Chapter Three #2
“Nestore!” I snapped my lips shut as my voice echoed in the dank chamber. Nestore stirred, then rolled onto his back.
I gasped, my heart jolting. The left side of his face was entirely swollen, his eye a black-and-blue bump and crusted shut.
His other eye opened, and for several moments, he merely stared up at the ceiling, his chest rising and falling slowly before he rotated his head toward me.
He grimaced. “Hey, Amelia.” His voice was rough.
From screaming? The thought made me want to wail.
“I…” I cleared my throat. “I brought you food and a book.”
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to read tonight. My head is spinning.”
I nodded, my chin wobbling. “Yeah. You look…you look really—” I wasn’t sure what to say. He looked like hell, like my father really wanted to kill him.
“This is nothing.” He pushed into a sitting position, his expression tightening with pain.
He moved his hands stiffly and kept them hanging limply at his sides the moment he stood.
When he moved to the bars, I finally got a good look at his hands and immediately wished I hadn’t.
He didn’t have any fingernails. Left were swollen nail beds and half-moon-shaped wounds.
My belly dipped with a heave, but I quickly swallowed.
Nestore leaned the less beaten-up side of his face against the bars and smiled, or at least he tried, but the swollen side didn’t move properly, so it looked like a grotesque grimace.
“I wish…” I felt a wave of immense guilt. I wished I could help him, not just with food or books.
“Yeah, me too.” He motioned at the bag. “Let’s see what you got.”
I pulled out a couple of bananas, a protein bar, and a small pack of chips. “The cook threw away the food before I could pack some for you. I’m sorry.”
He ate the bananas first, then handed me the peel. “It’s better if you bring me stuff that doesn’t leave a trace. Your father noticed the plate you brought down here last time.”
I could feel the color drain from my face. I hadn’t even thought about that. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Me neither,” he said. Was he really joking?
When he had eaten everything that I’d brought and handed the packaging back to me, we settled on the floor.
“The staircase creaks when they come down here. You can hide in time,” Nestore told me when I glanced at the cellblock door for the hundredth time.
“Here.” I handed him the book I’d picked. It was a fantasy book with dragons. He took it without checking it, then took a few gulps from the water bottle.
“I’m praying that this will be over soon.”
“There are only two ways this can end. With me dead or with your father dead.”
Two weeks later, I could barely contain my excitement as I headed down to the basement to Nestore. My father had left that morning, so as soon as my homeschooling was done, I hurried downstairs.
Nestore’s face looked better. He had a new cut on his lower lip, and the way he moved suggested he had other bruises and injuries on his body, but it wasn’t anything as obvious as the first time my father had tortured him. “I know why my father was so busy in the past few days.”
Nestore raised his eyebrows as he eagerly dug in. Today, I had a container with penne all’arrabbiata for him.
“I overheard the guards talking today. They said Benedetto Falcone was killed by his own enforcer.” I grinned, feeling giddy with the possibilities.
Nestore stopped eating and put the container down, hope lighting up his face. “Growl? Are you sure?”
“That’s what they said. My father wasn’t at the dinner table, so I couldn’t ask him, but he’s tripled the guards.”
Nestore’s brows snatched together as he absentmindedly rubbed his left rib.
“Maybe a new Capo will improve things,” I said.
“Maybe,” Nestore agreed, looking more alive than I had seen him since his capture. “But it’ll be a while until his influence reaches California. His son, Remo, is too young.”
“Rumor has it nobody knows where he or his brothers are anyway.”
Nestore perked up, his brows furrowing further. “Several forces will fight for the position of Capo of the Camorra, and eventually, he’ll be one of them. It’s in his blood.”
That was what I had feared. “Do you think my father will be among them?” The idea that Father could become even more powerful terrified me. He’d be as bad as Benedetto, and Nestore’s fate would be sealed.
Nestore’s shoulders stiffened, a flicker of fear passing his face before he masked it. “He’ll try.”
“I don’t think he’ll be successful.”
Nestore didn’t say anything. He finished the food and then leaned back with a deep frown. He pushed up the sleeves of his shirt, and my belly dropped. The bruises, cuts, and burns on his arms made my chest ache for him. What did he go through while I was comfortable upstairs?
The moment my birthday party was over, and the guests were gone, I snuck downstairs with a huge piece of my chocolate cake. Father had gone to bed completely shit-faced, and the staff was busy cleaning up after the crowd, so nobody paid me any attention.
Nestore’s eyes widened when he spotted me in my blush-colored ball dress.
He pushed to his feet and came toward the bars. “What—” He snapped his lips shut. “Your birthday?”
I nodded. I hadn’t told him about the party.
I had felt too horrible talking about something like that when Nestore’s last birthday had ended in a nightmare, and he’d been locked inside a cell for two months.
Having to celebrate in the very ballroom so much blood had been spilled not too long ago had been a horrid experience I didn’t wish to repeat.
“Thirteen?” he asked.
“Yeah. I brought cake for you.” I took out the container with the chocolate cake and handed it to Nestore, who took it hesitantly.
“Happy birthday,” he said quietly, his eyes forlorn. “I don’t have a present.”
“You being alive is a present.”
He opened the container and ate the cake in silence.
“Do you like it?” I asked, unable to bear the silence any longer. Seeing Nestore eat cake in the dirty, cold cell made me desperately sad.
“It’s delicious.” He let out a sigh. “Sometimes I wish you wouldn’t still give me glimpses of good things in life like delicious food. Sometimes I just want to drown in the darkness down here.”
I gripped the bars. “Don’t give up. Promise me. We’ll find a way to get you out.”
He nodded, but he didn’t look convinced.
I wanted to distract him from his captivity. “Tell me about your favorite memory.”
He was silent for a long time. When he finally spoke, I had already given up hope for an answer.
“My mother used to read me the same book every night. I loved it and couldn’t fall asleep without it.
No matter what my father did to her, she always came to my bed and read me The Tale of Peter Rabbit. ”
I perked up. “Maybe I can find the book for you. Is it in the library?” I hoped it was. Father had removed everything from Nestore’s room and burned it.
Nestore shrugged. “I don’t know. The day my mother died, the maid took it out of my room, and I never asked for it again.”
I swallowed hard. “Do you want me to look for it?”
Nestore gave me a small smile. “Yeah.”
I gave a resolute nod. “I’ll do it tonight and bring it to you tomorrow.”
“What about you? Do you have a favorite memory of your mother?”
My face became taut. “No, at least I don’t think it’s a memory. I was only two, too young to remember anything, but sometimes I dream of a woman singing a lullaby, and I see my mother’s face.”
“The subconscious is powerful. It might be a deeply buried memory that your mind can only access during sleep.”
“I like to think it is,” I said with a soft smile, then pushed to my feet. “I’ll be back with The Tale of Peter Rabbit, okay?”
“Okay.”
I left the basement and made a beeline for the library door, which was in the corridor behind the ballroom. The oak door creaked when I pushed it open and snuck in. I spent plenty of time in this room, so nobody would be surprised to find me here, even at night.
My eyes caught on a stack of photos on the desk in front of the window.
Those hadn’t been there this morning. I moved over to the desk and froze.
These were photos from Nestore’s birthday party.
The top photo showed Flavia in her bloodred dress standing behind Father as he chatted with Benedetto.
I quickly rummaged through the photos until I found a photo of Nestore and me on the balcony.
Nestore was more than a head taller, and we were smiling at each other.
I folded the photo and slipped it into my neckline, then checked the other photos, but stopped when the first images of executions appeared.
Had Father really made the photographer capture the brutal murders?
I grimaced and backed away from the desk, then focused on the task that had brought me here in the first place.
I scanned the shelves for one with children’s books, but only found one with fables and fairy tales.
Old leatherbound books lined the shelves, nothing that usually spoke to a child.
I ran my finger over the spines in search of the right one.
I had almost given up hope when I found the small, thin book at the end of the shelf.
I took it out with a grin. Something fluttered to the ground.
A photograph of a young Nestore, maybe six or seven years old, standing beside a beautiful, tall woman with dark hair and huge green eyes.
She wore a long blush-colored dress and had an arm wrapped around her son.
I picked up the photography and hid it in the book. My father destroyed every photograph and all the Romanos’ personal belongings, so this could very well be the last photo of Nestore’s mother.
The house was quiet when I stepped out of the library. The staff was probably done cleaning the ballroom or took extra care to be quiet so they wouldn’t wake my father and encounter his wrath.
With the book clutched against my chest, I hurried downstairs. Nestore shoved to his feet when I entered the basement.
“I didn’t expect you to be back tonight,” he said as he curled his hands around the bars.
I lifted the book with a smile, then held it out to him. He froze before he took it as if it were breakable.
“I found a photo inside.”
He opened the book, and his face softened with wistfulness as he looked down at the image of his mother and himself. He swallowed audibly before he took it out. Then he held the book out to me.
I shook my head with a frown. “It’s for you.”
“I know. Can you read a couple of pages to me?”
My chest tightened. “Of course.”
I took the book and sank to my knees. Nestore sat against the wall, the photo propped up against his raised legs.
I began to read. “Once upon a time, there were four rabbits, and their names were—Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail, and Peter.”
Nestore closed his eyes, and I kept reading.
Ten minutes later, Nestore opened his eyes. “Thanks. That’s enough for tonight. Can you read me more tomorrow?”
I gave a slight nod, my throat too tight for words. I slid the book through the bars and Nestore took it. Then he hid both the book and the photograph under his bed.
He sank down on the bed. “It’s late. You should go to bed before someone catches you.”
“Sleep tight,” I said, moving toward the stairwell.
“I don’t know if I would want to survive without you. Thank you for helping me.”
I froze. “You don’t have to thank me.” I slanted him a look over my shoulder. He was looking down at his legs. “I need you to survive.”