“Then you need to shut the cameras.”
He looks back at me with a raised eyebrow.
“Men are weak in places you know goddamn well you don’t want to see.”
“Your language.”
“I talk like a man so you’ll take me seriously. No cameras.”
“Fine.” He flicks a few switches. The monitors go black. Dario’s feet disappear.
“Thank you.”
With his thumbprint, he opens the door to the hallway of cells and steps aside so I can pass—but I don’t walk out just yet.
“Why’d you change your mind?” I ask.
He straightens up on the cane and hops back. I’m sure he’s going to tell me to mind my business, but instead, he takes a sharp breath and answers.
“Agosti’s willing to do shit I’m not. I need to make a move.”
I nod. Poor Massimo. He’s counting on me to give him the weapon he needs to win a war, and I never will. Not this weapon. Ever.
I pass into the hallway alone. My footsteps echo, even when I try to walk softly. The bulbs in the hall have been dimmed to the glow of a single firefly and Dario’s cage is completely dark. The benefit of this arrangement isn’t entirely clear until he’s in front of me, so close to the glass his mouth and nose are veiled by the condensation of his breath on it.
I stop.
The darkness nestles us into the intimacy of a candlelit dinner.
He looks worse. Unshaven. Sunken. Greasy hair with a bloodied patch missing. Chapped lips. The missing tops of his ears seem more like the result of trauma than battle scars that made him stronger. But his fists clench so tightly the wedding scars are incandescent white. His eyes are clear and strong. They say this beaten shell is temporary. It will be left behind after his enemies are torn to shreds.
I don’t know how anyone has the courage to hurt him.
“Come closer.”
I step to him until my forehead feels his breath through the inch-wide slit between the upper and lower panes. I’m close enough to see his pocket. The edge is uneven. The hem’s been picked open. He felt the paper clip. He got it out. Did he see the message and understand it? Or did he just slide the clip out and leave the hem intact? I can’t tell. But he has to have the razor. He couldn’t have eaten it, and Denise never reported contraband in the dirty bowl.
I don’t know what to say to him. Even if I had every word in the dictionary at my disposal, I couldn’t express my sorrow at seeing him like this together with the euphoria at seeing him at all.
“Dario.” That’s the only word my mouth will make. The only one that squeaks through the space between joy and despair.
“They think this glass can keep me away from you. What do you think? Do you think I can’t tear this thing down?”
His fingertips are white from gripping the edge of the bottom pane. Is a man strong enough to dismantle this cell? Is a starving, enraged beast?
“If you could, it would be gone already and you’d be carrying me down this hall. We’d be shot at the end of it. Or at least you would be. They’ll keep me alive if they can.”
The consequences of that stick in my throat. A life without him would be death. The organs between my legs would never bring pleasure again.
“They let you in here with me.” His gaze narrows. “What do you want?”
He’s guarded, wrapped in cold steel. Meanwhile, my hot, slick insides are ready to spill onto the floor. I say his name in my mind until I see over his head, where the smoked dome of the camera reflects the light above me.
“Massimo turned off the cameras.”
He looks over his shoulder, at the ceiling, then back with an expression only slightly less wary. “Take that dress off.”
“Dario, I—”
“I need to know if you’re wearing a wire.”
“I’m not.”
“Do it,” he growls. “Now.”
He won’t talk to me unless he knows I’m clean.
Fine.
The mourning dress buttons from neck to sweep. I step away and start at the top, exposing the yellowing finger marks on my throat.
“I’ll kill him for touching you.”
“I know.”
“No arguments? You’re done trying to save my soul?”
“Virtue is for the free.” I get two buttons past the waist. “The rest of us do what we have to do.”
I shrug off the shoulders and slide my hands from the sleeves, exposing my black cotton bra and underwear. The skirt hangs low on my hips.
Dario’s fingertips push the glass and his eyes eat me alive as if he’s never seen my body before. Moving as close to the glass as possible, I put my fingertips against his. When he slides them upward, to the open space, mine follow, pushing through the emptiness at exactly the same time.
We don’t have all day, and there are so many things we need to tell each other. Not the pain or the grief, but the plans. The practicalities. The how and when, not the what or why.
But when our fingers touch, we pause as the warmth of our bodies passes between us. Nothing is practical. There is no sense or meaning in the world. There’s just us, and an intimacy so tiny only the electricity that rouses our hearts to beat can fit inside it. We stay still in this touch as if more is too much. Then at the same time, and with a ferocity that no will or intention can contain, we hook our fingers together in that little space.
“I can’t be here. I can’t be without you.” If I could turn into light, I could get through this barrier. If I could put my soul into my lungs, I could breathe myself into that cell with him.
“Don’t give up.”
“I’m weak. I’m stupid.”
“Prima, no.”
His command fogs the glass. My lips move against the other side. He’s close enough to feel, but impossible to touch.
“I’m scared.”
“You need to get out. Leave me here and find Willa.”
The idea shocks me back to reality. I’m not here to wish myself into a puff of air or beam of light. “Never—”
The little red light on the ceiling blinks on. I shut myself up and back away from the glass, leaving him to drop away from it like a magnet without its partner.
It’s over. The moment of privacy is gone. We wasted it on my weakness, and now someone is watching while I’m half-naked and tear streaked.
Dario knows. He doesn’t have to look at the camera because he already sees the direction of my gaze. I remain exposed to the skin while he’s still dressed in the cold armor he wore when I came in.
“What did they make you do? What did they make you trade?”
He knows my people too well. Nothing is freely given.
“Not anything you care about.”
He isn’t soothed. “Anyone who touches you while I’m in here… remember who they are so I can murder them. I swear, Sarah. You’re my property.”
What if the camera light went on because it’s not just Massimo on the other side? What if it’s someone who can’t know what we mean to each other? One wrong word and I’ll be a traitor. Too much risk. Too much unknown. I have to tell Dario everything without saying anything.
“You told me you stole women from us, but you never told me where they ended up. You. Never. Told. Me.”