The Sea Beyond - On Stranger Tides

Chapter 1

Ciro

Half-an-hour after being stabbed

The captain had just said to everyone that Ciro was dead after the riot the inmates had organized, he was deeply upset, and felt the need to leave that place.

A kid had just died, the most difficult to save, yet he never lost hope that one day he would have understood the error of his ways.

Now he couldn't hope anymore. Paola tried to approach him to talk but he didn't allow her to actually say anything.

Mainly because there was nothing to say.

She was right from the beginning: the only way to actually help this people was not getting emotional involved. In that moment he wished he wasn't, he wished he could do something, other than feeling terribly powerless.

Beppe's words were echoing in his mind "I failed them. I'm a failure..."

and a moment later Ciro's words replaced Beppe's.

«Cap, I don't wanna die.»

I don't wanna die. I don't wanna die. I don't WANT to die!

Dammit, he couldn't bear to keep hearing Ciro in his head.

Another kid dead before his time, all because of that horrible system, the Mob, that twenty years ago started to tear apart even his own life, day after day, month after month, year after year.

The Mob was the reason he lost his best friend: Antonio Valletta decided to be a part of it and to Massimo that meant the end of their friendship.

After seeing a brutal murder with his own eyes at the hands of Antonio Valletta, Massimo had to make choice: become a criminal or a man who would fight criminals.

He was heartbroken while choosing, but he chose the second option nonetheless and in that moment he discovered his true self and lost the one he considered a brother.

But the past was the past, and in the present he found himself facing another kind of loss, that of kid he wanted to save.

Instead of going back home with his car, he started walking for what seemed an infinite span of time until the sea was all he could actually sea.

It felt so close and yet so distant, so unreachable.

In the Institute everyone was heartbroken for the loss of their friend, and even those who feared him had a hint of sadness on their faces, but in reality everybody was upset but one, and that was a surprising one, given that she was supposed to be his girlfriend.

Viola after seeing Ciro's body had no emotional reaction whatsoever. She only said "one less loser on the planet".

Ciro's entire life was full of deceit. He just kept trusting the wrong people and not those who loved him. Edoardo, for instance, was one of them.

He tried to stop him from going alone against Carmine and Filippo during the riot, and in response he got a deep cut on his chest, made by Ciro himself.

Yet there he was, mourning Ciro with desperation in his eyes.

Every single one of Ciro's gang followed the ambulance until it passed the gates of the institute, and only after the ambulance got far away from there, practically out of sight, did they go back inside their cells, escorted by the guards.

«Piero, did ya hear somethin'?» The paramedic said while he was comfortably sitting next to the driver. The silence in the ambulance was almost unnatural, until one of them heard a wheeze.