The cell was empty when Ruaan got there.
He stood in the doorway and exhaled with the relief of a man who had been granted a small, specific mercy. No Yoon. No Petre. No Luca. Just four beds, grey walls, and the beautiful silence of a room that currently contained zero people who had recently done anything with his clothes.
He sat on his bed, took the box out of the bag and opened it.
The smell hit him first and his eyes closed automatically. That specific combination of fried pastry and sweet ricotta and something faintly citrusy that he had been ordering from the same bakery in Palermo for three years and had missed every single day since the arrest.
He picked one up, sniffed it properly and made an embarrassing sound but he didn't care.
There were four of them. Four perfect cannoli sitting in the box as they had personally come to rescue him from Blackmere, which in a way they had, which meant he owed them the dignity of being eaten slowly and with full attention.
