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Dario gave me that sad smile again. “Losing someone you love dearly, no matter the circumstances, is the worst pain imaginable. I just lost mine a little more recently, is all.”
I had to get away from this topic. The feeling of being back in San Vittore, and knowing how Rachel had slipped away while I was trapped here, was too much to bear.
“How are you holding up?” I asked. “In prison, I mean. The day-to-day shit.”
He gave a sigh of despair. “Not well.” Then he followed it with a short, bitter laugh. “Not that I could tell my brothers that.”
I nodded. He could tell me these things because he knew I would understand them – because I’d lived them. He didn’t have to protect me from the horrors of his daily life like he did with his brothers.
“Are you in any danger?”
“No… my other friends are keeping the assholes off my back out of respect for my father. For the moment, anyway.”
I knew that ‘other friends’ was code for other members of the Cosa Nostra. They were protecting him from the Camorra and anyone else who would take advantage of his grief.
“Just hang on,” I said. “You won’t believe how good the air smells when you’re free.”
He smiled wanly. “What did it smell like when you walked back inside San Vittore?”
“Like Satan’s ass crack.”
Dario laughed – the first real laugh of our conversation and probably the first he’d had since the news of Leonardo’s death.
When he stopped laughing, he said, “That’s a very apt description. I can’t wait until I never have to smell it again.”
“Just a few more months and you’re out.”
Dario’s eyes drifted into a thousand-yard stare. “Yes… but what kind of world am I going to come back to?”
“One where you’re the head of your family. One where you get the chance to do everything you told me you wanted to do. Remember? All the plans you had, all the changes you wanted to make?”
His eyes met mine. They looked very, very tired. “I didn’t tell my brothers, but… I’m not sure I can do it.”
“Do what?”
“Lead the family.”
“Of course you can. You were raised to do this – you were born to do this. Hell, all your brothers look up to you. I was there when they took the vote – it was unanimous from the very first – ”
“That’s the problem,” Dario said wearily. “They look at me as some kind of hero who’s going to ride in and save the day. But I’m just… me.”
“And that’s enough. You can do this.”
“There’s a big difference between training to take the captain’s chair and actually being responsible for all the lives onboard.”
I nodded. I knew where he was coming from – because I’d felt exactly the same way back in the military.
“When I went through basic training, I drilled and I marched. I learned how to fight and how to shoot a gun… and then I went into Special Forces, where I drilled some more. I learned survival techniques and practiced how to react under pressure. But the first time I was in combat – the first time bullets were flying around me, and I saw one of the guys in my squad get shot in the head five feet away from me – you know what happened?”
Dario frowned. “What?”
“I shit my pants.”
Dario stared at me in shock –
Then burst out laughing.
“Just a little,” I protested, smiling. “But I still shat my pants. I think Americans call it a ‘Hershey’s squirt.’ At least, that’s what I heard in a movie, anyway.”
