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“Your grandfather is not the villain in this story, Gabriella. He's been trying to bring you home for a long time.”
“What are you of him?”
“Employee. I'm your grandfather's personal assistant.” My eyes roam over her fitted suit, her red hair, and dark eyes.
“I want to go home,” I say the words, knowing that even though I've never referred to the Cantina like that before, that's what it's become, my home, because Vittorio is there. He's my home, and the thought that I'll never get the chance to tell him that makes my entire body shake.
The fear I felt about telling you how I felt seems like a silly, distant worry now. So, what if he disregarded my feelings? At least I would know the feeling of, at least once, having declared myself to him.
“And where would that house be, Gabriella? Your only family is here,” she says, flipping another switch in my chest, the one that reminds me of Raquel. Another person I will possibly never see if I don't make it out of here. I need to get out of here. Alina lets out a short sigh before moving back toward the door. “I'm sorry I have to do this, but if you're not willing to talk, I'm going to need to lock you up.” I kneel on the bed so quickly that I don't know how I didn’t fall.
“Please don’t! Please don't lock me here! Don't leave me alone here, I just want to leave. Let me go, I won't tell anyone, your boss will never know.” She twists the corner of her lips and shakes her head from side to side, as if she feels sorry for me.
“I'll be back later, Gabriella. Look at the photos. That door is the bathroom,” she says, pointing to an entrance to my right. “And this is your breakfast, you need to eat, you've been just sleeping for days. There are clothes here in the drawers if you want to change.”
Her last words make me look at my own body for the first time since I woke up and only now do I realize that I'm wearing a long white nightgown that isn't mine. I reach for my neck with more desperation than I've done or said anything since I opened my eyes only to find it empty.
“My necklace,” I exclaim, feeling myself entering a spiral of loss of control greater than any other that had dominated me so far. “My choker! Where is my choker?”
“It was burned along with the clothes you arrived here in.” The words make me feel as if a fire has been lit in my heart.
“My necklace...” This time, my lament is a barely audible whisper.
“Forget that life, Gabriella, it's over. You are free,” she repeats the word that I remember her boss saying to me as soon as I woke up. Free. I don't feel free at all, and even if there weren't walls around me, even if this unknown woman wasn't threatening to lock me inside this room, I don't think I would. The sob that bursts through my throat comes from the core of my soul.
“I hope that when I come back later, you'll be calmer,” Alina says and, as if she wasn't doing anything wrong, she just leaves, and I hear the key turn.
CHAPTER 63
________
Gabriella Matos
I'm standing in the middle of the room when the door opens for the second time that day. Alina enters, looks at the still full tray on top of the dresser and laments before closing the door behind her.
“You didn't eat.”
“I'm not hungry,” I lie, and she gives me a look that makes it clear she knows what I'm doing.
I'm not bothered. What kind of person admits they kept me drugged for four days and still expects me to eat or drink something they offer me? A crazy person is the only possible answer.
I looked at the photos.
After opening each of the windows and discovering that they all have bars, after searching the entire room in search of something that would help me escape and not finding anything, after crying in despair once, twice, three times, I didn't have much left to do other than force myself to try to understand what is happening.
I went over, again and again, every single word I remember hearing the first time I woke up. There were few. Afterwards, I replayed the conversation I had with Alina like in infinite loop inside my own head.
Everything about the woman, from the way she smiles to the way she moves, suggests that there is something wrong with her. The fact that she is willing to give me answers doesn't even inspire me with confidence. For all I know, she could be pouring an endless amount of lies over my head. Why am I here?
Why would a man I've never seen before claim to be my grandfather? For what purpose? I have nothing to offer anyone, I don’t have a penny to my name, and when I exhausted the meager mental list of what I knew about the people who brought me here, I realized that, whether they are truths or lies, I need any and all information they are willing to give me.
I leafed through the album, page by page, finding in different contexts a woman with my face. If I didn't know myself, I would be able to confuse myself with her. But that's only as far as the similarities go. Her skin is different, her hair is different, and the pain I saw in her eyes is completely different from the one that lives in mine.
I don't know what these people hope to accomplish by keeping me trapped here, but I don't want to be drugged again. The longer I can stay awake, the more likely I will be able to find a way out of here.
So, even though I'm scared, actually, because I'm scared, I decided to pretend that these people make some sense to me. Alina said she would explain everything to me if I was calmer, so that's what I pretend to be.
Maybe by understanding how they think, I can find a more effective way to explain that I'm not who they think I am. It was this certainty that made me go to the bathroom earlier today, take a shower and fill myself with tap water until I felt my hungry belly filling with liquid.
