METANOIA

Thoughts

The night was a tense one. I kept my eyes on the dark sky hidden behind the dense material, listening for Dante's footsteps, despite the terrible fatigue and the tugging ache that filled my mind. The couch I was lying on was the only sleeping place in the flat, but I didn't care about the fact that De Rosso was sleeping — I was still wary, though I'd begun to look at the potential rewards of working with him. My own intuition clenched my stomach every time I thought about his family's records; according to the man, he'd worked with people in the business on more than one occasion, but if Dante's work was all about finance, I had far more questions about his military background. He's ambiguous. I suppose it will take me a while to uncover De Rosso's true nature because, as I revealed earlier, he doesn't like to throw words around — he speaks few but to the point.

I thought back to the scars on his back that I had once seen under the cover of night — large and small, wide and narrow. In my short but torture-filled life, I'd never seen such marks, especially such as on his back, as if they'd been carved on purpose, which was also at odds with the information in his file that he came from a well-to-do, neighbour-loving family.

"As if your family didn't create an image of morality itself, Alana," my inner voice hissed angrily, making it clear that it wasn't a fact that Dante's parents were as good as the dossier said they were.

However, Thomas's file also contained information about Uncle De Rosso, who had rescued the orphaned boy from the orphanage and moved him to London. It was possible that he was the cause of those scars, for I knew nothing about the conditions of Dante's childhood. Either way, he hadn't come into my world by accident — and I did wonder what had preceded that event.

As he handed me the machine gun, I followed the way his gaze was as few words as his compressed lips, as cold and sharp — a man raised in a loving family would be so stern and detached, unemotional? Dante looked like someone who had been working with criminals for a long time and had seen many scenes of violent murder and torture, but certainly not like a beloved son — was his own uncle really the reason for De Rosso's behaviour? His stern gaze, as intense as his broad shoulders, tugged at my thoughts, taking me into long contemplation. I was burning with curiosity — so eager to know what lurked in his mirrors of the soul.

When De Rosso left my thoughts and stopped making noise in the kitchen, apparently settled on the floor, and fell asleep as the white light of the dawn sun began to filter through the blinds, my body and mind were overcome with extreme fatigue; I had no more energy left in me to think about the man's past, and I stopped myself from taking any interest in his personality; my eyes began to droop (it was more convenient for me to keep them closed, because the many burst capillaries gave me a sensation of sand under my eyelids when I blinked). The exhaustion that came over my throat wiped out any enthusiasm and curiosity about the night's reflections, and wishing I could sleep sooner to be rid of the company of my inner voice, if only for a few hours that would pass like a moment, a different kind of idea, not at all connected with Weber or De Rosso, came into my traumatised head.

Would I be happier if I lived another life? An ordinary life where people save for months for two-week holidays abroad, a life where people learn new languages inspired by a music band, a life filled with stability and calm, where gruesome murders are only heard in documentaries about maniacs. All people have their own experiences, (preferring another life to your own in the hope of escaping suffering is tantamount to chasing your own tail) and even if my life was written by classics or played by virtuosos — would I be happier living a life that is not my own? I am a hostage to my own body and mind, a victim of my own reflexivity which destroys any positive emotions in me — would I change by living other events? The truth is that when I plunge into escapism, I do not stop being me; when I live other situations, I still have the same character and mindset, I speak the same thoughts as in this life, I defend the same opinion as here — wandering through the worlds I try to escape from myself, blaming external circumstances for my own unhappiness. The truth is that wherever and whoever I am, I will always hate myself.