Dungeon. The word hits like a slap. Our love nest, our sanctuary, our perfect underground paradise, reduced to a dungeon in her eyes. Everything beautiful Carlo and I built together, dismissed as evidence of my sickness.
“There was someone...” I start, then stop. How can I explain Carlo to someone who’s never understood love? How do I describe perfect happiness to someone who thinks emotion is weakness?
“Someone?” Mama’s voice goes very quiet, very dangerous. “What someone?”
“A friend,” I lie, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. “Someone who needed help. I was helping them.”
“With restraints?”
“They were... struggling. With personal demons. I was providing support.”
The lie builds on itself, becoming more elaborate and more pathetic with each word. But what else can I say? That I kidnapped Carlo Benedetti and kept him chained to my bed for two weeks while I played house with him? That I drugged his food and tried to kill us both in some romantic murder-suicide that apparently failed spectacularly?
Even I know how insane that sounds.
“Where is this friend now?” Mama asks with the patience of someone questioning a particularly slow child.
“This girl,” she adds with a stern expression and a stubborn gleam of hope in her eyes. As if she would make allowances for me chaining someone to my bed and doing kinky things, if they were the gender she deemed appropriate.
I tilt my chin up stubbornly. “Man,” I correct ruthlessly, destroying her hopes and dreams.
The corner of her lip curls up in disgust. “Where is thisman?”
“Gone,” I whisper, and it’s the first honest thing I’ve said since she walked in.
Gone. The word echoes in the sudden silence, carrying all the weight of my loss. Carlo is gone, and I don’t understand how or why or where. I don’t understand why I’m still alive when we were supposed to die together. I don’t understand anything except that the only happiness I’ve ever known has vanished like it never existed.
“Perhaps that’s for the best,” Mama says, her voice gentler now that she thinks she’s getting somewhere. “Giovanni, you can’t keep taking in strays. Broken people will only make you more broken.”
Broken people. She thinks Carlo is broken, when the truth is that he was the only thing that ever made me feel whole.
“You need professional help,” she continues, settling back in the chair like she’s made a decision. “Real help, not just theweekly therapy sessions we’ve been paying for. I think it’s time we looked into residential care again.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. Residential care. Another institution, another place where they’ll try to fix what’s wrong with me. Another place where I’ll be medicated and monitored and slowly worn down until I’m too tired to remember what happiness felt like.
“Please, Mama,” I whisper, hating how young and desperate I sound. “Please don’t send me away. I’ll be good. I’ll be normal. I promise.”
“Oh, sweetheart.” For just a moment, her voice softens with something that might be genuine sadness. “You’ve made that promise so many times before. And every time, we end up here. With you in some state of crisis, having done something...” She gestures at the restraints. “Something that proves you’re not safe to be left alone.”
Not safe to be left alone. The words confirm what I’ve always known but never wanted to admit. I am too broken to exist independently. Too damaged to be trusted with my own life, let alone anyone else’s.
“I’ll think about what to do,” Mama says, standing up with the crisp efficiency that signals the end of uncomfortable conversations. “But Giovanni, this can’t continue. Do you understand me? This fantasy world you’ve created down here, it has to stop.”
Fantasy world. She thinks our love was fantasy. She thinks everything beautiful Carlo and I shared was just another symptom of my madness.
Maybe she’s right.
“Get dressed,” she continues, moving toward the door. “Properly dressed, in clothes that cover your body appropriately. Have a shower, eat something substantial, try to look like amember of this family instead of a...” She pauses, searching for the right comparison. “Instead of a lost soul.”
A lost soul. Yes, that’s exactly what I am, isn’t it? Lost and wandering and desperately searching for something I’ll never find again.
“We’ll talk more later,” she says, her hand on the doorknob. “When you’re more coherent. When you can explain to me exactly what’s been happening down here.”
The door closes behind her with a soft click, leaving me alone with the artificial sunlight and the lingering scent of her expensive perfume. Alone with the empty restraints and the candle stubs that are the only evidence of our final meal together.
I sit there for a long time, trying to process what just happened. Mama found me alive instead of dead. She found evidence of Carlo’s presence but no Carlo. She thinks I’m sicker than ever, more in need of institutional care than before.
All true, probably. But none of it explains where Carlo is.
