Trapped by the Mafia

18. What's Left of My Life Is Yours

Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.

― George Orwell

***

An eternity passes in icy darkness, before Matteo's hand finds mine.

"Don't touch me!" Another shiver rattles me against the wall. But his hand is warm amidst the merciless stone, so I contradict myself immediately by pressing my forehead to his shoulder. "M-matteo."

My tear ducts are primed to perfection by now, but when a barrel of salty liquid spills out, it hurts like a blowtorch. I sob in pain and frustration—it hurts to bloody cry! How cruel it is that I can't even cry!—and just rub my forehead softly against Matteo's shoulder. "Your fault... it's your fault... your damn fault."

"Bryn, I want to free your hands." His voice is not as dull as when he's promised to bury Creepy alive, but sort of like he's speaking to me from another dimension. He's preternaturally calm.

"What for?" I wail into his solid flesh. "We're dead, Scali. We're dead! How can you be so calm?"

"Bryn." His fingers untangle one of the clips that hangs on for dear life in a rat's nest of my hair. I can't see the abominable tangles and knots, but I know they are there from the twenty-four years of exposure to the horrors of my hair. "We're not dead yet."

"Fine. Not yet, but we're dying. That's so much better."

"I've just started a turf war so you could get your face stitched up. So, no, we're not going to die." His voice drones on as he works my hair-clip free. "Can I cut the ties on your hands now?"

"Okay," I whisper.

My hair being unruly at the best of times, I always have a whole bunch of two-inch long clips pinning it in place. Scali uses the metal prong of one of them to push the plastic tongue of the tie down, then he pulls the tie loose.

"Jeez, Scali, whatever else you are, you sure have a way with plastic ties."

"Glad you appreciate my skills."

While his head is still bent over my hands, I inhale the smell of his hair. It draws my nose deeper and deeper into its thick dark mass. It dives like a bee into a nectar-dripping flower.

Scali's hair is no longer brushed and styled till it shines. The strands matted by the dried blood are scratchy. The forehead underneath is grimy and sweaty, and I still can't resist plunging my nose into his hair. "What did you mean about the war?"

He tilts his head back, slowly, so as not to bump my nose, and stares above my head.

I follow his gaze and see a little light blinking above us. Camera. Of course. "Can they read lips?"

He shrugs, then winces with pain that this small movement causes him.

Well, duh. Asked and answered. He doesn't have a clue.

Fresh out of small talk, I watch him shift into a less painful position, with his back to the wall, long legs splayed out. Once there is nothing more to be gained by fidgeting, he freezes into a stone-still, stone-cold, stone-stone figurine.

Seriously, I could mistake him for a carving of a seated Adonis. The heady mix of pheromones turns me light-headed, but the minutes flow by, deflating my libido. We have no food, nor water. We're dying. "Why are you sitting there like a gargoyle, Scali?"

"There is nothing to lay on. You scream, when I touch you. That leaves sitting."

So logical, yet so stupid.