It’s a room frozen in time. The four-poster bed sits in the center, the covers neatly tucked, the headboard still polished to a high shine. The curtains, a deep blue, hang exactly where they always have.
I can’t decide if the weight in my chest is comforting or crushing.
Someone has already brought up all my things, so I shake off the thought and go about setting up my temporary office with a heavy indignation, sparing only half a thought to the woman now residing beneath the foundation of the castle. Which quickly escalates to an entire thought, and the work becomes monotonous.
By the time I’m staring at my monitor as my computer slowly loads the applications I need, I’m trying to figure out if I should chew out or laugh at Carmen Rubio for having the balls to curse at Evelina Grasso.
“Grasso?” The crackled sound of Rocco Moretti comes through the speakers and draws me from—okay, maybe it is a bit funny—the memory.
“You’ve got some nerve agreeing to comms, Moretti,” I say as the video feed pops up, and suddenly, I’m facing my oldest betrayer of a friend.
Rocco shakes his dark hair from his eyes, an easy grin on his lips. “I’m not gonna sit here and feel sorry for you getting sent out to fucking paradise, Dante. The rest of us are running overtime at the whim of Leon’s paranoia.”
“Careful. That sounds like mutiny to me.”
“It would be if his paranoia weren’t so accurate,” Rocco sighs. “We’d have lost so much more if he wasn’t at the helm.”
I grimace in agreement. “I take it there’s no updates then?”
“Eager to be back?”
“You haven’t met my mother.”
Rocco chuckles to himself. “Hang in there,fratello.It will be over before you know it.”
6
CARMEN
Three days in, and I’m ready to bang my head against the iron bars of my cell.
They are perhaps the only remaining indicator that this room used to be a dungeon in the traditional sense. The stone walls are smooth and pale, washed clean of whatever history they once held.
I’ve fiddled with the wallpaper enough that it is torn at the edges where it meets the narrow bed in the corner. The bed's frame is made of iron, and the mattress is thin but not unbearable.
There’s also a small wooden table and chair placed against the back wall, and a single lamp glows softly on top of it, casting warm light that does little to soften the starkness of the space.
What would be lovely is ifsomeonewould give me something to do other than quietly lament my existence. Instead, I have to make do with pacing. Thirty steps to the back wall, fifty-two steps across, then back again.
The floor is cold beneath my bare feet—smooth tiles instead of rough stone—and the air smells faintly of lavender. The smellwafts through the door to a tiny adjoining bathroom, the sink and toilet cleaned each day.
But it’s the silence that gets to me. It’s heavy and unbroken, like the walls themselves are listening. There’s no window, no clock, nothing to mark the passing of time. Only the meals that appear three times daily remind me that I’m not suspended in a pocket of timelessness.
This is why whenever I hear the door creak open down the corridor, I’m practically buzzing with excitement at the prospect of some kind of human interaction.
The guard’s name is Pierre, and he pretends he doesn’t speak English. But one time, I made a joke about the thickness of the soup he was bringing me, and I caught him smiling.
Also, Dante spoke to him in English when I arrived.
But I’m not thinking about Dante.
“Well, hello, princess.”
Until he’s standing right there in front of me. Soup bowl in hand.
I wish the patronizing smirk on his face would somehow obscure how objectively attractive he is. It’s a frustrating reality that I’m slowly trying to come to terms with. At least he’s ugly on the inside, where it counts.
“Where is Pierre?” I say stubbornly.
