Page 61 of High Stakes and Soulmates
“Obviously, we don’t know if this is the actual first letter, but we know we can subtract letters like S, W, X…” He gets another piece of paper and then just sits down right there on the sidewalkand starts scratching out letters. He overlays whatever letters might fit over the picture the techs had sent him and crosses out any letter that doesn’t fit on his paper.
I point to one of them. “I think this line here might connect with this line, not that one. You could make an R out of it if you connect it there.”
“You’re right,” Cyrus says. “There are only a few letters that round like this, and I have to assume it’s an O. Itcouldbe a C or a Q, but Q is such an uncommon letter, and C at the end of a word isn’t as common.”
“So you have a T… unknown letter, S, unknown, B, and an O?” I ask.
“Possibly…”
“That B could be an R,” I say.
“I’m leaning that way too. It looks a bit rounded on the bottom, but it could just be the person’s way of spelling.”
“Typing those letters in, I’m not really getting anything,” Zach tells us.
“I’d really prefer not to have to wait until another person dies to figure out a couple more letters,” Cyrus says as he starts swapping out things, then he begins just placing every letter in the alphabet in place of the unknown letters.
“Tes… Tes… something bo?” Zach asks.
“Wait… Tes… tesoro!” Cyrus says. “It means treasure in Spanish.”
It’s like a fucking fist slams into my gut. I hurriedly get up from where I’d been sitting next to Cyrus and start back toward my car while that single word twists around me. My world is shattering; it’s squeezing shut and planning to rip me apart. It’s like someone is tearing my insides out as I reach my car and realize that I can’t even find the door handle. I drop down to my knees, not even caring that I’m right here in the middle of thefucking road. Someone could run me over at this point and I’m not sure I’d even care.
“Ezio, what the hell happened?” Cyrus calls as he comes running over to me.
His voice cuts through the darkness suffocating me, but I still feel like curling in on myself. My fingers are digging so deeply into my arms that I can feel the blood running down them and still it’s not enough to snap me out of this.
“Stop, what the hell are you doing?” Cyrus asks as he grabs my hands and draws them up. “Ezio, come on. What’s wrong?”
How do I even speak? How do I even tell him what has happened? If I open my mouth, if I tell him what happened, it’ll make it all real. It’ll make everything real.
Suddenly, arms wrap around me, squeezing me tightly. My hands are pinned between us, but it’s keeping me from tearing into myself.
“Calm down. You’re having a panic attack. I… I know you don’t need to breathe, so just… focus on my breathing instead, okay? It’s okay. I’m right here. You’re okay. Can you tell me what happened?”
I close my eyes and think about Arturo comforting me like this after I had to kill someone. He’d hold me and squeeze me… he was my treasure… he was my tesoro.
“It’s what I called Arturo,” I whisper.
“Treasure?” he asks.
“He’s come back. Louis has come back,” I say.
“No… you said he’s dead. Tesoro… I mean… it’s just a word, a common word at that?—”
“Tesoro means my treasure… inItaliantoo.”
I can feel his body tense.
Cyrus pulls back enough to look at me. “But… no. I mean… it’s such a common word, Ezio. It’s so common. Hell, it’s so common that multiple languages use it! It’s just a coincidence.And because you were telling me about him the other day, it just threw you when you heard it. We don’t even know if it’s right. I’m sure this could make up so many other words. And you said Louis was dead, right?”
“Yes.”
“And that was… one hundred and… what? Fifty years ago? You think a cocky asshole like him played dead for that long?” he asks.
He’s right… Cyrus is right. Why the fuck would I have even… let myself fall into thinking such a foolish thing?
“I’m sorry… you’re right…”
