“We need to get the fuck out of here,” Nick says.
“You got him?” Max asks, his voice sounding unsure.
“No.” I look up at Nick to see him pointing up the stairs. “There is some weird shit going on up there. Let’s go.”
“Wait!” I scream. “Is he alive?”
Max grabs my arm and helps pull me up to my feet.
Nick seems so lost in the moment that he doesn’t answer my question. “Alessandro’s siblings walked past the room I was hiding in. Next thing I know is that they’re boning—”
“Is Alessandro okay!?” I cut him off.
Nick hesitates, looking up towards the stairs. “He was when I ran away, but his sister had a gun pointed at him. The brother looks pretty fucking dead to me, though.”
“We need to help him,” I plead.
“What!?” Nick snaps, looking me up and down and realizing that I’m physically fine. “What the fuck is going on?”
“They’re in love, and she’s pregnant.” Max’s voice is monotone.
Nick paces around as if he’s losing his mind, rubbing his face with his gloved hand.
Alessandro and Elena are shouting back-and-forth upstairs. They’re screaming over each other to the point where I can’t make out what they’re fighting about. But Nick said that Elena and Vincenzo were having sex?
I can’t even wrap my head around that, so I can’t imagine what Alessandro is feeling right now. “I need to go help him.” I take a few steps towards the staircase.
“Like hell you are,” Max grabs my arm, preventing me from moving any further.
“Let. Go. Of. Me.”
I try jerking my arm away, but there’s no give.
“There are two possibilities,” Max says as I continue to flail my arm against his grip. “Either you’re as loved up as you say you are and that man up there will not want his pregnant wife anywhere near his batshit crazy sister with a gun. Or. Alessandro manipulated you into thinking that you’re in love. In either case, you are staying far, far away from whatever is happening up there.”
More shouting continues from upstairs, and I can’t make out if they’re making any progress as Max drags me out of our wing. I fight him as hard as I fought Alessandro on our wedding day, and just like it was that afternoon, all I land are some annoying blows on Max’s shins, but there’s no chance of escape.
We’re halfway through the castle when he finally sets me down and pauses at my incessant chanting of ‘let me go’ and ‘put me down.’
He looks to his left and his right as Nick scratches his head. “Know where we are?” Nick asks as if I weren’t here.
“Yeah, I’m just taking a break from carrying her. We keep going this way, then we’ll pass the courtyard and then… I don’t know, man. I recognize where we are, though.” He nods at the statue next to us. “It’s the hallway with the naked dude in it.”
There are dozens of hallways with this type of statue in them. A smile spreads across my face. If they want to talk like I’m not here, there’s no need to help them out.
“No,” Nick says. “This is one of many statues. This one has the micro-penis, but we need to find the one with its nose busted off to get to the courtyard next…”
“Micro-penis?”
Nick raises his eyebrows and smirks.
Max rolls his eyes. “He’s smaller than I am. I’m just saying, I think calling that a micro-penis is offensive to the average dude.”
“Hmm.” Nick crosses his arms. “You know, I think there was one that was less-endowed somewhere that I’m getting this confused with. One of them has three testicles too.”
“Were you just running around and judging the statue penises rather than helping me find Sofia?!”
“It was a coping mechanism!”
