*Giovani*
The man before me was broken, in more ways than one. The bullet had certainly done its damage, I thought as I stared blankly at Salvatore.
Bandages were wrapped around his torso and stitches across his eyebrow, even his hands were red and raw from whatever they had put him through. It was no wonder he had taken so long to wake up, but it wasn’t just his body that was broken.
There was a hopeless resignation in his eyes, like a man staring down the end of a noose, the jeering crowd waiting for the moment he took his last breath. Despite having been comatose for so long, there were dark bags under his eyes, a deep exhaustion that ran down to the marrow of his bones.
His skin was sallow and sunken like a man who hadn’t known sleep for weeks, and his hair was flat with a greasy sheen to it that didn’t match the man who had first come here claiming to be my father-in-law.
His dues had caught up with him and life had done quite a number upon him, it seemed.
