting. You could see it in my face, my body, the way I walked and talked and moved.

Somebody saw my weakness. And they took advantage of it.

I’m quite certain of that now.

For a long time I thought it was a mistake that put me in San Quentin. A horrible convergence of bad luck.

I don’t think that anymore.

Somebody put me here on purpose. Maybe a few people, working together.

I have my suspicions about who that might be.

Fitz and I swap positions so I can spot him for the next exercise—seated shoulder press.

Fitz was a professional bodybuilder. He placed in the Arnold Classic five times and took third in Mr. Olympia. He’s shown me old pictures, when he looked like a prize steer on the stage, so swollen with muscle that he could barely move. Now he’s in his late fifties—still far more muscular than even the average bodybuilder, but nowhere near the inhuman size he once maintained.

We’ve been lifting together every morning for four years. I’m one of a dozen guys Fitz trains. For him, it’s a way of maintaining normality, of keeping his identity.

He writes out meal plans for me, instructing me how to get the most protein possible out of the pitiful selection available in the cafeteria and the commissary. He’s offered to get steroids for me as well—they’re smuggled into prison just like cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, and cellphones. I haven’t taken him up on it. My body has already exploded to the point where I hardly recognize myself. His training has served its purpose in making me look like a man instead of a boy. I don’t need to get any bigger than this.

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