He shook his head. “Hafta stay.”
“Antonio, I need to get you some help. I need to get you out of here.” I lifted him by the arm, and he felt much lighter than he should’ve. Then, I tried to lead him out, but the closer we got to the perimeter of the alcove, the more he resisted me. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m getting you out.”
I began to push him, shoving him from behind, but he panicked, throwing up his hands to free himself of me, and hurried back to the far wall mumbling, “Hafta stay. Hafta stay.”
“Giorgio,” I raised my voice just enough for him to hear. Everything echoed in here. “He won’t come with me.”
“C-can you p-pull him over t-to see m-me?”
“I’ll try,” I said. Then, I went back to my oldest sibling. “Come on, Antonio. You know me. I’m Lucia and you’re my big bro, remember?”
He just stared at me, unblinking. I saw nothing of the brother I knew in his eyes and it scared me. Although he stood seven inches taller than me, he was so lightweight that when I dragged him by the hand, I actually made some progress.
Maybe this could work after all.
Using all my strength, I tugged and tugged on him, and even though he didn’t go willingly, I managed to bring him around to the end of the alcove so he could see Giorgio.
“H-hey, man. You okay?” Giorgio asked him, so far from okay himself as to be laughable.
But something about making eye contact with Giorgio caused a change to occur in Antonio. Instead of racing back to his alcove, he ran toward the door I’d snuck through earlier. No, hezoomedtoward it, moving far faster than I would’ve thought possible in his current state.
“Wait, Antonio,” I called him back. “We have to get Giorgio.”
The next things that happened occurred one after another with a horrible inevitability. First, just as Antonio reached the door, it opened, and the same huge man I’d seen close the door of my room appeared. In his hands was one of those sawn-off shotguns, and I heard the distinctive click-clack of the weapon being cocked. Instead of turning around to flee, Antonio kept going as if the man wasn’t there, and once within inches, there was a terrible boom as the Cavetti goon fired both barrels at once.
The echo of the cavernous dungeons made the sound reverberate, multiplying in volume as Antonio stood there before the much bigger man, staggering backward. It seemed to take ages for him to fall, and only once he’d landed on that damp stone floor did I see the two blast patterns across his chest. I skated over to him just after he went down, watching the blood pouring out of his ribcage.
“No, Antonio,” I wept, soothing my hands over his burly face. “Stay with me.” Then, I thought of his phrase. “Hafta stay, remember? You hafta stay with me, okay?”
His breathing sounded like a death rattle, but I couldn’t let him go. I’d already lost so much. Too much. His eyes had been unfocused, revolving around without being able to find anything, but then they found me. For the space of a few crucial seconds, I watched as Antonio’s gaze linked to mine, and I knew he’d come back to me as he reached up his hand and touched my cheek.
“There you are,” I said, smiling down at him. But then his hand dropped away all at once, and I knew he was gone.
As my brain caught up, making the connection between this huge goon, my brother who had been chained up in the most deplorable conditions conceivable, and my brother who had been driven mad before being gunned down right in front of me, something within me twisted. I peered up at the goon and caught sight of Romeo with a stunned expression standing behind him.
“Vittorio,” Romeo said to the goon. “What have you done?”
But I didn’t care. I roared from some guttural place deep inside of me as I leaped at them both.
I wasn’t being rational. I wasn’t thinking about anything but that I wanted their blood. I knew that it was their fault that I had no parents. I knew it was their fault I’d been trapped in that stupid room for months. I knew it was their fault that I’d lost my eldest brother. The Bonifacio heir was dead, and I couldn’t handle it anymore. I was sick of having no control over my own life, of being nothing but a pawn, an object, an offering. And now, I was going to do something about it.
“I’ll kill you,”I shouted as I jumped on the enormous goon. As he’d been in the middle of reloading his shotgun, I caught him by enough surprise that I managed to knock it from his grip. It landed with a clatter several feet away, and with a ferocity I hadn’t been aware I’d had, I tore into every bit of him I could reach. Scratching, kicking, punching, biting. I was like some ravenous animal, and he was my first free meal of the season.
Still, when it came to brawn, he far outmatched me. Vittorio the goon peeled me off like he might an errant thread, then slammed me full force into the hard rock floor. My vision went from light to dark, dark to light, before flickering like a lightbulb fuse going out.
The last thing I remember is seeing the image of Romeo retrieving his pistol and firing upon his hired goon, then pivoting toward me, his dark Cavetti eyes trained on my face and I knew no more.
12
Romeo
Carrying Lucia away in a fireman’s lift, I didn’t know if I’d ever felt what I was feeling now. I was so irritated at her from trying to escape yet fascinated by her ingenuity at getting as far as she had. I’d had to kill Vittorio, which would no doubt make my father livid, but I’d learned something in my two-week absence. While I did just fine without my spacious quarters, what I had missed during that time was myfarfalla.
What I hadn’t known—what I’d only come to understand in that specific moment—was the reason why. Though it pained me to admit it, I’d been wrong about my bride-to-be. I’d always thought of her as this weak yet precious possession of mine, beautiful and delicate. But tonight she’d displayed for me in great detail that while she might be tremendously beautiful, she was not weak. When she’d released that roar of defiance, and attacked an armed man three times her size, the sound had quivered its way down my spine and back up again.
Like me, she would kill for what she cared about, or do as much damage as she could at any rate. Once I’d stripped her down and slipped her into the bath I’d run for her, she’d come to, again muttering, “I’ll kill you.”
Before, her declaring such violence toward me would have made my temper skyrocket, but this time I saw it for what it was. Her standing up for herself. So now, I had to determine one more thing so I could come to my final conclusion.
