“Don’t leave me.” I repeat the same desperate plea I made to my mother.
And then I realize—this isn’t the dream.
I rush up from the couch and leave Bruno’s room.
I wipe my face with my sleeve as I walk to my room. Once inside, I collapse onto my bed, staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Why did you leave?” I whisper to the empty room, knowing no one will answer.
I close my eyes. The boy is waiting there, staring back at me from behind them.
He’s angry these days. I’m not doing what he wants—I’m not torturing Alexander’s daughter. When he gets mad, he locks me inside the memories. He does the same this time. And like always, I’m helpless, I let him show me whatever he wants.
It was the fourth day.
They caught us while we were planning to run away.
First, they whipped us both. Then they moved on to removing our skin from our flesh. My mother begged them to let me go, to do whatever they wanted with her, but they didn’t. They ripped the skin from my chest in patches. They stopped after five, but they kept beating my mother. They broke one of her hands.
That night, they locked us in a room where we stayed, starving, for two days.
On the third day, Antonio brought us food. He promised my mother he would get us out. We just had to survive a few more days.
He loved my mother. For her, he became a killer. Antonio was my father’s accountant. He had never once killed so much as a bird. But after what they did to us on the eleventh day, he killed many to drag us out of that hell.
He still couldn’t save the woman he loved.
A knock comes at the door. I blink out of the memory. The door opens. I sit up in bed.
She enters with two cups. Bruno follows her in, he reaches me first, climbing onto the bed and lying down beside me.
She hesitantly steps closer, reaches me, and extends a cup toward me.
When I don’t take it, she pulls it back and sits on the edge of the bed, both cups in her hands.
“I know you want me to stay away from you, but I’m a little thick-skinned.”
“Non sai niente.” I mutter.
(You know nothing.)
Her eyes widen slightly, then she smirks. “I knew you were Italian.”
She shifts a little closer. “I’m half Italian, but I can’t speak the language. I only know a few words.”
She extends the cup again. This time, I take it.
She takes a sip. I do the same. It’s the same honey chocolate milk.
“This is the only thing I can make,” she chuckles. “It’s my sister’s and my comfort drink. I’ve made it hundreds of times. I’m an expert.” She finishes with a grin.
“Sister?”I didn’t know she had a sister.
She nods. “My uncle and aunt’s daughter. We’ve spent our whole lives together.” She pauses, then adds, “You might know her.”
“King’s daughter?”
She looks away, takes a sip, then nods.
