Page 26 of Thin Lives

“Did you remember something?” Gio asked.

He wasn’t sure.

Yes. But no.

It wasn’t like saying he remembered how he felt on any given day and what someone had said in a passing moment would do him any good.

Calisto chose to brush it off, hoping the memory would lead to something else. “No, just curious.”

Gio didn’t look like he believed him, but he didn’t push for more. “All right. Spar?”

He shoved the mouth guard in.

“Spar,” he mumbled.

“Cazzo merda,” Calisto growled, smacking his hand against the face of the black metal safe.

Metal clanged, but it did him no good.

Again, he dropped down into a squat and fiddled with the dial on the face of the safe, determined to get the damn thing opened. Earlier, he hadn’t lied to Gio when he said he needed to get some paperwork for his restaurant. An issue had come up about the deed for the place, given it was in a plaza like situation.

Calisto had bought the restaurant years ago, and he’d purchased it as if the property were a sale, and not a rental. Nonetheless, legal issues had come up.

And he needed, amongst many things, the paperwork for the place—including the deed and contract when he purchased it.

It was in his safe, in his office.

A safe he’d apparently changed the fucking code to.

Obviously, he had changed the safe’s code over the course of the last two and half years, because he couldn’t remember the damn three numbers it wanted if his life depended on it. He also couldn’t figure out why in the hell he would change the three digits, as that required a whole process with a safe master who came in and changed the guts of the safe just to reset the tumblers.

Well, Calisto knew why he would at least keep the safe instead of getting rid of it. It had belonged to his deceased father, but his mother had given it to him about a year before her death. Though he didn’t remember the months leading up to her death, he did remember her wanting him to take the safe. She hadn’t kept anything in it for a long time.

If he had changed the digits for the dial to open it, it must have been because he didn’t feel comfortable using the ones it needed before. Maybe someone else had known the numbers.

Calisto wasn’t sure.

He just wanted inside the fucking thing.

Frustrated, Calisto tried different combinations of numbers. His birthday. His mother’s birthday. Even his uncle’s birthday. He tried other dates that jumped out in his mind as important, but they also failed.

Nothing.

He needed those damn papers for his lawyer, or else he was going to be stuck paying rent to a bastard he didn’t owe money to. Years of owed rent, for that matter.

More irritated than before at his lack of knowledge of even the most basic things in his own damn home, Calisto stood and then promptly fell into his computer chair with a mumbled curse. A throbbing ache had started in the base of his skull, warning that a major headache was eminent. He’d had those damn things pretty regularly ever since he woke up in the hospital.

Your brain is constantly working too hard, he was told.

Stop pushing it, another doctor said. You’re not doing yourself any favors by demanding more than it can give you.

Fuck.

They just didn’t understand.

He couldn’t let it go.

Calisto spun the computer chair around, and scrubbed his hands down his face. The date and time flashed in the corner of his computer screen, catching his attention. It had been just three weeks since he found his priest murdered. The officials had finished their investigation inside the church, and thankfully, left him the hell alone after that first initial interview. They had yet to release Father Day’s body, despite the many requests from the Diocese to do just that. A proper funeral should be held for the man, and Calisto wanted to attend.