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“…okay,” I said, then walked over to the doorway.
As the guard led me down the corridor, the smell hit me. It was the same as my very first day in San Vittore: body odor, sweat, bleach, and stale cigarette smoke, with a hint of urine and shit.
I must have gotten used to it when I’d been imprisoned here because I didn’t remember it smelling this bad. Now that I’d grown accustomed to the fresh air of Tuscany, the stench of San Vittore was like being trapped in a sewer. I could only imagine the effect it must have had on Valentino.
The guard brought me to a room with wooden chairs in front of a long counter. There were eight partitioned areas with thin walls subdividing each spot. A scratched-up plastic barrier shielded this side of the counter from the inmates. The only way to speak to them was with old-school telephone handsets bolted onto the partitioned walls.
Seven of the chairs were filled with young women and old people – the convicts’ mothers and fathers – but the eighth chair was empty.
And on the other side of the plastic wall sat Dario.
He looked like he had aged ten years since I’d seen him last. His hair and beard were still dark as ever, but there were lines in his face that hadn’t been there before.
The playfulness and joy I remembered were gone; in their place was a pain I’d never seen in him, not even during our worst hours in the prison.
I sat down and took the phone off the hook.
He gave me a sad, weary smile as he picked up his end.
“Lars,” he said. His voice sounded wistful, like seeing me conjured up memories of better days.
“Dario,” I said softly. “I’m so sorry.”
He gave me that same sad smile and nodded. “Thank you. I wanted to say it in person that I’m sorry, too… that it didn’t work out with Rachel.”
I stared at him in shock.
He’d lost his father just days before… had been denied the chance to say goodbye while he was stuck inside this hellhole…
And he was telling me that he was sorry for my loss.
It shook me to my core, and my heart broke for him all over again.
In many ways, he was the best friend I’d ever had. He and I had gone through things in San Vittore that Gunnar would never understand.
Gunnar and I had been in combat, which was its own kind of hell. That experience had forged a bond between us that only soldiers could understand.
But at the end of every day, Gunnar and I had gone back to the military base. We hadn’t slept every night amongst the enemy. We hadn’t walked past men every second of every day and wondered when they would try to slit our throats.
In Afghanistan, your enemy skulked in the shadows and carried a gun – but he could be identified by that gun.
In San Vittore, your enemy ate next to you in the cafeteria. He stood next to you in the yard… showered next to you… slept six feet away on the other side of a wall.
Or maybe he wasn’t your enemy at all. Maybe he was just another prisoner trying to make the best of a bad situation.
You could never know for sure…
Until his shiv was buried in your guts.
San Vittore was its own special type of hell. Only Dario and I knew what it was to have each other’s back in a place like this.
“That’s over and done with,” I said, talking about Rachel. It was a lie, and I was sure Dario knew it, but he didn’t call me out on it. “But thank you. I can’t even believe you’d think of that so soon after…”
I trailed off.
I couldn’t bear to say it:
So soon after your father died.
