In here, I’m something else. An asset. A mind that can see patterns. Someone whose insights made the Don’s right-hand man go still with recognition.
It’s fucked up. I know it’s fucked up. Stockholm syndrome, or garden-variety desperation. But for the first time in years, I feel like I have a purpose beyond surviving until tomorrow.
Is that worth more than freedom?
I don’t have an answer.
Morning comes gray and drizzling. The window streaks with rain, blurring the courtyard into watercolor shapes. I watch the guards do their rounds, umbrellas up, shoulders hunched against the wet.
Breakfast arrives. I eat mechanically, barely tasting the eggs.
When Leone walks in at nine, he looks worse than yesterday. Dark circles, stubble shadowing his jaw, suit slightly rumpled like he slept in a chair. Or didn’t sleep at all.
“You look like shit,” I say.
“Thank you for that assessment.”
“Did you find anything? About Renzo?”
He crosses to the desk, sets down a thin folder. “Surveillance footage. Communication logs. Financial records.” He meets my eyes. “You were right.”
Cold dread settles in my stomach. “How right?”
“Renzo Marchetti has been feeding the Castillo’s information for fourteen months. Routes. Schedules. Guard rotations. Everything they needed to stay one step ahead of us.” Leone’s voice is flat, controlled, but I catch the rage simmering beneath. “Eighteen men have died because of him. Two of them last week.”
Eighteen men. I try to wrap my head around the number. Eighteen lives ended because one guy decided to play both sides.
“What happens now?”
“Now we bring him in. Question him. Find out how deep the damage goes.”
“And then?”
Leone doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
I look down at my hands. They’re shaking. I curl them into fists to make them stop.
“I got him killed,” I say. “That’s what I did. I looked at some papers and now a man is going to die.”
“He got himself killed.” Leone’s voice is hard. “The moment he started selling information to the Castillo’s, he signed his own death warrant. You only moved up the timeline.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“It’s not supposed to.”
I laugh, high and a little hysterical. “Jesus. What is wrong with me? I should be—I don’t know, crying or screaming or hiding. Instead, I’m—”
“You’re surviving.” Leone sits on the edge of the bed, closer than he usually gets. “That’s what you do. It’s what you’ve always done.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“It’s an observation.”
He’s right. Iamtired. Not physically, but down to the bone. The tired that comes from carrying too much for too long.
“Does it get easier?” I ask. “Knowing you’ve ended someone’s life?”
He’s quiet. “No. But you learn to carry it.”
