Page 44 of The Madman and his broken Princess
Nestore had removed the tennis courts and built a wide circular building in their place. It was only one story tall and windowless. Inside, electric torches illuminated the rotunda. Two staircases led to the stories below. Noise came from this area, an erratic and excited roar of male voices. What was going on?
Nestore took my hand and led me down the staircase. I kept staring at the crown made from bones on his head. Part of me hoped it wasn’t real bone, or at least not human bone. I wasn’t an expert, so maybe it was something else. It reminded me of an array of entwined sprigs, and I decided to think of it as exactly that: sprigs. I needed to forget the truth.
When we emerged from the stairwell, my lips dropped open in surprise. The room resembled a miniature amphitheater. The ranks were crowded with men who fell silent when Nestore and I stepped out. Every eye followed us as Nestore pulled me toward a loge with a perfect view of the circular pit below.
The moment Nestore sat down, a man stepped into the pit. He was thick around the middle with broad shoulders and a thinning hairline. His heavy-lidded eyes carried the look of someone who had seen too much. “Tonight, we have a special treat. A rat gets its chance to evade death by surviving five minutes in a cage with Drago. Put your bets in. The fight begins in one minute.”
The man disappeared through a door that led to another area below the ranks. I sent Nestore an incredulous look. “Drago, as in my father’s tiger?”
My father had been obsessed with wild animals. His private zoo of apes, tigers, lions, and cheetahs had always made me feel icky. The poor beasts didn’t have enough room, and my father kept them drugged half the time, so he could pet them and feel like an even bigger man for controlling them. He had brought them to this place when we’d moved here after Romano Senior had been murdered.
Nestore inclined his head, a few strands of his hair falling into his eyes as he held my gaze.
“You kept them?”
Nestore gripped the banister and surveyed the pit below before he fixed me with a look. “Not all of them. I could have had them killed. No sanctuary or zoo had room for them. There are too many wild animals being traded, and too many of them need to be rehomed.”
“So now you use them for fights?”
His dark brows dipped. “It’s good entertainment, an effective deterrence, and drives up the bets. This is business, Amelia, one I need to keep running so I can buy you only the finest fabrics and gems.”
I shook my head, horrified by what Nestore had become.
A tall man with his long brown hair in a low ponytail entered the pit below. He wore only pants. His upper body bore a few bruises and cuts, but he seemed well otherwise. His gaze found Nestore, and his expression shifted into one of pleading. “Let me redeem myself. I could work for you.”
Nestore made a cutting motion with his hand and sank into the elevated red velvet chair behind him. I lowered myself into the seat beside him, my eyes trained on the circular arena. A door was pulled up behind the man in the pit. The manwhirled around and backed away. For several seconds, nothing happened, then the head of a tiger peeked out of the inside before the rest of the majestic predator emerged from the shadows. The crowd aah’d, and money was handed to two men who took down bets on their phones. I wondered what they were betting on. Did anyone actually bet against the tiger?
My eyes caught on a clock on the wall that was counting the seconds of how long the man had spent in the pit with the tiger. That must be what everyone bet on.
Nestore raised an eyebrow, a challenging smirk tugging at his lips. “Wish to bet on the outcome?”
I gave a jerky shake of the head. “That’s not my definition of fun.”
He shrugged as if it were of no consequence to him. “It is mine, and it’ll be yours too.”
“Why? Will you turn me into a version of yourself?”
“Maybe you are already more like me than you want to admit.”
My attention was drawn to the cage. “I’m not.”
The tiger snarled and pounced. With one swipe of its massive paw, it sent the man flying. He landed on the floor with a terrified gasp and tried to scuttle backward to escape the prowling beast. It sank its teeth into the man’s shoulder, causing him to screech in pain.
“These caged predators never learned to go in for the kill. They play to satisfy their suppressed urge to hunt,” Nestore murmured, his expression pleased as he watched the spectacle.
I shuddered at the sounds of bones breaking and the screams of agony. They reminded me of the past, of Nestore’s very own screams.
“These are men who betrayed me and the Camorra. Men like your father. Men who tortured and killed until I caught them.”
I looked away, unable to bear another second of the barbaric display. Finally, the screams stopped, and only the sound of bones crunching and the wet noises of smacking could be heard.
“Why are you forcing me to watch this?” I asked in a whisper. Nestore leaned back in his chair. “To scare me? That’s unnecessary. One look in your eyes is enough for that.”
He let out a low chuckle. “You watched me getting tortured for years, you heard my screams and the sound of my bones breaking, and you never ran away from it, but this makes you want to take flight?” The hint of accusation carried in his voice, as if he thought I had enjoyed watching him suffer. His mind had warped the truth, and my running away had definitely contributed to it.
“I stayed to remind you that you weren’t alone. I bore the sound of your screams because I knew you suffered so much worse. I didn’t do it out of curiosity or fun. I stayed because I cared about you. After all, it was the only way to support you.”
Some of the hardness disappeared from Nestore’s eyes, and hope flared in me, only to be snuffed out when his jaw set tight and he turned away. He watched the tiger eat parts of the corpse before the predator lost interest, and so did Nestore. The door opened, and the cat prowled out.
