While I’m being defiled by a man I despise, I’ll need the comfort of the knowledge that the man I love isn’t in a cage.

I will set him free, and I’ll be happy with that.

Massimo hasn’t said a word the whole drive down to Precious Blood. It’s three in the morning, but unlike my last late-night drive here with Dr. Palmeri, it’s not garbage night. There are no bags on the curb and no metal monsters roaring and clanking. My brother seems tired and distracted. Maybe the business on the dock is wearing him out. Good. I don’t want to talk. My voice is rolled up, tied down, and locked away behind the walls of my heart.

I will not say a single thing to Dario about what’s about to happen.

I muffle the words in my brain, seeing colors without naming them. Matching the emptiness of the streets with emptiness in my mind. Rain drops run down the windshield along bowed roads that go in a single direction.

Massimo parks in front of the church. Like well-prepared thieves, we don’t need to speak. We leave the car together and enter using the thumb pad in the front. The guard isn’t Sam this late. He jumps up, and my brother calms him with a wave, explaining nothing. I follow Massimo, but I know the way now.

When we get to the little room with the TVs, it’s already empty. I assume that’s courtesy of the current head of the table, but I don’t ask. That would require speaking.

On the screen, Dario sleeps on his cot with one arm bent over his eyes and the other draped over his bare chest. His waistband is pulled below his navel, revealing the arrow of hair leading to the first sliver of dark curls.

I will kiss that arrow of hair with the reverence of a true believer. I will worship it in silence no matter how loudly my heart screams.

“Cameras off.” Massimo flicks a few switches, and one by one, the monitors go black, leaving the image of Dario’s beauty in the wires and walls. “But these…” He slides up a knob, and I can hear Dario breathe, then he turns it back down. “I mean it, Goody. Don’t make any plans. Don’t tell him shit. Don’t fuck with me. I shouldn’t be doing this at all.”

He waits for me to thank him, but I just nod. My gratitude isn’t big enough to break through the wall of silence.

He takes me around the same corners Dr. Palmeri took me down to get to inside the cell. He opens the first door and leads me down the hall, holding me back while he looks through the little window.

“I’m going to leave you here and open it from the other side.”

I nod.

“You okay?”

I nod.