Italian Mafia Boss, My Cell

Chapter Eight: Small Kindnesses

Darkness swallowed the cell whole.

Isabella's heart slammed against her ribs as the emergency lighting flickered on seconds later, dim red bulbs casting the corridor in a bloody glow that did nothing to steady her nerves. Shouts erupted down the block, some panicked, some gleeful, the particular chaos of men who understood that darkness meant opportunity.

"Stay against the wall," Salvatore said, already moving to position himself between her and the bars, his voice low and controlled despite the chaos outside.

"What's happening? Is this because of us?"

"Power grid issues happen. Sometimes they're accidents." His eyes tracked movement in the corridor, alert and calculating. "Sometimes they're not."

The emergency lights held for almost ten minutes before the main power flickered back on, guards moving through the block with flashlights and raised voices, restoring order with the particular brutality of men who'd been caught off guard and wanted everyone to know it wasn't their fault. By the time headcount was confirmed and the noise settled into its usual low hum, Isabella's hands were still trembling.

She sat on the edge of the bottom bunk, staring at the folded note still clutched in Salvatore's hand. They know what she found. Run. Six words that had turned her fear into something sharper, more immediate.

"You should eat something," Salvatore said, breaking the silence.

She looked up, surprised by the sudden shift in subject. "I'm not hungry."

"You didn't eat this morning either. Not really." He crossed to the small shelf near the desk and retrieved something wrapped in a paper napkin, setting it down beside her without ceremony. Inside was an apple, slightly bruised but intact, and a foil wrapped granola bar that looked like it had come from somewhere other than the standard prison commissary.

"Where did you get this?"

"Doesn't matter." He sat down across from her, close enough that she could see the tension still lingering in his shoulders from the confrontation with Brack. "Eat. You can't think clearly if your body's running on nothing but adrenaline."

She unwrapped the granola bar slowly, watching him. "You didn't have to do that."

"No," he agreed. "I didn't."

Something in the simplicity of his answer settled uneasily in her chest, not quite gratitude, not quite suspicion, but something in between that she didn't have a name for yet. She ate in silence, and he didn't push her to talk, seeming content to sit across from her while the block outside slowly quieted into its evening rhythm.

Later, when the lights dimmed for lockdown and she curled onto the thin mattress of the bottom bunk, she noticed something she hadn't seen before, an extra blanket, folded neatly at the foot of her bunk, thicker and cleaner than the one she'd been issued at intake.

"Salvatore."

"What."

"This isn't the blanket they gave me."

A pause from above her, the creak of the bunk frame shifting slightly. "Wasn't going to let you freeze because the state issues one paper thin blanket per inmate regardless of body size."

"How did you even get this?"

"I told you. Doesn't matter."

She lay in the dark, staring up at the underside of his bunk, turning over the small, deliberate kindnesses he kept extending toward her without ever framing them as kindness at all. The food. The blanket. The way he'd positioned himself between her and danger without being asked, twice now in less than two days.

"Why are you doing this," she said quietly. "Helping me. You don't know if I'm working for the people who framed you."

Silence stretched above her for so long she thought he might not answer.

"Because if you are," he said finally, voice low and even, "then whatever kindness I show you now will mean nothing to the people who sent you. And if you're not" he paused, and she heard something shift in his tone, something almost reluctant. "If you're not, then you didn't ask for any of this. Nobody deserves to survive this place with nothing."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I've got right now."

She let the silence settle between them, unsure what to do with the strange warmth spreading through her chest despite everything, the fear, the uncertainty, the six words scrawled on a scrap of paper that still sat folded somewhere in the dark above her.

"Salvatore," she said finally, "thank you."

He didn't respond immediately, and when he did, his voice had gone quieter than she'd heard it yet. "Don't thank me. Not yet. Whatever's coming for us, it's not finished."

She wanted to ask what he meant, wanted to push for more detail about the note, about Brack threats, about the growing certainty that neither of them was safe inside these walls. But exhaustion pulled at her, heavier than fear for the first time in days, and she let her eyes close, lulled by the strange, unexpected comfort of knowing someone in this place had chosen, however reluctantly, to look out for her.

She didn't hear the footsteps outside the cell until they stopped directly in front of the bars.

She didn't see the shape standing there, motionless, watching them both in the dim emergency lighting, until Salvatore's entire body went rigid above her, and his voice cut through the darkness in a whisper sharp enough to cut glass.

"Someone's outside our cell. And they're not a guard."