“Nope, but the masters know I enjoy it down here.”
One of them snorted. “You’re a sadist. You actually get off on whipping those Bonifacios till their skin peels off. That takes a sick mind.”
“The sickest,” Nasal agreed, and I felt revulsion glide through my veins. These goons were the ones in charge of my brothers, and they sounded capable of the vilest of behaviors. “You think I’m bad you should watch old man Cavetti’s face when I go at it. Pretty sure him overseeing the sons of his oldest enemy screaming and begging gives him a woody.”
Suddenly, the men emerged through the locked door, each of them one-upping the other on tales of torture they’d heard about. Grasping every ounce of my courage, I darted through the door, hearing it click shut behind me as I sunk down in the shadows next to yet another stairway. Feeling more fortunate that I’d dared to believe was possible, I headed for the set of stairs made not from fine marble and other exotic materials but from what appeared to be hewn slabs of grayish stone.
There was a humidity that hadn’t been present upstairs, a coolness, too, as if the temperature controls they’d regulated in my room didn’t exist down here. I’d expected there to be some sort of extra security. More goons maybe or at least more barriers, but there weren’t. As soon as I touched the bottom of the stairs, the space opened into what must have been the basement. There were three alcoves right in front of me, each separated by a brick wall. One was empty but the next had a man in chains. I gasped at how painful being partially suspended by chains over a pool of water must be, and the man looked up.
“L-Lucia?” my brother Giorgio stammered out, and though his voice was recognizable, the rest of him wasn’t. All he had on was a set of rags that may have been the clothing he’d been wearing months ago. His black wavy hair, which he’d always worn fashionably and a bit on the long side hung in his face, the bottom half of which had been covered completely by a gnarled beard.
“Giorgio?Santa Maria…” I sobbed out for the horrendous state he’d been left in.
“D-don’t step in the l-liquid. They k-keep an electrical c-urrent r-running through it.”
Considering the putrid odor of the dungeons and how filthy, bone-thin, and neglected my brother was, I didn’t want to ask what might be in that liquid.
“But I need to get you down,” I protested.
“C-can’t. Not s-safe,” he juddered out as if to still protect me, and I sobbed even harder. “Luce, is Antonio st-still alive? I haven’t h-heard him make a n-noise in a l-long time.” Giorgio jerked his chin toward the last alcove, the one I hadn’t quite made it to yet.
“Giorgio, I can’t leave you like this.”
He shook his head at her. “Ch-check on Antonio.”
Tears streaming so thickly that I had to wipe at them to see, I stepped in the direction Giorgio had indicated. The alcove was similar but without the pool of rancid water inside. There were chains here, too, but they were unoccupied. This one was dry and bare except for the figure in the back, a lump of man that wasn’t even moving. Was he breathing?
Wary of possible booby traps, I crept towards him. But as I neared him, I noticed he wasn’t even restrained.
“Antonio? It’s me, Lucia.”
My eldest brother made no sound and didn’t move a muscle. What would I do if he was dead?
“Antonio?” I said again and laid my hand on his back. While his skin was chilled, he didn’t feel like a corpse, and once I made contact, he flipped over and went from a prone position to crouching so quickly that he took me by surprise. “Oh, thank God you’re alright. I need to get you out of here.”
But while he seemed in slightly better condition than Giorgio physically—particular since he was free of chains—when he looked at me, his eyes flitted around like an injured bird’s. He began whispering some phrase I couldn’t quite make out.
“Speak up a little, Antonio, I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Hafta ssstttt,” he whispered, unintelligibly.
“What?”
“Hafta… hafta… hafta stay.”
“Have to stay?” I repeated back at him.
He nodded vigorously. “Hafta stay. Hafta stay.”
“You want me to stay with you?” I asked him, my heart breaking at seeing him like this. I didn’t even know if he had recognized me.
“Hafta stay,” he murmured quietly, pointing at his chest. “Hafta stay.”
“You meanyouhave to stay?”
He nodded again.
“You don’t, though. I’m here to rescue you. To take you away.”
