Page 65 of Break For Me
The container is a standard twenty-footer. Steel walls. Steel floor. Steel ceiling.
The door is a double-hinged lever mechanism operated from the outside. A padlock the size of my fist hangs from the latch.
The guard unlocks it. The hinges scream. The door swings open and the smell hits me—iron, urine, the sour metabolic output of a body in distress.
I step inside.
The light is a single bulb wired to a battery, hung from a hook welded to the ceiling. Its glow is yellow, weak. The walls arebare steel, condensation running in streaks down the corrugated surface.
Rocco is chained to the far wall.
His wrists are shackled above his head. The chains are threaded through a cargo ring bolted to the container wall. His feet are on the ground but his knees are buckled. The chains bear most of his weight, the steel biting into wrists that are already raw.
His head hangs forward. His shirt is gone. His torso is a canvas of fresh damage layered over the damage I’ve already catalogued.
New injuries. A laceration above his right eye, blood dried in a dark track down his temple. Bruising across his ribs. The broken rib I suspected is confirmed by the asymmetric expansion of his chest. His bandaged left hand hangs from the chain, the gauze filthy, soaked through with blood and fluid.
The guard steps back. "Twenty minutes."
He pulls the container door closed. Not all the way—a six-inch gap remains. The guard’s shadow is visible through the crack. Monitored. Not private.
I cross the container. My shoes ring on the steel floor. I reach up and touch Rocco’s face—my fingertips against his jaw, tilting his head up.
The skin beneath my fingers is hot. Feverish. The infection in his hand has gone systemic.
His eyes open.
The recognition takes three seconds. The pupils adjusting. The brain processing input through a fog of pain. His gaze sharpens. Focuses. Finds me.
"No."
The word is a rasp. Barely vocalized.
"You shouldn't be here." His voice breaks. "I blew that building so you could run. I took the boot so you could run. You were supposed to?—"
"I’m here." I cup his face in both hands. My palms against his jaw, my thumbs on his cheekbones. The blood and the grime and the sweat are hot against my skin. I hold his face the way Alessandro held Killian’s.
"I’m here, and I’m getting you out."
His eyes close. His jaw tightens under my palms. Something moves through his face—a wave, a tremor. The structural failure of a man who has been holding himself together through sheer physical obstinacy and has just been given permission to stop.
"They’ll kill you."
"They need me alive." I lean closer. My mouth beside his ear. The guard’s shadow is in the gap of the door. I press my lips against the cartilage of his ear. "Forty-five minutes. Alessandro is coming. Breach team through the drainage tunnels. Hold on."
His eyes open. The delirium clears. What’s underneath is not gratitude. It’s rage. Clean, focused. Clean, focused rage. He has a timeline now. He’ll use every second of it.
"My hands," he whispers back. "I need my hands free."
I look at the shackles. Heavy-gauge steel. The lock is a keyed padlock—no pick, no combination. I don't have tools. I don't have my bag.
I check my pockets. Nothing. My jacket.
A pen. The pen I used to sign myself into the Falcone compound’s medical suite. Stainless steel. The clip is sturdy.
I remove the pen clip. I bend it. I insert it into the padlock mechanism and feel for the pins.
My hands are steady. They are always steady when the work matters.
