I lifted the bottom part of the door and pushed the food through. I packed it in and tried pushing it until it was in the space between him and the door. His cell was small, only about the size of the bathroom attached to my own bedroom. I couldn’t imagine spending time alone in it. There was nothing for him to amuse himself. It was completely solitary.
“Is that enough to last you?”
His eyes were lowered onto the food, and I could see that he was licking his lips with excitement. It was sad to see that even the thought of food left him salivating. The torture likely burned up all the energy he had, and no amount of food could bring him back from such a strenuous thing.
“It’ll work,” he grumbled back to me.
He looked worse than the last time I saw him. Though the room was too dark to really give me any clear view of the extent of his injuries, the fact that he was stretching to his maximum just to reach the food, with his arm barely extended half its length, was indicator enough. I wanted more than anything to just go in there. To bandage and clean him up a little, do anything I could to help ease his pain, but food and a brief escape to my childhood were all I could offer.
“One of your sisters is singing,” I said. “It’s beautiful.”
“Alessandra,” he groaned back. “She’s got a lovely voice.”
“It reminds me of my Nonna,” I said. “I lived with her for a little while, but she passed away when I was young.” My throat knotted as I remembered the woman. How much I missed her. How much she was rolling over wanting to save Savio and I from our endless hell.
“I’m sorry,” he replied, and I was relieved when he finally managed to get a piece of the food I’d provided up to his mouth. Even eating it seemed difficult and he collapsed back against the wall as he chewed.
“She loved flowers so she taught me how to garden,” I said. “Queen of the Nights are my favorite, but they rarely bloom, and when they do, it’s only at night.”
“Somehow that doesn’t surprise me,” Giorgio replied. He worked the bottle up to his lips and sipped back some of the water, and then he cleared his throat. “You’re kind of a Queen of the Night,” the water seemed to help at least a little.
“My Nonna used to say that too,” I said. “She used to say Savio was the sun and I was the moon.” I curled my knees and wrapped my arms around them. “Sorry. I know hearing about my life isn’t helping you a whole lot.”
“You’d be surprised,” he said. “It’s nice not to think about anything else for a while. Can you tell me more?”
That was why I was down there after all. Giorgio didn’t deserve the torture he was getting, and I could only imagine how I would feel if it were Savio.
How Ididfeel.
So even if it wasn’t much. Even if I wasn’t healing his wounds, if I could give him a little bit of sustenance and a way to escape, then that was better than nothing.
The larger issue was that there wasn’t much in my childhood that I enjoyed talking about. Over the course of a couple of weeks of sneaking down to the basement, I covered everything that felt like it could distract without being too sad. I talked a lot about Savio, obviously, and I was happy when he started to open up about his childhood as well. His siblings had the kind of relationship I was jealous of among my siblings. Whereas it felt like my siblings and I were constantly battling against one another, his siblings loved one another deeply and it was evident in the pained looks Giorgio would occasionally throw in the direction of Antonio’s room.
One night, I wanted to go and visit him, but I received word that I should wait. More time had passed than a normal torture session, and apparently, some pent up rage led to Giorgio and Alessandro getting even more brutalized than they had been in the past few weeks. By the time I finally made it down to the dungeon, Giorgio was so destroyed he could hardly move. I’d brought food and water, but he was slumped against the far wall, bleeding so much he would never be able to make it to where I was.
If only I could get in the room.
“If I drop the food it’ll hit the floor,” I called in.
“I’ll be okay,” he said, but his voice was weakened and strained. “Just leave the water.”
“Okay.” I rolled the bottle of water through the window, and because the room was so small, I was able to do it with enough force to get it over to where he was. The bottle rolled just up to his hand, but he still didn’t reach out for it. His fingers twitched but that was it. “Giorgio…”
He let out a forced chuckle. “I’m going to die here.”
It broke my heart to hear. It wasn’t even that it was resolute or that it was frustration, he had just come to the very edge of giving up all hope. If I could get in to him and at least dress some of his wounds, or maybe even help him eat, things would be different, but we were divided by the thick, metal door and there was nothing I could do but talk to him.
“I wish there was something I could do,” I said.
“There is,” he replied. “Help me get out of here.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I would if I could, I promise, but I can barely get myself out of this house let alone someone else. The guards would have us both dead before we even saw the outside. You know how paranoid my dad is. This place is guarded like a fortress.”
Giorgio didn’t respond. It killed me to disappoint him. I would have loved to give him a little bit of hope, but we would never get out.
There wassomethingI could do.
“I can’t get you out,” I said, “but I can get a key to your room. I can patch you up at least. Maybe even bring a couple of painkillers, just to help numb the pain? On bad days like this, I can bring food directly to you.”
