If I could just disable that camera. Well, no, that wasn’t all it would take. I had to disable the camera and somehow keep Romeo from fixing it. Since I wasn’t going back to sleep any time soon, I pulled out my computer and turned to the good ol’ internet for advice. Surely someone had to have a camera disabled in their lifetime and keep someone from fixing it or needing it to be repaired.
The simple solution would be to just come clean, but though I’d seen changes in Romeo since Lucia entered his life, I didn’t know that those changes extended all the way to Giorgio and I. My brothers would need to be told in phases, starting with Savio and working my way up, and they’d need to be additionally convinced not to tell my father. For as long as Angelo Cavetti was a living, breathing man, he couldn’t know thatanyonehad their sights on me, let alone a Bonifacio. That’d result in Giorgio’s death before he even thought twice, and he just might kill my brothers for knowing and not saying anything.
Of course, the search results I got ranged from things that would only work if Romeo was a complete idiot, to the cartoonish and nonsensical like trying to pass off a picture of the room as a stand-in. In spite of myself, and due in part to the fact that I was sleep-deprived, I was actually considering the latter, but it’d involve trying to get an exact perfect picture of the room based on the angle and zoom of the camera, which of course I didn’t know, not having seen the feed the camera provided.
Was there any way to get Romeo toshowme the feed he saw from his camera of Lucia’s room? He probably kept a close eye on it whenever one of the Bonifacio sisters was visiting with Giorgio, maybe I could happen upon him with a random request while he was watching the feed and just get enough of a glimpse of it to base my photo on?
Eventually, I scrolled past that option. The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it seemed. I was going to have to disable the camera and keep Romeo’s attention on it low, but how I would do that was a complete mystery.
That’s when I came across my first possible lead for something thatcouldwork.
My parents used to keep a camera situated right outside our house to catch me because they knew I liked to sneak out. I just had to convince them the camera was on the blink. I started by jostling it one night to change its angle but didn’t sneak out. My parents came bursting into my room and I was sitting there painting my nails. I did it a bunch more times and eventually when the camera changed angles they thought it was just a glitch and stopped checking.
It hadn’t occurred to me to simply attempt to falter Romeo’s faith in the camera. He was a man ofverylittle patience. Perhaps if I tried the jostling trick, he’d eventually just get sick of fixing it and find another, less permanent way to keep an eye on Giorgio that we could sneak around a little bit easier.
I closed my laptop and tried to focus my attention on what circumstance I could muster up to mess with the camera’s angle or just straight up unplug it when I suddenly heard something that sounded like thunder. The view from my window confirmed that there was no bad weather outside – it was a clear night so what was that noise?
Returning my laptop to my bedside table, I climbed out of bed and walked over to my bedroom door, and opened it. I was already halfway convinced I was going to see a maid had tripped and tipped her cart or something, but I heard a quiet, distant groaning. I walked down the hallway and turned to look down the stairs and was shocked at what I saw.
“Lucia!” I yelped. “Help!” After screeching out, I bolted down the stairs to where Lucia was laying at the bottom, helter-skelter, as though she’d fallen. “Lucia? Hey!”
The only words Lucia could get out were, “My baby,” in a quiet, weak whisper.
“Shit!” A pool of blood was gathering around the back of Lucia’s head. “Help!”
“Natalia?!” Savio came bolting around the corner at the top of the stairs, to my surprise, Alessandra was with him. Alessandra let out a screech and both she and Savio came charging down the stairs. “What happened?!”
“I don’t know!” I was panicking. The blood spot was getting larger and Lucia’s eyes were fluttering closed. “I just heard a bunch of noise and came out to this! I think she hit her head.”
“What’s going on?” Marcello asked from the top of the stairs.
“Where’s Romeo?” I asked. “Why is she just wandering around by herself.”
“Dad sent him out on a job?” Savio asked.
Marcello pounded down the stairs and looked down at Lucia with horror. “Fuck!” He dragged his phone out of his pocket before pointing at Savio. “You call Romeo. Let him know what happened. I’ll call an ambulance.”
Alessandra was knelt down next to Lucia, hands shaking as she looked over her unconscious sister, where she stayed until an ambulance came and started to load her onto a stretcher. She looked at Savio through tear-stained eyes. “I want to go with her.”
He looked back at her, heartbroken.
“We can all fit in my Escalade,” Marcello said. “Alessandra, go get your sister.”
“I’ll go get Giorgio,” I said.
“No!” Savio and Marcello said simultaneously.
“What? Why? He’s her brother, remember?”
“Father will…”
“I don’t care about him!” I snapped. “Do not leave without Giorgio.”
Then I rushed away from the scene and bolted up the stairs. As fast as my feet would carry me, I made my way down to Giorgio’s room, throwing open the door and running straight into the room, regardless of the camera.
“Natalia?” Giorgio said. He was wide awake, clearly plagued with similar sleeping issues to my own, though not for the same reason. “What’s wrong?”
“Lucia,” I said, fighting to get my breath. “She fell down the stairs. Everyone’s piling into Marcello’s truck to go to the hospital.”
