He really was telling Sophie the truth that he didn't mind prison at all. Nate had committed a crime and was caught, so his sense of fair play dictated that he own up to his punishment. Plus it had the added benefit of buying freedom for his team, and he'd do far more than sit in jail to ensure the safety of those four. Now that he was out of prison, and leashed by the Italian, he would again step in to protect the four thieves who had become family to him. Their task would become an invisible prison until he could complete it, but he didn't mind it so much. Prison, after all, was only a state of mind and Nathan Ford was the master of his even if he did his best to pickle it with alcohol.

Prisons were his area of expertise, from both the physical to the mental. The first time he met Eliot they were sharing a dingy Singapore prison cell; he'd been thrown in there by his mark, a wealthy man determined to keep the insurance investigator from proving that he'd sold the 'stolen' Matisse, and Eliot had refused to say exactly why he was there, only that it involved interfering in an attempted kidnapping. Nate was smart enough not to continue questioning after he got a good look at the furious look in the man's eyes. Someone would be due for some payback just as soon as Eliot got free, and Nate didn't want to be in the way of the fallout. They'd eventually been released two days later when the man Nate had been investigating met with an ignominious death at the hands of a local prostitute; he'd been able to confuse a guard enough to secure a release for Eliot as well, and they both had to make a dash for freedom before the guard captain realized what had happened. Other than a case of fleas and desperately needing a bath, Nate had come out of the prison unscathed; the papers later reported that two warring families had annihilated each other, and Nate carefully refrained from attributing that to the man he'd shared a cell with.

Nate had even survived the prison in his head after Sam died, though that was the toughest by far. Alcohol didn't weaken its bars, and only the distraction of working with Sophie, Eliot, Parker, and Hardison could free his mind for a precious few hours. He was getting better, though, and had regained his mental control even if he'd never fully escape that particular prison. It was a state of mind, yes, but when the prison is your mind, it simply becomes an exercise in enduring. Having four friends slowly become family also helped to chase back the prison walls, and Nate would do anything to pay them back for their unknowing rescue.