ch.3 Fornelli's Exile

 Asinara wasn't a prison. It was a biblical exile, an island forgotten by God and man, where the sea pounded against the cliffs like a punishing hammer and the sun burned the skin like a mark of Cain. Vito Rizzuto, number 739, had been transferred after the signing of the protocol—not by mercy, but by calculation—to the most remote wing of the Fornelli super-prison: a half-abandoned wing, built in the 1970s and never finished, with corridors that stank of rust, damp, and decades-old piss. The cells were holes in the tuff, the windows barred with rusty iron that let only shafts of gray light filter through. The food? A swill of cold beans, stale bread that smelled of mold, and, once a week, a piece of rotten fish that the guards tossed into the tray like a bone to a dog.

Vito didn't complain. Never.

Anger was a burning coal in his chest, but stoicism was the forge: every insult, every disgusting dish, every night on a mattress that smelled of other people's sweat was a brick in the fortress of his revenge. I eat this shit because I have to, he repeated to himself, chewing the hard bread until his gums bled. But one day, Masi, Serpente, all of you—you'll eat your own guts with your hands tied.

He didn't speak to anyone.

The guards feared him: they called him "the Sicilian" in hushed voices, as if pronouncing his name could evoke a curse. Common inmates avoided him. The Camorristi regarded him with hatred mixed with respect. The traitorous mafiosi—those who had sung for a sentence reduction—disappeared into the bathrooms with their throats slit. Vito no longer gave orders. He couldn't. But his silence was a weapon. A glance, and a guard would turn a blind eye. A nod, and a message was passed from cell to cell.

Then came Jamal.

A tall, black man, thin as a rail, with skin shining with sweat and scars that crisscrossed his chest like war maps. Nigerian. Sentenced to thirty years for trafficking pure heroin from Lagos to Naples. He spoke little Italian, but with eyes that understood everything. They put him in the cell next to Vito after his previous cellmate was found hanged by his shoelaces.

The first time they spoke was during exercise time, in the central courtyard—that rectangle of cracked concrete where Vito walked every morning from 8:00 to 11:00, counting his steps, measuring the shadows, memorizing the guards' faces. Jamal was sitting against the wall, a piece of bread in his hand, staring out to sea as if he could swim into it and disappear.

"You are the Don," Jamal said in broken Italian, without looking up. "Everyone talks. They say: 'Don't look at him. Don't speak. He dies inside, but he kills with his eyes.'"

Vito stopped. He didn't answer immediately. He studied him: his calloused hands, his broken nails, the faded tattoo of a Coptic cross on his neck. No fear. Just tiredness.

"You're not afraid," Vito said, his voice low, cutting.

"I've seen worse," Jamal replied. "In Africa, children die with guns in their hands. Here? Only men crying at night. You don't cry."

Vito laughed—a dry, bitter laugh, the first in months. "Crying is for the weak. I wait."

From that day on, they talked.

Not about business. Not about the Mafia. Jamal didn't ask for favors. Vito didn't offer protection. They talked about God.

"Do you believe?" Jamal asked one morning, as they shared a piece of stale bread that Vito had set aside.

“I believed in myself,” Vito replied, breaking the bread with firm fingers. “Now? God abandoned me here. But maybe… maybe he forgave me.”

Jamal laughed, a deep, warm sound. “God doesn’t abandon. He waits. Like you. You wait for vengeance. He waits for you to understand.”

Vito didn’t answer. But that night, for the first time, he didn’t dream of blood. He dreamed of his daughter.

Conditions worsened.

A week without hot water. The food reduced to a gray mush that tasted like wet cardboard. A guard—a fat Neapolitan with smoker’s breath—spat into Vito’s plate. “Eat, Boss. Now you’re like us.”

Vito didn’t bat an eyelid. He picked up the spoon, wiped it on his overalls, and ate. Slowly. Each bite a vow. I’ll find you. I’ll cut open your belly and make you eat your liver.

Jamal looked at him. “You’re strong. But strength without forgiveness is just anger. And anger eats you.”

“Let it eat me,” Vito growled. “As long as I have teeth, I will bite.”

But something was changing.

Every night, Jamal prayed. In a low voice, in Yoruba. Vito listened through the wall. He didn't understand the words, but the rhythm was a dirge, a distant drumbeat. One night, after a beating—Jamal had refused to pass drugs to a guard—Vito passed a piece of clean cloth through the bars to staunch the bleeding.

“Why?” Jamal asked, his voice cracking.

“Because you're the only one who hasn't betrayed me,” Vito said. “And because, perhaps, God is using you to remind me that I'm still a man.”

It wasn't friendship.It was something harder, purer.

Two exiles on a cursed island. One white, one black. One Sicilian, one Nigerian. Both ate shit, slept on concrete, and stared at the same sea that had swallowed them.

One morning, during exercise time, Vito stopped in the center of the courtyard. The sun was a blade. Jamal was beside him.

"When you leave," Jamal said, "remember this place. Not to hate. To remember who you are."

Vito nodded. Slowly.This was last contact with humanity.

Revenge wasn't dead.

But now he had a witness.

And, perhaps, a soul to save.