Page 44 of Sweet Prison
Feeling Zahara’s eyes on me every second.
The front door shuts with a loud click. Finally, blissful silence.
“Massimo? What was that?”
“Nothing,” I say, furious with myself. “I was always quick to shoot, quick to anger. But I never lost my temper without reason. “I’m sorry if I scared you.”
“You didn’t. But you did scare them.” She places her hand on my forearm again. “Are you alright?”
I look at her, so beautiful and so… calm, even after I lost my shit right in front of her, and some of her calmness seeps into me. The tension in my muscles slowly loosens.
“Nope,” I say. “I thought that, once I was freed, things would just go back to how they were. That I’d be back to my old self again. But… I’m not sure that’s possible anymore.”
“I’m not sure how it could be. You’ll have to learn to live with who you are today.”
Her palm slides down to my hand, and she laces her fingers with mine. The contact sears my skin—her touch both scorching and soothing.
“Let’s go see what the cleaning company has done so we can assess the state of your home.”
I let her pull me across the entry hall and into the dining room, clutching her hand in mine as if it’s my only hope for survival.
Maybe it is.
***
The slow drip from the leaking tap in the corner echoes through the illuminated space. The sound rings hollow as drops of water land in the metal sink. Above it, the constant buzzing of a fluorescent bulb. “Lights out” is just a euphemism around here. Although muffled by the distance, the screams coming from somewhere in the adjacent block still reach me. The heat is brutal; the humidity is even worse, clinging to me with a sticky sheen. The putrid air is heavy, and there’s no way to escape its suffocating weight. I turn onto my side, facing the gray wall of the cell, and start counting the cracks in the old paint.
Rusty hinges squeak as the door opens with a clang behind me. Rushed steps, drawing closer. I leap from the bunk and face the man holding a shiv formed from a shard of glass tightly in his hand. The same bald motherfucker who tried to kill me after I got back from Nuncio’s funeral is standing in the middle of my cell. Behind him, his bossy short buddy grins, bearing rotten and missing teeth. I swing at “Harry,” aiming for his ugly mug, but my movements are too sluggish. It’s as if I’m pushing my fist through dense paste rather than fucking air. The bastard smiles. And buries the glass shank between my ribs.
My eyes snap open.
The walls are pale beige, but the paint is peeling in several spots. Half-burned logs molder in the neglected fireplace and a layer of dust coats the once distinguished mantel. The furniture is covered with white sheets.
My home.
I push to a sitting position on the couch and take a look at the laptop I left open on the coffee table. Three in the morning. I dozed off. For a whole twenty minutes.
Last night, Zahara helped me find a renovation company specializing in interior design, and boasting the fastest turnaround times on the market. Then, she contacted them through their website and scheduled a consultation for first thing in the morning. I’m thankful for her help. I’m sure I would have eventually figured out how to do it myself, but I would have wasted hours on that shit.
I thought my main challenge after I got out would be regaining the helm of my businesses. I didn’t count on needing to learn how to navigate a much wider world than the one I left behind eighteen years ago. In prison, access to the internet is limited, and online activity is always monitored. Mostly, only educational sites are allowed. I tried to keep up, but at present, I feel a bit out of sync with the times.
As I walk from room to room on the ground floor of the darkened house, the dull tap of my shoes is the only sound in the eerie silence of the abandoned home. I got so used to the nonstop clamor in the pen, that now, all this quiet is a blessing and a curse, and it’s making me jumpy in the noiseless dark. The shadows move around me, something I haven’t experienced for a long fucking time. I can’t be certain if I’m alone or if some asshole is hiding within the shrouded spaces. Glancing outside, I thought I saw someone sneaking through the yard. But did I, or was it a trick of my restless mind and unaccustomed-to-the-dark eyes? My skin crawls with awareness, and a strong premonition of impending doom has me bracing for shit to hit the fan at any moment.
I climb the stairs to the second floor and continue my aimless meandering through the mansion. My head is killing me, from the lack of sleep most likely. Years of getting by on a few winks are taking their toll. Or maybe I’m just getting old. Whatever it is, I’m fairly certain I won’t get any more resttonight. Not in this place that’s still so familiar but also not at all. I don’t even realize I’m heading directly toward the room where Zahara is sleeping until I’m standing in front of the door at the far end of the hall. Everything is quiet here, too, but the unease I felt on the lower levels has greatly diminished.
Undoing the top few buttons of my shirt, I slide down to the floor, leaning my back on the opposite wall. And then, I just stare at the door before me.
Chapter 15
I descend the ornate stairway and take a look around. Massimo mentioned that the temp workers from the staffing agency would be arriving at eight. It’s almost time, but he doesn’t seem to be anywhere in sight. The small sitting area on one side of the stairs seems empty. I turn in the other direction and head across the enormous dining room that’s occupied by a table long enough to seat sixteen people easily. The exterior wall is made up of floor-to-ceiling windows facing the garden. At one point, the view must have been magnificent, especially the winding vines of jasmine spilling from atop the iron arches over a quaint outdoor nook. Currently, however, the grounds are overgrown and filled with weeds.
The far end of the room leads to a small square space that separates the dining hall from the kitchen, which I spot past the open anteroom door. As soon as I cross the kitchen doorway, I stop dead in my tracks.
Standing by another wall made up of big windows, in the brilliant glow of the morning light shining through the glass, is Massimo. He has his back turned to me while he gazes at the backyard. And he’s dressed in a pair of gray sweatpants and nothing else.
Every single inch of his upper body is covered in ink. A mix of black and colorful designs wraps over his impossibly wide back, then flows across his broad shoulders and down his muscular arms, all the way to his fingers. It’s hard to pinpointwhere one image ends and the other starts, as each seems to bleed into the next.
My hand flies to my chest as if that would prevent my wildly beating heart from punching its way out of my ribcage. I haven’t had a lot of opportunities to see shirtless men. In school, occasionally, some of the guys would pull off their shirts after soccer practice, and there was that one time I helped Nera clean the blood off Kai when he was wounded, but that’s it. Generally, men never held my interest anyway. Men who aren’t Massimo, that is.