Page 4 of Thin Lives

The dream came like a warning, and a reminder. He pinched the bridge of his nose, ignoring the twinge in his shoulder. While his broken femur had healed with no lasting repercussions, he couldn’t quite say the same thing about his shattered shoulder. The doctors had already warned him that another surgery was probable in the future, if the pain and lack of mobility continued.

Nerve damage was suggested.

Calisto brushed it all off.

He could still drive a car and shoot a gun.

That was enough.

Next to being able to command and control men, driving and shooting were the only things Calisto felt were needed for his job as consigliere to Affonso, of the Donati crime family.

Knowing that sleep wasn’t going to find him again anytime soon, Calisto pulled on a pair of sleep pants and a T-shirt. He grabbed the pack of cigarettes on the nightstand, and headed out of the bedroom. He traveled down the long length of the hallway that led to the main floor of his condo. It wasn’t three days after the doctors took the cast off his leg, and Affonso told him to head back to his own place.

Calisto didn’t mind going.

Affonso’s wife—Calisto winced, correcting himself—his new wife, Emma, was pregnant and his uncle was strange about the woman and the upcoming baby. There were little to no details shared, except for the fact that the pregnancy was high-risk, and the less stress the woman was put under, the better.

Calisto tried a few times to get a conversation in with Emma. If his uncle didn’t interrupt and divert him to something else, then Emma herself did so with a forced smile and a vague excuse of needing to do things.

It made him think that perhaps he had done or said something to offend Emma before the accident, and that was why she kept a distance from him.

Calisto tried not to mind—she wasn’t his wife, after all—but he couldn’t help it. He didn’t know her at all. He couldn’t remember the deal Affonso talked about between their family and the Sorrento family in Vegas that brought the two together in an arranged marriage. She was his uncle’s wife, and that meant she was family to Calisto. At the very least, he thought they should be friends.

Before long, Calisto found himself standing on his private balcony with a burning cigarette dangling between his fingers. The cold September air barely registered to his senses, except to wake him up a little more. He took a heavy drag, and stared at the inky sky, dotted with stars above.

Not black.

Not like that night.

Despite the difference, his thoughts still went straight back to the nightmare. He only called it that because it came when he slept, and never when he was awake. But given the details he knew about his accident, never mind how he felt when he was in the midst of the nightmare, he knew it was real.

But why did it keep coming back?

Why repeat, when there was nothing new to see?

Why wouldn’t his brain give him something else to remember?

Frustrated, Calisto balanced his arms over the railing and bent down so that his head was resting on them.

You can’t force the memories, they said.

Your situation is abnormal, the doctors explained.

It may never come back, Calisto, his uncle warned.

A deep ache settled in the middle of his chest, making Calisto straighten to a standing position once again. He rubbed at the spot, willing the pain away.

Whenever he found himself overly irritated with his lack of memories, that nagging pain returned right where his heart still beat. A reminder that he was alive and there for the moment, and nothing more.

Be grateful, he was told.

Goddamn.

Didn’t they understand he was still missing something?

Calisto looked back up at the sky, taking in the differences of its current beauty compared to the bleak undertone it held in his nightmare.

When was it that he first noticed the sky in his recollection of that night?