8. Vivi
VIVI
The room doesn’t have a clock. Or curtains. I have no clue what time it is. Mid-morning, maybe? Bright light cuts across the bare tile floor, the bed creaking as I sit upright, sheets tangled around my waist.
I’ve survived my first night on the island.
The thought doesn’t bring relief. Just dulled panic and an ache in the base of my skull.
How is this my life now?
Agitated, I swat at hair that’s escaped my topknot during the night. Strands catch something on my hand, tugging against my scalp. I wince.
I forgot about the bandage on my right hand. And the wedding ring on my left.
Memories of the last twenty-four hours unspool, each one coming faster than the last.
My hand. The hotel. The girl in the bathroom.
Crashing into her, the broken champagne flute. The helicopter ride, the plane ride, the wedding. The fire.
The husband.
Panic goes from a dull throb to a sharp stab. I leap out of bed and collapse to my knees, taken down by a sudden wave of vertigo.
My sister’s face fills my head. Elena. I was so close to seeing her again. So close. And now I’m locked in a room on an island, thousands and thousands of miles from Chicago, married to that man.
I wretch, stomach convulsing. There’s nothing to throw up. I’ve barely eaten anything in what feels like days.
I have to eat. If I’m going to figure out what the heck is going on—figure out how I ended up here—I need to be able to think. I need fuel, energy.
Giovanni said meals would be delivered on a schedule, but I can’t wait that long.
My eyes land on the old-fashioned phone that he pointed to last night. I crawl over to it and pick up the handset.
There’s a click, then a tone, then another click. Barely two seconds go by before a male voice says, “Pronto.”
I’m about to order food—I swear I am—when instinct takes over. “Help,” I rasp. “He’s locked me in. I can’t get out. Please, let me out. Please, help me?—”
The line goes dead.
A sob burns the back of my throat. I swallow it, ignore the taste of bile.
Calm, Viviana. Be calm. You’ve been locked up once before, and you found a way to survive. You can do it again.
I was only ten the first time. Sent clear across the ocean, away from my parents, my little sister, the best friend I knew I’d never see again…
If I survived that, I can survive this.
I force air into my lungs and out again, clinging to all the determination I can rally. Then I pick up the phone and try again.
Click, tone, click. “Pronto.”
I order food, pretending like the first call never happened. The person on the other line does the same, accepts the order, then cuts the line.
As soon as I hang up, I reach for the rock I left on the bedside table last night. The only thing from my old life that’s made it to my new one.
A Petoskey stone that’s traveled across the Atlantic more times than it should’ve.
It’s a token from a rare day my sister and I spent on the beach at Lake Michigan. An afternoon when we actually felt like kids, not dolls to be paraded around or packed away, depending on our parents’ mood.
Our best friend was with us, too. Millie. Our housekeeper’s daughter and the third member of our all-girls club.
We found three fossilized stones that day. Elena and I thought they were just boring rocks. Millie knew better.
She took them into the waves, flashing an infectious smile, coaxing us to follow.
That smile practically split her face in two when the water transformed the plain stones into a tapestry of multi-hued honeycombs, revealing the fossilized coral that had lived on them hundreds of millions of years ago.
We thought the stones were magic.
We thought Millie was, too.
Our magical friend who got kisses from her mom instead of cold stares, hugs when she cried instead of the silent treatment.
The magical friend I wanted to protect so much, but couldn’t.
I’m not failing again. Not with Elena.
I don’t know why Father married me to Giovanni Marchetti any more than I know why Giovanni was standing in front of the altar. But I’m not that terrified ten-year-old anymore.
I’m a slightly less scared twenty-year-old who has to figure out how to move when all the things I’ve been dreaming about are gone.
Best place to start: familiarize myself with my surroundings.
I head to the windows first. There are three in a row, all large and at least a hundred years old.
Each is a two-pane design, a left and right panel that swing in to meet in the middle where they latch closed.
With both panes open, the windows are more than large enough for an adult to climb through.
Tentatively, I open one of the latches. No resistance.
I push open the glass and am immediately engulfed in a salty sea wind. The sound of waves crashing floods the room. I look out, holding tight to the frame as I look down to the rocks below.
Giovanni wasn’t lying. No one would survive that drop.
I was alert enough last night to be able to track how many stories up I am.
The villa has four floors. Numbered in the standard European way, there’s the ground floor and then floors one, two, and three.
I’m on the third, the very top. A drop from this height alone would be hard to survive, and that’s before factoring in the cliffs.
Last night, our trip from the helipad to the villa took us along a long, winding path, through countless gardens. I was too overwhelmed and tired to notice any other details, but the space felt lush and expansive.
That’s not the case on this side of the villa.
I must be looking out the back side because the drop goes all the way down.
The exterior wall of the building meets the ground; there are a few yards of solid rock, and then just…
nothing. Nothing for what looks like almost a kilometer before waves erupt.
I step back from the windows, hair windswept, forehead damp from sweat. The vertigo returns with a vengeance.
“Signora!” There’s a perfunctory knock before the door opens. A man I haven’t seen before comes in carrying a tray of food.
He doesn’t ask me where I want it. I don’t tell him. He just deposits it on the bed and, without another word or glance, leaves.
It doesn’t matter how loud the waves are. The sound of the lock sliding home is deafening.
I eat while the food is hot. I don’t remember what I ordered. I don’t register how it tastes, but my blood sugar feels somewhat normal by the time I’m done. It’s easier to think, and I focus my attention on the rest of the room.
It’s austere, but if Giovanni thought that would upset me, he’s wrong.
I can handle simple, basic. I don’t even mind the hard bed. It all reminds me of my room at the convent. And as much as I wanted to leave that place, it was home for half of my life. There’s a sense of comfort in the familiar, even if the familiar is literally uncomfortable.
But being locked in here, listless, clueless, bored? That will actually drive me insane. I’m used to working, getting my hands dirty. Being useful. I refuse to just sit and play dead.
I’m clean and dressed in minutes, my Petoskey stone in the pocket of a black dress I found hanging in my wardrobe. Just one of many articles of black clothing. The only color I’m allowed to wear, apparently. Like my new husband knew I’d be in mourning from the moment I arrived.
Tino.
I’m never going to see him again.
My heart becomes heavy in my chest, the pressure against my ribs painful, my breasts straining against the coarse fabric as I try to catch my breath.
Save it for tonight, Vivi. When the crappy lighting in here makes it too dark to see properly. I can sob myself to sleep later. Right now, I’ve got the daylight on my side. I can’t waste it.
It’s the right call because, as I pull myself together, I do another scan of the room and realize there’s a weird discoloration on one of the walls, a mark I couldn’t see before. Something so subtle it’s only visible in bright daylight.
It’s on the far side of the room, opposite the bed. The room’s entrance is on my right. The opening to the bathroom is behind me, past the bed and bedside table. The windows break up the wall on the left.
The discoloration is on the fourth wall, the one I stared at for hours last night. And again, this morning as the sun was coming up. It’s empty. Completely normal.
Except...
I get closer, squinting at what looks like a strip of light hitting the wall.
No thicker than a pencil, it runs vertically up from the floor and stops just shy of the ceiling.
I press my finger to the plaster. The surface is smooth.
No imperfections. But there’s no light either.
Not from an obvious source. I flatten my palm against the wall, expecting to see the strip illuminate my skin.
Nothing.
Instead, I’ve blocked it out. Covered it up.
I step back, studying the wall from a different angle. Smother a squeal when I realize it’s more than one line. It’s three. Two parallel lines that run up from the ground and are connected at the top by a third.
The shape and width of a door.
I rub my hand across the wall again, spanning the two vertical marks. I can’t feel any grooves or indents, but I’m positive there is light back there. Behind it. Like the gaps around the door are being illumined by whatever is on the other side.
I look down. My heart rate hitches. Beneath my feet, there’s a groove in the flooring. From where something has been dragged over and over again, year after year.
The long-worn indent of a door being opened and closed.
Oh. My. Gosh.
Hope bubbles dangerously close to the surface. My eyes sting with it before I tamp it back down.
I can’t get carried away. I don’t actually know if it’s a door. If it is, I don’t know where it leads—if whatever is on the other side is better or worse than the room I’m already in.
I press my ear to the wall, see if I can get any hint of what’s on the other side.
For a long stretch, there’s nothing. Total silence.
I’m about to step away when I’m sure I hear what sounds like a voice. Faint, distant. Coming from far, far away.
I hold my breath, strain my ears.
Seconds pass. Then a minute.
I hear it again.
But that’s not possible. I’m imagining it. I have to be, because I swear the voice is calling my name.
I give my head a hard shake. The breakfast coffee isn’t cutting it. Maybe I should call down for something stronger. Espresso. That’ll clear my head.
I know the last forty-eight hours have been intense, but I’ve never heard voices before. That’s the last thing I need.
What you need, Viviana, is to learn there are consequences for not doing what you’re told.
Mother Superior’s favorite phrase dive-bombs my thoughts. Her constant reminder that I’d done something wrong.
She’s right. I did do something wrong. I didn’t do what I was told. I shouldn’t have seen what I saw. Shouldn’t have said a word.
I should’ve just done what Millie’s mom told me to and kept my mouth shut.
I thought I was helping.
But I was too young, too ignorant of adults to realize how much damage one conversation could do.
I’ve spent every year since trying to repent. To be good. Obedient. From the moment my parents sent me to the convent, I did everything the nuns told me to do. Followed every instruction my parents sent. Heck, I even did everything Tino asked.
And look where it’s gotten me. Same country, different prison.
To hell with that.
“Get out of my head, you crazy old witch. I don’t have to listen to you anymore.”
I grab the butter knife from the tray and hide it beneath my mattress. With the right angle and enough force, I’m pretty sure I can use it to pierce the plaster and start the long process of exposing the concealed door.
I’m going to be careful, cautious. Quiet.
I’m going to come up with a plan.
I’m going to find out what’s on the other side of this wall.
I’ll hide what I’m doing. I’ll make sure there’s nothing to see when the guards deliver my meals.
And if I manage to get the door open, I can’t let Giovanni find out. Not if I want to keep my sister safe.
Every step is a risk. I know that.
But there’s an even bigger one. And that’s to just sit here and wait to see what my new husband is going to do next.