Page 20 of The Madman and his broken Princess
I held her gaze. “I’d put my life down for her.”
She scowled. “You’ll both die down here!” She choked up and swallowed hard, then her face became hard. “I have clothes and food for her.”
“Considering the state of your face, I’d recommend you don’t sneak down here either.” I didn’t really care for her fate, but Amelia often talked kindly about her and obviously cared about her stepmother, so I felt compelled to warn her.
“He knows. He wants her well enough so he can torture you both.” Her voice broke, and her shoulders slumped. “She shouldn’t have risked it for you.”
“I know,” I said.
She regarded me as if to gauge my sincerity, then quickly looked away. I wondered what she saw in my face that scared her so much. She slid a heap of clothes and a plastic plate with sandwiches into Amelia’s cell. After a moment of hesitation, she took one of the sandwiches.
“Don’t,” I said.
“She’ll share her food with you anyway.”
“She will, but she won’t believe you gave it to me and will insist on sharing more of her food with me.”
She put the food back down and rose to her feet. Her eyes lingered on Amelia. “I’ll try to talk him into letting her go. She still has worth for him if he marries her off. It’s better than dying down here.”
Jealousy reared its head. The idea that Amelia would marry someone else felt like a dagger in my chest, but Flavia was right. If that meant Amelia would get out of here alive, then I’d choose that option.
“Why did he send you down here?” I asked.
“To punish me for helping you.”
“Looks like he punished you already.” I motioned to her many bruises.
She shuddered. “You know very well that’s nothing.”
I did. She left without another word, and I sank on my bed to keep an eye on Amelia, even if there was nothing I could do. Soon, her body shook with nightmares. I got up, ignoring the pain in my side, and walked over to the bars. “Amelia, wake up.” She didn’t wake.
“Wake up!”
She jerked up with wide eyes. The terror in them reminded me of the beginning of my captivity. How often had I woken with my pulse pounding in my ears and my heart threatening to burst out of my rib cage? This primal fear had become a part of me, and in some ways, it had lost its threat. Pain and torture were part of my reality. I didn’t know how I’d ever existed without them.
I wanted to say “You’re safe,” but she wasn’t, and I didn’t want to lie to her. Her blue eyes settled on me, and she smiled. Smiled as if we both weren’t doomed to rot in this dank basement, as if pain and misery wouldn’t be part of the rest of our lives.
I wasn’t sure how, but I wanted to save her. I didn’t care if I died doing it. Amelia wouldn’t survive years in this cell, and I wouldn’t survive without Amelia.
She had become my reason for existing.
15 years old
Eight months later
Itried to figure out what day it was by the markings on the wall. I hadn’t begun counting the days at the beginning of my captivity, stupid enough to believe it would be temporary. Sometimes when I’d felt too weak, I hadn’t counted either, but I estimated it had to be Christmas soon, which also meant that Nestore’s eighteenth birthday probably wasn’t that far away.
The creak of the door to the cellblock opening tightened my belly until it felt like solid rock. My pulse began racing as I wondered what was in store for us today. The air suddenly felt too thick to breathe. I struggled with every intake of air. The beatings had become less frequent in the past two to three months. Maybe once a week, Father still came down here to whip me with his belt or pummel me with the unrelenting waterfrom the hose. I wasn’t sure what was going on, but he looked as if he were the one being hunted. He had been Capo for only three months, but since taking over from the previous person, he had lost weight.
It made me gleeful to know things were tough for him. I didn’t remember if I’d ever loved my father. Maybe as a little girl, before he’d killed my mother and later his second wife, but the memories of those warmer emotions were distant and almost unimaginable. Maybe they had never existed in the first place, and I only wished they had.
Nestore did sit-ups in his cell. He worked out every day, using his own body weight, but a lack of food slowed his progress. He was only muscles, sinew, and bone, and always on the verge of passing out. I spent hours watching him. Nothing filled me with more warmth than the sight of him.
One of the younger guards, a bulky man with a bald patch he tried to cover with the longer hair from the side of his head, entered the cellblock. The little hairs at the nape of my neck rose when his brown eyes settled on me. Something in them was greedy and hungry.
He sauntered over to my cell, twirling the key chain around his index finger as he leered at me. “My, my, Amelia Lamorgese. You used to be untouchable. Look at you now.”
I ignored him and looked back down at my notebook, where I wrote down dreams and hopes and memories from long ago, everything that kept me busy and reminded me I was still human.
