Thirty Three
LIANA
“Hey, blondie, wake up.” A soft, deep voice says. A light grip wraps around my arms and shakes me slightly, but my body is too cold to focus on their words.
The surface beneath me is freezing cold and flat, like metal. I hear the trickling of water in the distance, causing an echo to bounce around the room.
“She should be awake by now.” Another softer, quieter voice says.
My eyes refuse to open and every part of my body feels stiff. In an attempt to respond, an almost soundless hum escapes me, but it’s nothing compared to the noises that surround me. Gathering as much strength as I can, I hum again, this time a little louder.
“I think she’s awake, but still out of it. Get the spray.”
I listen as a hurried set of footsteps walks away from me before coming back, and a tapping noise sounds against the floor.
“I didn’t say throw it at my head, you prick.” Venom and annoyance lace the voice.
All of a sudden, a putrid scent fills my nostrils and bile rises up in my throat as my eyes shoot open and I inhale a large, deep, scattered breath.
“I told you she’d have brown eyes.” A large muscular man says, a wide smile on his face. “I’ll take my money now.”
The woman in front of me side-eyes him. “Yeah, I’ll be sure to do that as soon as we leave this place.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Strawbs,” he replies, leaving my eyeline.
“I’ve told you to stop fucking calling me that,” she retorts, her eyes rolling and a disgusted grimace pulling at her lips. Turning her attention back to me, she brushes the hair from my face. “How are you feeling?”
“W-what the fuck was that?” I ask, referring to the wretched smell as a shudder rocks through me as I recall it.
“Neat little thing, isn’t it?” she says with a smile, holding the small white bottle up to my line of vision. “It’s something to wake you up when your body isn’t ready. It’s disgusting, but it works.”
“I can still smell it.”
“It’ll pass in a few hours.”
I stare at her in disbelief. “What the fuck is in it?” I ask, rubbing my eyes. “It’s getting stronger and… fuck it burns.” My hands become frantic as they try to rub the pain from my eyes.
Her cold hands reach for mine as she pries them away from my face. “It’ll only make it worse if you irritate it further. Come on, let’s get you something to eat.”
I glance at her in confusion. This room is almost twice as small as my bedroom with what seems to be at least six people including myself. Three of them are lying down, facing the walls as they sleep, leaving me, this girl and that guy the only ones awake. She’s trying to make light of a very dark and glum situation.
“We’ve only got day-old bread and some very suspicious-looking water, but it’ll hold you over until tonight when they bring more.”
I nod, grabbing her hands as she holds them out to help. As I rise, the light-headedness returns, and everything spins wildly. She holds me steady as she slowly guides me near the black rusted metal door that keeps us confined in this box.
She helps me sit down on the bed beside the door, and it creaks under my weight, sending an echo through the room.
“Here,” she says, tearing me off a piece of the stale bread and handing me the bottle of water that has about a swig of dirty liquid left. “It doesn’t taste as bad as it looks.”
Every part of me screams to release the bile in my stomach, but my body won’t cooperate. My mouth is bone dry, and my stomach growls as I stare at the water and dry bread in front of me.
I hold the bottle with a shaky hand as I take a bite, the bread crumbling in my fingertips. I take a small sip of the water to wash it down with. “I was expecting a lot worse,” I admit, shame filling me.
She offers a comforting smile and sits beside me. “What’s your name?” she asks, facing me.
“L-Liana,” I answer in a low voice, my eyes flicking across every aspect of the room.
“Everyone in here calls me Strawberry,” she says, a smile in her voice. “Or in that prick’s case,”—she points to the man in the corner—“Strawbs.” A sense of hatred laces her tone. “Perks of being a natural redhead, I suppose.”
A light laugh leaves my lips, the best I can offer considering the situation. “Well, what’s your real name?”
She shakes her head. “Believe me, it’s better to keep some things to yourself in here. If you keep it impersonal, you don’t get hurt. And being in this godforsaken place, the last thing you need is more hurt because you let yourself get close to someone. We’ve lost some good people, people that did absolutely nothing to deserve it, but the bastards that keep us here don’t fucking care.”
Her words ring around in my mind like a broken record on repeat, a swirling feeling of dread lingering in my stomach.
“H-how long have you been here?” I ask.
She sighs. “It’s easy to lose track of time here, so it’s impossible to know for certain. A couple of years would be my guess, though.”
My head whips to the side and I watch as her face doesn’t even shift, the small smile granting me a sense of comfort. She’s content here; she’s made her peace with her dreadful situation; it’s quite literally written on her face.
“S-so, how old are you?”
She shrugs. “Again, I’m not quite sure. I’m sure I’ve missed a few birthdays with my family, though. A little piece of advice for you, don’t dwell on it too much. I’ve done everything I can to escape, and I’ve found it impossible. You’ll stop kicking yourself eventually.”
“Kicking myself for what?”
“Vittorio is a good guy and he meant you no harm. He’s only doing what he was trained to do.”
“A good guy?” I scoff. “He met with me under the guise of being my friend’s boyfriend, continued to make small talk before drugging me and bringing me here. And now you’re trying to tell me he’s a ‘good guy’? Believe me, I’ve met good guys and he doesn’t hold a candle to any of them.”
She sighs, annoyed, and reaches beneath the bed to retrieve a black book, placing it in my hands with a loud thwack. “I’ve been here long enough to know how this is going to end. There is no way out, Liana, so whether you like it or not, you have to make peace with it.”
I shake my head rapidly, the refusal to believe it outweighing my rational thoughts, and tears glossing in my eyes. “No, he’ll come for me. My husband loves me, and he’ll come for me.”
“Will he though?” she asks, her eyebrows pinching together and her nose scrunching as if it’s the most impossible thought. “I thought someone loved me once, too. I had a good home, and a good family… and if you haven’t noticed, I’m still here despite all that. I’m still trapped in this hellhole with not an inch of sunlight pouring in from anywhere.” She sighs, trying to keep herself composed. “I think we’re underground somewhere—we never see sunlight through those holes in the walls during hours of the day, so unless there’s no sun anymore… It just makes us less likely to ever be found, and for however fucking long you deny it all, you’re letting the bastards in charge win.”
“But he loves me,” I reiterate. “He would do anything to find me, I know it.” As the words leave my lips, I sound completely unsure. Does he actually love me? It was only a few hours ago that I was picturing him as the kind of man incapable of the word itself.
“Why, because you feel it in your gut?” she asks with a sense of sarcasm in her tone. “Use your head, Liana. I don’t know you, but I’d like to think you’re a smart girl. Use what you know and weigh the possibilities of him finding you before you’re dead. I’ve been here for fucking years and I thought my family would do anything to find me. But I’m still here, so what does that tell you?”
I don’t believe it. I refuse to believe it. While we started off at each other’s throats, he’s shown he cares for me. I believe he cares for me as much as his blackened heart will let him. And, if I know him at all, he’ll stop at nothing to find me.
“So, what do I do with this?” I ask, my fingers tracing the deep marking on the front of the little black, tattered book.
“It’s a little ritual we have,” she admits, showing me the softest smile for a woman stuck in an actual cave-like hole. “I make sure that every person that enters, man or woman, writes how they’d like to be buried. That way, they remain hopeful until their dying breath that someone cares, that we care. That maybe, just maybe, in another life, they’d be buried by the people who care about them the most in a way they see fit.”
“You–you want me to write how I want to be buried?” I breathe in disbelief. “That’s stupid. I’m not dying in this godforsaken place.”
“Fucking believe it. We’ve all made peace with it, including the newest one before you, and you should too. This is your life now, not something you can escape when you wake up. So do me a favour and fucking suck it up because nobody, not even your little husband, can or will save you now.”
Clenching my jaw, I stare down at the book in my hands through blurry eyes. My anger finds its way to the surface, surpassing my dread, fear and the overwhelming panic that courses through me, and I throw the book with an ear-piercing scream.
Nobody flinches, but everyone’s awake now, staring at me with weakened expressions, one that showcases how far gone they all are.
“I’d rather die trying to escape than sit here and accept my fate. Thanks to my little husband , I’m a woman who never takes no for an answer, especially from men who wish to do me harm. If they say ‘jump’, I don’t ask them how high—no, I cut their legs off so they can’t give a damn demonstration. If they say ‘obey’, I don’t cave, not even under pressure—no, I cut out their tongue so they can’t even mutter the command and never will again. So forgive me if I choose to have faith in my husband and my ability to hold my own, over you.”
“You need to listen to her, Lia.” A soft voice says, drawing my attention to the opposite side of the room. It’s faint, familiar and filled with sympathy. “Not just about what it’s like to live in this shithole, but also about Vito. Every single person in here, besides the bastards in charge, is a good person with major flaws. You have to get to know them more before you make a definitive conclusion about them in your mind.”
“And who are you to say—”
The small figure walks into view, the shadows making it almost impossible to make out any distinct features. “There’s nothing saving us in here, Lia.”
“A-Anabel?” The dim light from the flickering bulbs brings her strawberry-blonde hair into view and for a second, relief fills me, but it’s quickly washed away by the blood that coats her skin and the gashes along her legs.
Panic rushes through me as my eyes flicker, examining more of her.
“I’m okay,” she says, crouching down in front of me, but the pain in her face tells a different story. “Don’t let my appearance scare you—God knows I’ve made my peace with it, so you have to as well.”
“You look so…” my voice trails off as I try to find the right words to say.
“Pale? Cut up? Different?” Somehow, her lips hold a warm smile. “Whether it’s all the above or you wanted to add a different word, it doesn’t matter. Every single one of us has made our peace with this fucked-up, tormented and wicked shitshow we’ve found ourselves in, and eventually, you will too.”
“Over my dead body,” I spit, my chin quivering from all the riled-up anger and fear that courses through me.
Over my dead fucking body will I ever come to terms with this. He’ll come for me. Dario will scour every nook and cranny of this earth to find me, I know it. Not because I feel it in my gut, but because I know him. He’s a good person who’s stopped at nothing to keep looking for the man who killed his sisters, so I can only pray he’ll show me the same courtesy. Not even God could save me from this, only him. And if he doesn’t, it certainly will be over my dead fucking body that I ever adjust to this.
Liana and Dario's story continues in book two of the Vitale Empire series.