There was a heat behind Natalia's voice that matched the passionate hatred I felt for Angelo Cavetti. Somewhere inside of her was a gear turning in a different direction, and I was curious to say the least.
But a Cavetti was still a Cavetti. They could not be trusted, and even if I was to believe her, that she was defying her family and seeking me out of her own volition, there was still a reason. There was some personal gain that she felt she could get from me.
And I'll be damned if I was gonna give it to her. Gianni may have managed to convince my family that a truce would be in our family’s best interests but he was as evil as Angelo and Romeo and I wasn’t prepared to accept that someone cut from the same cloth didn’t have the same disregard for my family.
"Why would you risk angering your family to come down here?" I asked.
“I don’t give a damn about them,” Natalia spat. “My brother Savio is who matters to me the most, and I even feel like I’ve been losing him lately. If I’m ever going to break this disgusting trend my father has set, it’s going to be in doing what I want, not what he commands. I’m not about to be a fly to shit like the rest of my family.”
A fly to shit? “So, you believe your father is evil?” I asked, with disbelief thick in my voice.
“My father isn’t evil,” she replied and frustration rocked through me at that expected answer. “Evil is too nice a word.”
She couldn’t see it, but my eyes widened with shock. “Is that so?”
“Trust me, Giorgio. You think my father has torturedyou?” She scoffed. “You have no idea.”
That settled in my stomach like a thick sludge. A rival family was one thing, but what had Angelo done to his own kin? “If that’s true, then I’m sorry.” My stomach growled at that exact moment, begging for more food, of which I had none.
“I’ll try to bring more food next time,” Natalia said in response. “I’m sure you’re starving and a couple of pieces of bread won’t do it. I’ll bring enough to last you for a while, you’ll just have to keep it hidden.”
There were the small bathroom and space under the cot I’d been allotted that my torturer never seemed to check given he was too focused on causing me unending pain. There would certainly be spaces to keep it if she kept true to her promise. I still didn’t understand why she was helping me, but after all of the evil the Cavettis had dragged upon my family, her inexplicable kindness was a nice change of pace.
Maybe she wasn’t as sick as the rest of her brood. When I’d compared her to her father back when we first met, she seemed insulted by the notion. Was it possible she hated him even more than I did?
If so, she could be my ticket to escape.
“Okay,” I said finally. “Thank you.”
“I can’t sneak much else but bread, so hopefully that will suffice. I always hated bread as a kid, so that would almost be more torture to me,” she said.
“You hatedbread?” I asked. “Who hates bread?”
“Bread doesn’t have flavor. It’s just there,” she said. Even though it hurt, I chuckled a little and she joined me. “What?”
“Nothing.” I let my eyes drift close. “Tell me more.”
“More about what?” she asked.
“About your childhood,” I said, desperate for any distraction from my current hell. “Was it all bad?”
“No,” she replied. “When my dad wasn’t involved, it was okay. I only really got to leave the house for school, otherwise, he always wanted me here, but I was close with Savio, so that was okay. We would always watch AlooAloo together.”
“The cartoon?” I asked. “With that weird cat?”
“Yep. Even when we were older, we’d watch it. I don’t know, I think it was a nice escape from our reality to just watch the dumbest cartoon we could find.”
“I get that.”
A sudden thunk of metal in the distance brought us both to total silence. Natalia didn’t speak, didn’t move, hardly breathed. The sound echoed down the hallway, but fortunately, no additional noises followed and after a little bit of time, Natalia let out a deep breath.
“I think that might have been a warning from the guard who’s keeping watch for me. I should go.”
For some reason, my heart sank a little. It could have just been because she was the first person to speak to me with any form of kindness in so long I’d lost count, or because there was something soothing and calming about her voice, but I didn’t want her to go.
So I didn’t offer a response. After a few moments of silence, her hand snuck through the window. It was so much more petite than I remembered, with soft, tanned skin and freshly manicured nails.
She set her hand on my shoulder. “Hang in there, Giorgio. I’ll be back soon.”
