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I'm a slave, it wouldn't make any sense for me to be relieved of my duties along with all the other employees in the house. But as I look at the room around me, I don't understand what the surly woman can expect me to do here. Everything is in perfectorder. The large bed is stretched to perfection, the surfaces of the few pieces of furniture in the room are free of dust and the windowpanes all but sparkle clean. If I'm honest, it's not like the rooms I cleaned all day today, under the guidance of a nonconformist Luigia, were actually dirty. This castle makes the mansions I've spent the last few months cleaning look like pigsties.
I turn to the woman trying to figure out how to ask what she expects me to do without any cleaning supplies or tools on hand, but when I find her already almost reaching the door, my heart leaps in my chest, reminding itself and myself that it is still able to beat a rhythm outside of the peaceful and apathetic one it has performed over the last few hours.
“Non uscire da questa camera a meno che non sia stato ordinato! Capisci[48]?”she says, and I just stare at her, static.
First, because I don't understand any words, and second, because my brain needs to be making the wrong assumptions. This can't be mine.
A bedroom.
I'm in a room.
It is not a cell, nor a dungeon. It's not a filthy cubicle destined for a worthless life like mine, nor anything I could have imagined in all the time that has passed since I left my house if I had cared enough to do so. It's a room. Luigia snorts when I don't respond.
“Si svegli alle sei.”[49]
She closes the door after throwing more words at me that I don't understand, and I hear the key turn, locking me inside. I turn to look around me once again and take in every detail I didn't pay attention to before, because it wouldn't make a difference, but now... Now...
The bedding covering the high mattress is white and burnt pink and looks soft. A sisal rug covers most of the floor from the bed to the other end of the room where a fireplace makes room on the wood-paneled wall, as is the floor. The huge windows overlook an endless expanse of grape-laden vines, and a chandelier worthy of a Hollywood film hangs from the ceiling.
Tears roll down my face without asking permission, and before I can do anything, a powerful, uncontrollable cry is shaking my shoulders. The weight of the latest events falls on me all at once, as if being truly alone finally removed the film of disbelief that insisted on covering my eyes.
My knees drop to the floor, I hug myself, crying, curling in on myself as a profusion of thoughts rush through me without me choosing or controlling how each of them hits me until I'm curled up, in the fetal position, on the sisal rug.
Alone. I'm all alone, kidnapped by a cruel man, and now on the other side of the only world I've ever known. I'd never felt particularly supported before, but at least there were people of my blood around me.
Except for Raquel, they didn't care, I knew they didn't, but I also knew that they needed me, that I could provide for them enough so that they wouldn't abandon me.
I knew who I was then. But now, who am I beyond the nothing I was told I was? The worst of all the certainties that sit inside me is that I will never see my sister again.
There is also the insistent thought that, even if by some miracle I managed to return home, I would probably find Raquel dead. Without me being there to take care of her, to guarantee her medicine, who is going to do it? What kind of fate worse than death could my little one meet?
Maybe it would be an act of mercy, maybe I should have chosen my little sister when Vittorio told me to choose one. That was one of the few things I actually learned today, Vittorio Cataneo is what the man who owns me is called.
Curled up on the floor, I realize that no matter how soft the bed at my disposal is, I will never know what it feels like to lie in it, because I don't deserve it.
Exhaustion is a wind that sweeps me away all at once, condensing the hours I've spent working since I set foot in this castle, the long flight, the jet lag, the emotional confusion I've become and everything else that can be added into this account.
CHAPTER 17
________
Vittorio Cataneo
“Cesare told me you brought home a new toy. What breed is the new horse?”
Tizziano says as he walks into my office for what was supposed to be our post-trip work meeting. But of course, my annoying brother would pay a visit before the underboss fulfilled his duties. I bring my fingers to my temples, massaging them before leaning back in my chair and looking up at the inconvenient but necessary visit.
He sits across from me, managing the feat of appearing curious and, at the same time, disinterested about my latest acquisition. This almost makes me smile because it means he thinks it is, in fact, a horse. Cesare probably used the words “pet” and let his older brother interpret it however he wanted.
I would let Tizziano remain ignorant if I didn't know my brother well enough to know that the second he sets eyes on Gabriella, he's going to turn her into a target. The mocking suggestion I made to my mother was not unfounded.
While the underboss isn't stupid enough to father a bastard child if given the chance, he would certainly fuck Gabriella on every surface he finds in his ward until he gets sick of Brazilian pussy. And even though I haven't decided the girl's fate yet, Icertainly haven't brought her to be the underboss' most recent fuck.
“It's not a horse, and you're not going near her.” The underboss' eyebrows rise, and he abandons the relaxed posture with which he sat in the chair in front of my desk, straightening up and resting his elbow on the arm of the furniture.
“Have you brought a woman home? A foreigner?” he asks rhetorically. “Looks like I wasn't the only one thinking about Brazilian pussies, then.” He reminds me of the accusation I made against him, I just ignore it. “Mammawill go crazy.”
“Believe me, I am well aware ofMamma's objections to thebambina's presence.”
