Chapter Eight #3
His eyes narrowed, and he shoved to his feet.
I jerked back in surprise. He wore only black sweatpants.
Without a word, he stalked toward the door and left.
I stumbled out of bed and chased him. I had trouble keeping up with him.
When he disappeared through the door that led down into the basement, I stumbled to a halt.
My heart threatened to jump out of my chest when I thought about going down there.
It was a place I never wanted to see again.
The walls of the hallway seemed to close in on me.
Nestore was down there.
He had survived so many more horrors.
I forced my feet to move despite my racing pulse and tightening belly, and when I finally arrived in the basement, the two guards didn’t stop me. I hovered near the stairwell, unable to move farther as the familiar stench of dankness, feces, and decay flooded my nose.
Nestore opened the cell beside my father, stepped in, and threw it shut with a resounding bang.
What was he doing?
The two prisoners in the cell with him were both men who’d picked him up for torture regularly. Nestore’s chest heaved with every deep breath, his expression entirely alien in its ferocity.
He sucked in an even deeper breath, cracked his neck, and his eyes came to rest on one of the men. His lip curled, and he lunged.
Nestore was like a wild animal as he clawed, punched, and kicked with a speed and force that took the heavier man by surprise and sent him tumbling to the ground.
Nestore sank his teeth into the man’s cheek, then jerked back with a piece of flesh in his mouth.
I covered my mouth with my hand as I watched Nestore once again become a monster.
The first man’s life ended when Nestore rammed his fingers into his eyes.
I couldn’t bear it anymore, but before I turned my back on the scene, I caught my father’s gaze. His expression was a mix of disgust and horror, then quickly morphed to pleading. Did he hope I’d help him escape?
He had turned Nestore into this bloodthirsty creature, and I’d never forgive him for it. I’d never forgive him for all that he’d made Nestore suffer. Even my own suffering took second place to that. Maybe I could have forgiven him for my pain, but never for Nestore.
The door upstairs swung open, and Remo and a tall blond guy named Fabiano appeared at the top, backlit by light from the foyer.
They stalked down the staircase and then entered the cellblock next to me.
I still hadn’t felt the courage to move away from the mouth of the stairwell, my way to escape this place.
Fabiano motioned at Nestore, who sank his teeth into the man over and over again. “Fuck this shit, Remo. This is a level of unhinged that I don’t think we can control. That guy is on the verge of becoming a cannibalistic serial killer.”
“As long as he eats our enemies, I don’t see a problem.”
Did they find this funny? “Stop it,” I gritted out despite my fear of these two men, but over time, fear dulled, and six months down here had definitely dampened mine. “He’s not eating them. He’s obviously hurting.”
Cool blue eyes locked on mine. “Some people also think a dog that bites their hand off is a misunderstood creature. I would put a bullet in its head.”
I risked another glimpse over my shoulder. Both prisoners in the cell were dead, and Nestore stood over their bodies, covered in blood.
“I told you he’s evolving,” Remo said.
“He needs help, not encouragement.”
Remo’s smile became hard. “Whatever you want to see in him, it’s a fairy tale that’s not going to happen, girl. Run as long as you can.”
They moved toward Nestore, but I left.
I couldn’t bear another second of this. I rushed out. My breath came in short bursts as I sprinted up the stairs. It was the middle of the night, or I would have gone to Flavia. Instead, I went to my bedroom, to our bedroom, and cried myself to sleep.
I woke to the sound of steps and quickly sat up, then turned on the light. Nestore stood in the room, covered in blood, with a haunted look on his face.
I shuddered out a breath and pushed out of bed, crossing the distance between us. He gazed down upon me, his lips covered in blood. “Nestore,” I whispered. “You have to stop. All this rage and revenge will drag you even deeper into darkness. Please come into the light with me.”
Nestore gave me a bitter smile. “There’s only darkness where I am.
I crave revenge. I crave their screams, and I won’t be sated until every last one of them has perished.
I can’t.” He brushed my cheek with his fingertips in a featherlight touch.
“You are my light. You remind me of my past self, of a time before the darkness consumed me.”
“You can leave the darkness.”
Nestore lowered his hand and didn’t say anything. His expression told me he didn’t think he could. Maybe he didn’t even want to.
“I can’t bear all this darkness, Nestore. I prayed every night for the past three years that we would both find a way to escape this place, and now you want to stay. Why? I don’t understand.”
“I won’t leave. This is my home.”
“Is it really? After everything that’s happened?”
A shadow passed his eyes, but his expression remained hard and stoic. “It is the place I inherited from my father, the home of us, Romanos. It’s the place from where I’ll rule over my territory. I won’t let memories chase me out of my own home. I’m stronger than the ghosts of my past.”
Was he? Then why was he so desperate to exact the most brutal revenge?
His gaze flickered with trepidation. “You promised to stay by my side. We promised each other our firsts, remember?”
I swallowed past the lump in my throat. “I do. I want to stay by your side.”
I also wanted to escape this place with a despaired longing that threatened to crush me. Relief crossed Nestore’s face.
I returned to bed, heartbroken and unable to fall back asleep, while Nestore disappeared into the bathroom. Nestore emerged clean and dressed in sweatpants fifteen minutes later and stretched out on the blanket on the floor.
“You can come to bed, you know?” My pulse quickened. After what I’d witnessed in the basement, a tiny part of me feared the man Nestore was becoming.
“This is more familiar, and I won’t share a bed with you until we’re married.”
Marriage. I had dreamed of marrying Nestore, but in my fantasies, he had always been smiling like the boy at his fifteenth birthday party.
Would I ever see this version of him again?
In the following three weeks, Nestore went on missions with Remo and Nino.
I heard the hushed whispers from Niccolo and the other guards who had remained to keep watch over me about how brutally Nestore killed his enemies.
They called him the Madman of LA in revered and horrified whispers.
Every time he came back, more darkness had consumed him.
Every time he returned, my heart broke a little more for the boy he once was.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew he’d harbored darkness back then, too, but it had been contained.
It hadn’t drowned out everything else like it did now.
And since Flavia had left the mansion to live in Santa Barbara, I felt even more trapped in my own despair and the past.
The worst days were the ones when he went down to the basement to torture my father and the other prisoners. On those days, I could barely look into his eyes, at the ferocious hunger for bloodshed in them.
On one of those nights, Nestore returned covered in blood as usual, and something broke inside me.
Every time he went down there, I too went down mentally.
I couldn’t stop myself from joining him in the dank basement in my mind, and every time I did, I felt small and powerless and filled with terror.
I didn’t want to feel like that anymore.
I stood in front of him, crying. “Please stop this, Nestore. I can’t bear this anymore. This house harbors too many horrors. I need to leave for a little while. Flavia told me I could visit her in Santa Barbara.”
Nestore gripped my shoulders with blood-covered hands, his eyes frantic. “You promised not to leave.”
“Just for a little—”
“No, do you hear me? I won’t let you leave. You belong here. By my side. You’re mine, Amelia. You are my light. You are the reason I’m alive.”
He released me and stalked into the bathroom.
Bloody handprints marked my skin and nightgown where he’d grabbed me.
A wave of nausea and despair washed over me.
I was the reason he was still alive, but I felt like I was dying a little more every day I spent in these haunted walls and witnessed Nestore’s descent into utter darkness.
Nestore wanted me to be his light, an anchor to the boy he’d once been and that he’d lost, but the girl who’d shone brightly enough to be all that he desired had been lost, too. And the small flicker of her light that had persevered would be snuffed out under the force of Nestore’s darkness.
Nestore would never let me go, but I couldn’t stay.