Giorgio jumped up out of his bed and raced towards the door. When he didn’t notice me following, he turned around. “What are you doing?”
“There won’t be enough room for me. Go. I’ll find a different way there.” To my surprise, Giorgio almost didn’t leave me behind. There was fear in his eyes, and as much as I wanted to go with and comfort him, there was something else I needed to do, for all of our sakes. “Go! I’m right behind you!”
With that, Giorgio ran from the room. I took a deep breath and walked back over to the doorway myself, but on the way out, I reached up and knocked the camera that was filming Giorgio’s room to the floor. I stomped on it and smashed it to bits, knowing that panic over a hurt Lucia was as good an excuse as any to get that camera gone for good. It didn’t feel great using such a horrible situation to my advantage, but somehow, we had to start turning the tables in our direction.
It felt like things were just going from bad to worse around the Cavetti estate.
20
Giorgio
Waking up with Natalia in my arms was a bittersweet feeling. My fingers skated gently across the skin of her cheeks, her plump lips, and faint freckles.
How sinful to be so beautiful.
It was nice just to have her in my arms again, but knowing that we were making the most of Romeo being out of the house while he was holed up in the hospital with my sister in a coma was a painful pill to swallow. She was comforting, more than that, she’d been a rock with me unable to visit with Lucia as much as I’d like. Chiara, Alessandra, and I had spent the first 48 or so hours of Lucia’s hospital stay in the waiting room, but then we had to face the truth.
Lucia wasn’t waking up any time soon.
Back when she first went under 48 hours felt like years, but it’d been close to two weeks that she’d been in stasis, and I was so terrified I’d barely eaten or slept. If Natalia hadn't managed to shatter the camera watching my room, I would have worried myself to the point that I was ready to jump out the window. She kept me calm and did a good job of convincing Romeo to allow me and the twins to see Lucia at intervals throughout the weeks.
We hadn’t been intimate again yet, well, apart from the wandering hands. Just as we had on our first night together, we often found our hands on one another and would help each other reach sleepy climaxes before drifting off to sleep again. Whether because of my physical condition or my emotional one, the mood never seemed to strike for us to go any further than that, but we both seemed satisfied with the arrangement.
At least for the time being.
“You woke up before me this time,” Natalia murmured, her eyes still shut.
“Yeah,” I replied. “I get to visit with Lucia today.”
“You do,” Natalia replied. “the twins saw her yesterday.”
“Do you think she’ll wake up today?” I asked, and it was a question that I had asked every day since Lucia first fell.
And every day, I got the same answer from Natalia. “It could be.”
It was an answer that was just encouraging enough without promising false hope. It could be.
It also could not be.
“I’m going to get up and take a shower,” I said.
Natalia let out a cat-like groan of dissatisfaction and curled closer to me. “Five more minutes.”
Five more minutes she would get.
Fortunately, that was all she needed to drift off to sleep again, so I placed a soft kiss upon her forehead and untangled myself from her, and climbed out of bed. My supply of clothes was growing thanks to Natalia occasionally bringing things to me, so though I’d prefer to don a nice suit, I at least had more than the estate’s supply of silk pajamas and the same sweatpants and shirt I arrived in, which were still stained with my blood. I grabbed a pair of black pants and a gray t-shirt and slipped into the bathroom.
Exactly as had happened after I healed from my first stint down in the dungeon, the more I could hold my own strength, the longer my showers got. Bathing wasn’t merely to clean my body, but I always found myself letting the hot water wash over me, hoping it would clean my reality as well.
Could it wash away the fact that, while my dear Lucia lay in a coma, Angelo was still storming around running his empire as if nothing was wrong? Could it wash away the fact that my brother and parents had died in recompense for Gianni’s life which had never been taken to begin with? Could it wash away the fact that while my family was suffering so heavily, we still managed to find some joy and love among the Cavetti children who seemed to accept us into their hearts - the guilt that I felt imagining my parents watching their child cavort with the family that took them from us?
Instead of getting my vengeance, we were in bed with them.
Please forgive me mom, dad, Antonio.
“Giorgio?” Natalia’s voice called over the hiss of the shower. “The driver will be here to get you soon, I have to go.”
“Okay. Hang on just a second,” I replied. I quickly turned off the shower and threw back the curtain. Natalia was still standing there, and her face turned red as she twirled away back into the bedroom.
