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It had one so I flipped it.
If he noticed, he didn’t say anything. I started to back up.
“Aleks, can I ask you something before you go?”
His voice was so different than it had been earlier. The fury and rage were gone for the moment.
“You don’t have to answer,” Luca added.
“Okay,” I finally said when he didn’t make a move to even look in my direction again.
“The blackouts… did they… did they start when you first got taken?”
I wasn’t expecting the question so it took me a moment to find my voice to answer. “I’m not sure.”
He continued to stare into the inky darkness. It was several long seconds before he took another puff. “Did they make it easier?”
I tensed because I started to understand what he was asking me and more importantly, why.
“Yes,” I said. “The first time I went into my head, it was more like I was just in a dream. I knew what was really happening to me, I just didn’t feel it. Does that make sense?”
Luca nodded. “So not blackouts then,” he said.
“No… I guess not. I think those are more recent.”
God, that was hard to admit to. But I had no choice but to accept it. The proof was on Vaughn’s arm.
“I don’t know why, though,” I admitted.
“Because your mind feels safer now,” Luca said.
I shook my head. “That doesn’t make sense.”
He finally cast me a glance over his shoulder. “There was no one to take care of you when you were with those men. If you’d done what you did to Vaughn today, they would have killed you for sure. Somewhere in your mind, you knew that. To escape that completely, that fully, you had to be certain you’d live through it. That there’d be someone to watch out for you. Back then you had to survive. Now your mind is trying to figure out how to… live.”
I didn’t know what to make of that. But he was right about one thing… if I’d lashed out at Father like I had Vaughn, he would have killed me. He’d tried to do exactly that the one time I had fought back.
“I don’t know what I want for him more,” Luca whispered.
I knew he was talking about his son. Gio would have been faced with the same choice as me.
“You want him to survive,” I said. I found myself flipping the lock on the screen door and opening it. I had a good view of Luca’s profile as I moved out onto the porch. He shook his head slightly and swallowed hard.
“I didn’t really understand,” Luca said softly. “Or maybe I didn’t want to.”
“Understand what?”
“The suffering those kids we got out went through.” He took another drag on his cigarette. “We saved them… I wanted that to be enough. It had to be enough. And the ones we couldn’t… I forgot about those. I had to forget… we all did.”
“So you could keep looking for Gio,” I said.
He nodded almost violently. “Vaughn thinks I didn’t see what he did and in some ways he’s right. But when they first took Gio, I went after him on my own and I did see things. There was this one boy… he… he…”
Luca just shook his head. “I had to forget about him,” he whispered. “I had to find my son.”
I felt myself softening a bit as I realized like Vaughn, this man was haunted.
And not just by the loss of his son.
“Will you tell me about your son?” I asked as I moved to stand next to one of the pillars that bracketed the steps Luca was sitting on.
Luca stubbed out his cigarette, then pulled out the pack from his pocket, along with a lighter. I flinched when he reached into his pocket again. He must have noticed my reaction because he said, “It’s a picture of Gio. Most of them are on my phone but Con took that when he searched me. I found the cigarettes in the pantry – I guess one of Con’s grandparents was a secret smoker. Vaughn made Con remove all the knives and anything else that could be used as a weapon. They’re with Vaughn in the room you guys are in. So even if I wanted to do something to you, which I don’t, I couldn’t.”
Luca kept talking as he pulled a small picture from his pocket. I didn’t actually believe him about not being able to hurt me if he wanted because he didn’t seem like the type of guy who needed to have a weapon to subdue someone – hadn’t he proven that when he’d kept me from striking out with that knife for a second time?
“Gio gave this to me the day he was taken… school picture,” Luca said as he reached his arm out to hand me the picture.
