Conduct: Breaking Bond Season 1, #3

By C.K. KANE

BREAKING BOND - SEASON 1
EPISODE 3

How bad can it get?
Very f*cking bad indeed.

Eventually, the shaking slows. The shock ebbs, just a little. I force deep breaths, over and over until I've counted in hundreds.
I tell myself I'm okay.
But I'm not.
Something in me has broken.

 

Cal thinks he's figured out the worst the Regime can throw at him.

That's yet another of his many recent mistakes.

Now he finds out just how brutal teen jail can get.

Now he's keeping his head down, trying his best to stay out of trouble.

Coward.

Coward.

Cal can take anything – he thinks. Used to think. Until a brutal punishment and a new arrival has him facing his biggest challenges – and his biggest shock – yet.

 

When you've fought and fought with every fibre of your being. But the hardest fight is yet to come.

 

Episode 3 in Breaking Bond; save by buying the Volume 1 Episodes 1-3 box set.
Episodes 4-10 publishing regularly throughout 2023. Episodes 4-6 preorders available now.

• Language: English
• Publisher: C.K. KANE
• Release date: Feb 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215035689

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

One year earlier

Does it count as a ‘fight’ if the person is thirty years older and a hundred pounds heavier?

Yeah, didn’t think so.

I pick myself up from my bedroom floor. I swipe blood from my mouth.

On my bed, Billy sits saucer eyed and trembling.

‘Hey,’ I start to say, then have to spit blood.

I spit into my fist and wipe my palm on my dirt-smeared jeans. The blood streak runs the entire length of my thigh.

‘Hey. Billy. He didn’t mean it. He’s just drunk, is all.’

Drunk and had to get more drunk, so punched me in the face because I wouldn’t give him the £10 I earned earlier. Fuck him.

‘But it was Daddy,’ my small brother says.

He starts to sob. His small body wracks with distress.

If our dad hadn’t staggered back out of the house, I might have tried to kill him because of Billy’s face right now. I can cope with the punches – I’ve always known my dad is an asshole, and once I’m sixteen I’m out of this house and taking Billy with me.

Two more years.

But Billy’s never seen Dad in full fisthappy mood like that. His small world (already not that great) has been shaken to the core.

‘It’ll be fine,’ I say.

Of course I don’t believe that.

But for the first time, I don’t think Billy does either.

Does it count as a ‘fight’ if the person is three years older and kidney punches you from behind?

Yeah, didn’t think so.

My brother’s possibly an even bigger asshole than my dad.

The second ‘fight’ of my day is only an hour after our dad smashes me in the mouth.

I’m in the kitchen, trying to find something to make for my packed lunch tomorrow for school. I’ve found a couple of slices of bread and am gazing mournfully in the fridge when – bam – something hits me in the back and I drop hard to the floor.

‘Leave that cheese, asshole – it’s mine.’

Hi, Logan.

I’m up and at him in seconds. I put up a good fight, but Logan carries beer belly weight just like our dear dad. He’s much heavier than me and he uses the weight wisely.

I get him a good sock in the eye and he throws me into the fridge.

Then he whirls around to the kitchen counter. Where I just set the sharp serrated bread knife.

He grabs it.

So that’s the first night I ever run from our house to sleep rough.

That was last October. In June, I get hauled into the Lincoln High office by the school principal. (He’s Principal Skinner, and yeah, I’ve made a hell of a lot of fun of that over the years.) He tells me curtly that the fight in the yard just now is my last ever at this school.

I’m out. Expelled.

‘You may finish the last week of the summer semester if you wish,’ he snaps, like offering a fucking cookie.

I tell him to get fucked.

He calls me a thug. He says I’ll be in prison before I’m eighteen.

Because I have something wrong with me, apparently. I’m violent to the core.

I make the connection, of course; I made it years ago. Getting beaten up regularly at home obviously means I use my fists outside it at any threat or opportunity.

It’s like a trigger thing. It’s been happening for years.

If anyone ever asked why I fight, I’d maybe have told them. If anyone ever bothered to connect the dots, I probably