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The door slammed and the sound of the key turning in the lock confirmed that I was once again completely imprisoned inside this cellar; nothing more than human bait for Renato.
Tears streamed down my cheeks, now that I was alone and free to fall apart. I’d be damned if I let them see me cry, but now, alone? I couldn’t stop it.
The soup quickly turned cold and the cool draft blowing beneath the door made me shiver. The smell of carrot and ginger filled my nose. Mixed with the earthy mold smell of the cellar, it turned my stomach.
I lay there, crying in the dark, my whole body shaking, shoulders screaming in their hunched position. I didn’t know how much time passed, but it was clearly enough for the rats who had made the basement their home to get curious. The rustling of their feet drawing closer only made me cry more. They smelled the food, and it was all over me. I didn’t dare shut my eyes; I was paranoid that if I did, I’d wake up crawling in rodents trying to suck soup from my clothes. Even as it got later, I fought to keep my eyes open, and twitch just enough to scare any animal from venturing too close.
Renato will come for you. He will come. Trust him.
I repeated the chant through my mind, rubbing each comforting thought like a precious, wooden bead. My own mental rosary.
He would come.
He would.
36
RENATO
“Scan all around the area again, search every building, shed, and fucking overturn every leaf again until you find her!” My shout echoed around the study, and the men standing before me flinched — well, all but Elio.
He waited until my voice had faded from the air. “You heard the boss. Search again. Do it now.”
The men filed out. Between them, they made up the next level of management in the family. They would make sure it was done. I’d never had a reason to doubt them before. They were good men. Yet, as soon as they filed out, I doubted my orders. I needed to be the one to search everywhere.
I didn’t realize I’d voiced that particular doubt aloud until Elio spoke again. “They’re your loyal men. You can trust them.”
“Don’t tell me what I already know,” I snapped.
Elio merely nodded.Fuck.I was losing control. This wasn’t me. This mess of violence and impulse. But since the moment Giada had zeroed in on the rosary beads, and I’d ripped open an abandoned car’s door and found them sitting on the seat, I couldn’t think straight.
Red colored my vision. Fury that was so hot it boiled in my veins tormented me. Yet despite all of that, it wasn’t the anger that was making me abrasive.
It was fear.
I’d never been so afraid.
Elio left the room, and the door had barely closed before my arm lashed out and struck the laptop on my desk, sending it clattering to the floor. It wasn’t enough. My anger surged through me, turning into violence.
The books on the bookcase were next, and then the entire case. It crashed to the floor with a thunderous bang. Next the desk itself became a punching bag. The lamp sitting on the end became a good weight to bludgeon the art on the walls, and the plant where Charlotte had hidden the bug became confetti, crushed under my feet on the carpet.
Time skipped forward again. I couldn’t keep it in place. My hands ached, the knuckles torn and busted. My breath rasped in and out, and the barren hole in my chest where a heart had beat for a few, precious weeks ached.
When time came back to me, I was spent. My arms throbbed, my shirt was dotted with blood, and the room was a wreck.
Nothing remained but the portrait of my mother, serenely smiling down at me, and the wooden cross on the wall above. Wrecking the room had brought me to my knees right below the portrait and the cross. The polished wood of the cross gleamed, and the strict lines of the shape judged me.
I was a man who had feared nothing. A man who’d had nothing to lose for a long time.
That had all changed. I was pushed to a point; a brittle, broken, jagged shard. My infamous control was hanging in tatters, and a stranger stared back at me from the pieces of glass littering the floor.
“Forgive me,” my voice rasped in the sudden silence. “Forgive me, damn me, drag me to hell…just bring her back.”
For the first time since I was a boy, following his mother’s coffin to the burial site, I began to pray.
* * *
Before another hour had passed,I was back out, searching the areas around where the abandoned car with the rosary had been found. Night had fallen, and with it, snow swirled in the air. It was bitterly cold and all I could think of was that my little nurse was out there somewhere right now, cold and alone.
