1
Lucia
These four walls were all I had to stare at since Romeo shoved me inside the room a week earlier. At first, I’d clawed at the locked door, dragged my hands along every inch of the place looking for something, anything, that would let me out. But that frenzied anxious time had passed. At least once a day I jerked on the door handle checking to see if it might be unlocked, but it never was. Nor was it ever likely to be.
I felt as if I’d been there for months when it had actually only been seven days. Within my opulent prison, there was no window illuminating the day or shadowing the night. No heavenly body to guide me other than my own circadian rhythms, so it was difficult to keep track. I wouldn’t have known how much time had passed at all had it not been for the maid the Cavettis had assigned me. A soft-voiced and timid girl by the name of Philippa.
Initially, I’d asked her about the passage of time, feeling disoriented. “What day is it? How long have I been here?”
Next, I’d pleaded for her to give me any news available involving my siblings.
“Where are Antonio and Giorgio? And the twins, Chiara and Alessandra? Are they here? Have you seen them?” I asked her these questions every time she came to me, but her inevitable answer in her thick Italian accent was, “I am sorry, signorina. I have not laid eyes upon them.”
She’d always answered me about what time it was and what day, but a few days in, I’d started to wonder what was the point? Did it matter if it were Wednesday or Sunday one way or the other? Nothing changed here in my gilded cage. So, while I continued to ask after my loved ones, I’d quit asking about the time and the date. I existed from endless second to endless second, having no definitive proof that I truly existed at all.
By the small circle of light my lamp cast on the ceiling, I’d mourned my losses. My mama. My papa. My famiglia. The weeping grief went on for a while before the numbness arrived. I didn’t even know if I should be thankful for that numbness or resentful of it. Was it better to feel the sorrow and remember what I’d once had or feel nothing and allow myself to drift on the empty, emotionless currents that surrounded me now?
I didn’t know the answer. I doubted I ever would.
In the beginning, I craved to take Romeo’s gift of the farfalla, the butterfly, and shatter the glass box into hundreds of needle-sharp pieces. As time passed, however, I stopped craving things, stopped having wants or desires of any kind, so the hideously beautiful present remained on my bedside table intact.
For what must be the thousandth time, I scrutinized my jail cell. If I’d ever felt like I’d been trapped inside my old room, I saw the folly of this when I compared it to my current situation. This room was just as lovely as my bedroom. It contained a queen-sized oaken and iron bed with four short posts rising mere inches above the frame, the golden color of the wood and swirls of decorative metal curved into shapes which resembled—irony of ironies—hearts.
I tried not to look at those four posts. They resembled bishop chess pieces, and those reminded me of playing the game with my brothers, brothers I wasn’t sure I’d ever see alive again. Giorgio, in particular, had always had an affinity for the strategy of chess, and thinking of any of the members of my famiglia made me slip past the bounds of my sanity into the depths of despair.
At this particular moment, I lay on a plush comfortable mattress, baby blue silken linens decorated with golden embroidered roses, and fluffy pillows covered in lace pillowcases. I loathed those roses. They were something else that reminded me of the carnage that had ended the lives of my parents. An oaken dresser matching the bed sat in one corner. The walls I’d begun to revile had been painted in a pale yellow, and all the accent pieces were gold. The lamp, the cheval mirror in the corner, the faucets in the adjacent en suite bathroom—all gold.
I felt as if these items had been placed here in order to demonstrate wealth, but I’d always come from wealth. Such displays in our family had been considered unnecessarily flashy, even petty. Something new money did that gave them away to the older, more established crime families. It reeked of insecurity, though I was the one who felt insecure now.
Other than the oaken crown molding that matched my headboard and the tiny Catholic statue of Mary set up near the ceiling in a small alcove, the walls had been left unadorned. I didn’t know if I should be grateful for this or not. While the roses—the same flowers covering the room in which my parents had been murdered—and the farfalla were painful reminders of what I’d lost, the blankness of the walls spelled out the meaning of emptiness to me. Hollowness. Of a life in tatters.
While my famiglia was not overtly religious, I had prayed to Mary before. In my youth, the ritual had offered me comfort. I liked to imagine Mother Mary watching over me and keeping my loved ones safe. So after arriving here, I had prayed to her many times, asking for her protection over whichever of my siblings might still remain. I also requested safe passage for those who had been murdered, that they might be forgiven their sins and be able to receive life everlasting in heaven.
Occasionally, I would regain my sense of anger at my one time fiancée. I would envision myself clawing out those cold dark eyes of his, of causing him even a fraction of the agony he’d caused me. I would swear to make him pay for what he and his had done to me and mine, but those moments never lasted. They came at a cost of energy I no longer possessed.
At regular intervals, food and water would be delivered via domed covered metal trays brought by Philippa. Other than some water, I had taken little from these trays. The food, even when the aroma of it smelled delectable, turned to ash in my mouth. My appetite had abandoned me as easily as Romeo Cavetti had.
Not that I missed him. How could I miss my personal tormentor and destroyer of my famiglia?
“Signorina Lucia?” came Philippa’s shy voice, perpetually kept at just above a whisper as if ghosts resided inside my room and she didn’t want to risk waking them. I saw no one else. It was she who delivered my sustenance, and she who disposed of it.
“Yes, Philippa?”
“Do you want any of this manicotti? You do not appear to have touched any of your cena,” she asked, using the Italian word for the evening meal.
“I’m not hungry. Have you heard anything about my famiglia?”
“No, signorina.”
I thought not.
Some of the other queries I’d demanded of her during those first couple of days had been about leaving my chambers. I’d hoped to be able to determine where any of my surviving family members might be.
“Can I go outside?”
“Mi dispiace, signorina.” I am sorry, miss.
“Can I at least go to a window and feel the sunlight on my face?” A window might have helped me at least know my location within their home. But Philippa’s response stayed consistently the same.
“No, mi dispiace. But that is not allowed.”
I never deigned to ask her what the cost of her disobeying what were clearly meant to be standing orders might be where I was concerned. Would she be fired? Beaten? Killed? Any of the three were possible since the horrible Cavetti clan was capable of literally anything.
So, I’d ceased asking her my questions. I heard her leave with the meal I once again had not tasted even a morsel of. When the door creaked open moments later, I didn’t bother to look. I assumed Philippa had forgotten something and had come back for it. But I should’ve known it wasn’t her because no knock had issued from outside first.