25. Sicily
SICILY
ONE HOUR AGO
Each day that I spent with the Feras was another day of pure insanity.
For one, I still refused to believe they all just merrily lived in a cottage even though I was staring at a crackling fire, long fluffy blankets slung over the cream couches, and some random incense stick thing Fiorella had said helped with stress and had stuck in the center of a huge oak table.
Brenno hadn’t appreciated when I’d asked her which flavor incense would help cure her Stockholm syndrome, but I didn’t really care.
I needed to go home and so did my sister.
Though none of this was normal, and they were the worst kinds of people, Brenno had kept Cesare away from me, and nobody had hurt me, not yet anyway.
It was the void in my heart that was causing me the most pain, throbbing in my body like a sickness.
My ears were empty of Milan’s voice, my eyes blurry without the sight of his smile, my hands numb without his touch, and everything I felt was just too much without him here to anchor me to home and safety and love.
The entire situation was just one giant, domestic-looking nightmare.
“This is actual bullcrap,” Ezio mumbled as he sat cross-legged on the red rug in front of the TV, a gaming controller in his hand that was helping him murder zombies, but that wasn’t what he was talking about; it was my sister who sat before him, painting his face with endless brushes and palettes of makeup.
“Shut up, Ezio.” Brenno sighed from the couch opposite me, staring at my sister and my sister alone.
I had to admit that the way he looked at her was fascinating, like he’d deluded himself into believing that he loved her as much as she ‘loved’ him.
Had the weak, pathetic Brenno Fera Stockholm-syndromed himself?
Ezio rolled his eyes, not taking them away from the screen. “I’m just saying, it’s not like I’m gonna learn anything from having my fucking face painted for Halloween.”
I let out a snort, and as I did, I caught Brenno’s eyes from across the room, so similar to my husband’s but so distinctly not his. A wide smile spread across his lips like the fact that I’d laughed with them, or tried to anyway, pleased him.
“Stop swearing, Ez, I mean it,” he scolded, still with that dumb smile.
My heart clenched at who he reminded me of, of how badly I wanted my person who hated swearing. I’d do anything to go home, absolutely anything, but Brenno had said he was still figuring out how to do it safely.
What he really meant was how to avoid Milan waging a war.
“You’re not going to be the only kid in the school who hasn’t gotten his face painted for Halloween,” he continued. “So just let Fiore practice. She’s gonna make you look good. Be grateful, asshole. If we didn’t have her, I would’ve stuck an orange hat on you and said you were a pumpkin.”
“I am grateful for Fiore!” Ezio snapped like a puppy. “Why do I have to be a skeleton though? Why can’t I be something cool like…a clown?” He gave Brenno a pointed look, one that made Brenno’s lips twitch, but ultimately he shook his head with a very fatherly, “Don’t push me, kid.”
Kidnapping was fine, but clowns weren’t? Weirdos.
Ezio frowned. “Whatever then, some fake blood and bruises.”
Fiorella stopped her brush against his face, tilting her head at the immaculately clean and innocent skeleton she’d drawn on his face. She pushed his long, almost blond, hair back from his forehead, analyzing the kid as he looked straight past her to the TV. “We can do that. Ask Bren first.”
Bren.
I wanted to vomit in my mouth, but even more so when Brenno quietly and dreamily sighed like she solved all of his many thousands of mental issues with the simple sound of her saying his name.
I could see why Fiore had fallen for his charms; she had always wanted to be seen and chosen, and he was playing right into her weaknesses.
“Whatever he wants, baby,” he replied.
She raised a brow with a small smirk. It was the first glimpse of the sister I’d known since I’d been here. “Really? You’re gonna let him go to school and traumatize all the other kids with his face painted like one of your victims?”
“The other kids can grow a pair.” Brenno yawned.
“Yeah, fucking pussies,” Ezio supplied, causing her to laugh and Brenno to gently kick her thigh with a gentle tease of not to encourage him.
He didn’t seem mad that she’d challenged him, quite the opposite.
Fiorella wiped his face down with a makeup-muddy cloth and began to work on Ezio’s face again with reds and blacks instead of whites, and a tube of deep red fake blood.
It reminded me of when she was four and I’d just turned eight, and we’d found our mother’s makeup in her bathroom.
She’d spent hours teaching us how to use it, how to get the perfect shade on our lips and eyes, how to feel feminine and pretty.
My chest tightened at one of the only good memories our mom ever gave us before we grew up and she started letting womanhood become about Dad.
By the time Fiore had shaped Ezio’s face into…the dead, which was accurate enough to convince anyone that his face was torn in half, I was done sitting downstairs hoping that Milan would come that night. That was the only reason I ever stayed. I didn’t want to hang out with my captors.
I pushed to my feet, rubbing a tired hand down my face.
“Are you going to bed?” Fiore asked, a heaviness in her tone.
I shrugged, slapping my hands on my thighs. “What do you want me to do, Fiore? Sit here like we’re best friends?”
When she said nothing, I escaped, leaving the warmth of the living room and making it to the staircase before my body was snatched from the steps and yanked into the kitchen.
A warm, wide hand spread across my lips, another around my waist, and I hated that I was so easy to bend and mold into wherever someone wanted me.
My kicking and biting were no use; he didn’t seem to care, didn’t seem to even flinch.
“You can stop licking my fingers now, fucking hell,” Cesare grumbled, grimacing as he let me go by the open back door and wiped his hand on his pant leg. “What was all that drama about?”
“What?” I snapped quietly, panting as I tried not to look out at the pitch-black, empty yard behind me. “You just snatched me and kidnapped me. What did you want me to do, thank you?”
“Technically, you’ve already been kidnapped, so does it count if I kidnapped you again from the hallway to the kitchen?”
There was an awkward, grating silence.
I blinked. “I don’t—”
“I’ll look it up later.” Cesare clapped his hands, pointing to the garden. “After you.”
“No, I’m not going out there.” I folded my arms around my body, shielding me from the freezing chill that blasted through the back door.
Cesare rolled his eyes before crouching, and I couldn’t figure out what he was doing until he snatched my ankles and threw my body over his shoulder like I weighed nothing, like I meant nothing too.
The wind was knocked from me as I thudded against his thick shoulder, enough that I didn’t scream or protest at first.
“You’re right to be scared of these fields, Sicily.
” He chuckled darkly, leading me somewhere into the shadows until my eyes couldn’t find anything familiar to latch onto.
My heart thudded wildly, my hands gripped his shirt for anything to hold, and I heard my breath hitch as something snapped beneath his boot. “Bad things happen in this forest.”
“L-like what?”
He sighed deeply. “Not my story to tell.”
“I guess I’m about to find out. Lucky me.”
He paused before throwing me back onto my feet beside a building with rugged stone brick walls. “I fear you’ve misunderstood.” I couldn’t see him properly, but I could feel his shadow close to one side of the wall. “I didn’t do that shit to her. I helped her, that’s why she helps me.”
My heart stopped. Even my shivering stopped. “Who?”
Surely he didn’t mean my sister because if he did, what the hell had happened to her in these fields and who had hurt her?
Cesare didn’t answer me. Instead, he pulled open a metal door that he had to tug with a grunt of effort. It scraped against the floor, and he snatched my arm into his fist, shoving me inside.
It was empty all for a decaying mattress in the corner and silver links hanging from one side.
This was a torture chamber. There were fucking chains and slime on the walls.
He was going to kill me.
“No,” I breathed, turning instantly to run, but slamming straight into his chest instead.
Cesare was perhaps the scariest villain I’d ever come across because he looked so normal.
He was a lawyer, he fought to put people like himself behind bars, he combed his hair and wore nice clothes, he had a wife and a baby on the way, but he was also a Lucca, and I wasn’t foolish enough to believe that these brothers weren’t battling demons scary enough to frighten the devil.
I wasn’t sure if I was shivering because the wet, slimy shit on the walls was becoming ice in here, or because I was absolutely terrified of what Cesare was going to do to me.
Maybe both, but when he walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him, leaving me in the depths of shadows, it didn’t matter, nothing mattered—I just wanted Milan.
“Okay, Jesus Christ, it’s cold.”
I blinked at the light and silhouette that had appeared in the doorway. It wasn’t the nice, calm light of someone coming to rescue me, it was a blinding torch in the mouth of my captor because his hands were too full of…random crap.
Cesare threw a dress, the same flimsy silk nightdress I’d woken up in, into my hands, pausing when he saw the disgust on my face. “Don’t judge me,” he mumbled around the torch. “Fiore put you in that when I brought you here, not me.”
“Pleasure to know that you still have some semblance of morals.” I tutted.
He dropped all of the things in his hands onto the mattress in the corner before staying with his back turned to me. “Put it on, I won’t look.”
My previous statement went straight out of the nonexistent windows.