When my father finally made it to the dining room table, fury was emanating off of him and it changed the aroma in the room significantly. Lucia wouldn’t even make eye contact, but all three boys appeared to be only taking his gaze as necessary. Whatever these new developments were, the boys were in favor and my father was not, and whenever my father wasn’t happy, the entire house suffered for it.
“Lucia, welcome to our table,” my father said.
She nodded, still mostly avoiding his eyes. “Thank you.”
Whether or not the boys saw it as well, I wasn’t sure, but my father’s gaze danced down Lucia’s form and back up again. If he’d licked his lips, it wouldn’t have shocked me, but after taking his fill of her, he turned his attention to the breakfast that had been placed before him. A quick glance at Romeo proved that he was growing increasingly more agitated by the situation, but then Lucia took a bite of her breakfast and smiled.
“It’s really good,” she said.
That seemed to crack Romeo open if only just a bit. He smiled at her, something he rarely did, and replied, “Yes. Our cook is a world-renowned chef.”
It didn’t take a genius to know that the circumstances around our home had changed with the introduction of the Bonifacios into our lives, but which recent development had left us where we were currently, I was unsure. The boys weren’t going to tell me, and my father obviously wasn’t, so the second I got a chance, I excused myself from breakfast and went to find the same informant I’d originally paid to get me information on Giorgio. We took a stroll outside, well outside the eyes of anyone, but also perfectly within the blind spots of the cameras, so he could tell me what I was missing.
“Well, the specifics of the new arrangements have been kept from everyone who isn’t necessary, but I do know that the Bonifacios are no longer in the dungeon.”
“What?” I said, my mind reeling and heart cracking. “They killed them?”
“No,” he replied. “Romeo had them moved to more comfortable rooms upstairs.”
That just plain didn’t make any sense to me. Romeo was almost as sadistic as my father. Why would he do something like that for anyone, let alone the children of the family who’d killed his brother, after weeks of having them enslaved and tortured?
“There’s more where my original offer came from if you can tell me which room is Giorgio’s,” I said.
He looked all around, making extra sure no one was looking, then he leaned a little closer to me. “He’s on the second floor, in the guest room furthest down on the right. It’s not locked.”
I smiled. “Perfect, thank you. I’ll have your money within a day.”
“Good doing business with you,” he confirmed, then he walked in one direction, and I the other, making my way back towards the house.
There was no hesitation in my movements. For a brief moment when the grunt said the Bonifacios were out of the dungeon, I assumed Giorgio was dead. My heart cracked at the fact, and the relief that I felt when he clarified was something I couldn’t deny. The feelings I was having towards Giorgio were scary and difficult to track, but after 18 years in a home a little more than a prisoner, something that set me ablaze like that was something worth exploring.
It took some maneuvering to get around the house in a way that didn’t tip my hand. At least when Giorgio was in the dungeon, as long as my father was done torturing him for the day, there was no one down there except the guard at the top, but in the main part of the house, there were guards everywhere, not to mention my brothers and father walking around. Sneaking around the house was something I was used to, however, and in no time at all, I was down to Giorgio’s room.
I slipped in, shutting the door behind me, and looked across to where Giorgio was a heap on the bed. “Hey,” I said but got no response.
He seemed to be moving, so I thought he was awake, but as I got closer, I realized that it wasn’t that he was awake, it was that he was shaking violently. His eyes were clamped shut, but he still appeared to be in immeasurable pain. He was gripping his own body and groaning, while sweat covered so much of him, the top of his shirt was completely drenched.
All I could do was hop to attention. There was a glass of water on the bedside table that hadn’t been touched, so I figured with my not going to visit him the past few weeks, he hadn’t eaten or drunk much. I bolted into the bathroom and filled up one of the buckets that was always kept in there for dirty laundry, with cool water. I grabbed a rag and rushed back into the bedroom and used it to dab Giorgio free of the sweat on his forehead. His skin felt clammy and burning hot, so I splashed some of the cool water over his head and neck, and then left the cool rag to rest on his forehead.
It wasn’t an easy task getting some water in him, but after grabbing the glass from the table, I hoisted him up so he was sitting a little more upright and poured the water into his mouth in dribbles that he wouldn’t gag on from not focusing. He was still shaking, no doubt why he wrapped himself so tightly in the blanket, so I clawed it from his grip and opened the windows to get some cool, fresh air inside.
“Come on, Giorgio. You didn’t come this far to lose it here.”
As soon as I pulled the blanket from around him, his teeth started to chatter, but I could only assume it was more related to a reaction to something than actual cold. Still, I climbed into the bed with him and maneuvered myself around him, allowing my body heat to transfer to him and hopefully help regulate his temperature. Where I could, I continued to drop water into his mouth and wiped his sweat away, and every couple of hours or so, I would climb out from behind him, replace the water in the bucket with fresh water, cool enough to be comfortable, but not so cold that it had the opposite effect, and then it turned into a waiting game.
Outside the window, the sun slowly started to set, but Giorgio didn’t seem to be improving. I wished more than anything that I could just get some food in his body — some sort of sustenance for him to feed off of — but getting water in was difficult enough and food would create a choking hazard. The only hope I had was to pray that he eventually came down a little bit so that he could eat on his own and the food could do the rest of the job.
My first break came when Giorgio stopped shaking. My heart sank at first, thinking that he’d passed out, or worse, but then I noticed his breathing evening out, coming in and out in short bursts. When I poured water in, he actually drank it, and I was able to get a whole glass into him without much issue.
“Hey, there you go,” I comforted. “Everything’s gonna be okay. I’m right here.”
The cloth on his head was starting to feel dry, and the water was too cold to dip it in, so I started my routine of slowly climbing out from behind him so that I could go and replace the water.
As my feet hit the ground, a hand reached out and gripped my wrist, I jumped a little and looked back at Giorgio. His eyes were open, though glassy, and when I looked back at him, he slowly sat up.
“Giorgio,” I said. “It’s me, Natalia.”
“I told you already, I was hiding in the closet,” he said.
