Page 60 of The Man with a Treasure

“Can’t we just shoot him yet?” asked the man I had forced to limp.

I assumed he was speaking about the demon child who was now evilly smiling. But, no. He was referring to the girl’s friend.

“How do we get a ransom if he’s dead, you idiot?” asked the man we had been following.

The restrained young man was giving quite the attempt to break free, his foot on the wall for leverage as he pulled on the chain. Secretly, I hoped he succeeded. Maybe if he caused enough chaos, I could somehow save the girl. She needed help. The free boy was now panting in an unbelievably cold fashion. Shivers raked my body as he firmly palmed his toy train and stalked forward, his eyes fixated on the girl’s juncture.

Hoping they were too busy to notice, my hand reached for my gun, wanting to be ready if Angelo gave me any indication that it was Scarlett who was about to be tortured—

“This way to Scar,” said the man who we had been following.

My ears began to ring. Not only was some poor girl about to be raped by a train, but I had just heard the nickname of the girl for whom we had given up normal lives to rescue.

She was here.

It was happening.

Found…

I looked back to the girl on the filthy floor, fighting for a freedom that was not coming that day. Her cat-like grey eyes looked at me, pleading, but I couldn’t botch this up. I couldn’t help the poor soul that was begging for someone to end the insanity. With so much regret that it caused me physical pain, I turned my back to her and followed Angelo as he was being led to a door.

If my heart was already pounding so hard it felt like it was lodged in my throat, choking me, what I saw next was sure to cause it to explode.

Hanging on a wall we were passing was an old photo with a large group of men. One of the men, trying to hide in the background, was none other than… Lorenzo Giordano.

I now knew who Papa wanted Scarlett hidden from. All suspicions were confirmed at that very second. And that wasn’t even the worst part of the picture. Next to a bonfire, hanging by her bound wrists, was a young woman with an otherworldly resemblance to Isabella. It wasn’t her, but they were definitely related. I had literally grown up next to these people. I would recognize a Giordano.

This girl was one of them. This was Scarlett.

We had known that Scarlett had most likely suffered the same fate as her mother, but all the men being naked was a tale of the goriest of unexpected details. With no other woman present in the photograph, it appeared that Scarlett had most likely been raped by her uncle.

I was grateful Angelo was far too focused on the stairs he was already heading down to notice the picture. It was more than understandable. His self-afflicted curse was moments from being lifted. That, or he would soon be dead and able to apologize to his mother personally.

I found peace in the fact that, if I died that day, I would soon be able to hold my brother again and thank him for sending me Angelo, the man who would only die if we had fallen together.

At the bottom of the dark wooden stairway was another door. As soon as it cracked open, a cold draft chilled me to the bone and trembled my spirit. I instantly prayed no one had lived in such a damp coldness, but as screams echoed from above, I knew there was no God present in this house.

The door opened…

Standing on the third step from the bottom, I had a perfect view.

Only one fluorescent light hung above her, making her appear ghostly. Sadness, loneliness, and complete sorrow aimlessly drifted within the dreary basement. I wasn’t even in it yet but could feel and see… despair.

A naked skeleton of a body was more proof than needed to realize this woman wasn’t even being properly fed. Scars and blemishes on her terribly pale skin declared years of physical abuse. Out of all the victims I had witnessed over the past decade, this woman was the most maltreated. If this person wasn’t Scarlett, I would be tempted to put a bullet in her head to end her misery.

But this was Scarlett.

The way her bare legs curved, just as her mother’s did in her sundresses. Isabella hated shoes, therefore didn’t wear them often. I had seen her bare feet enough times to recognize the toes gripping the concrete floor.

To confirm, I would have simply studied her face, but it was hidden underneath all her jet-black hair hanging forward, due to her exhausted neck no longer holding up the head to which it was attached.

I stood strong as Angelo jerked back and into my chest before covering his reaction. It was that appalling to watch Scarlett’s bound wrists slowly lift into the air as we had seen her mother do when trapped inside a nightmare.

The man who had led us down to the basement pulled on the end of a rope that was strung to the wall next to him. It was atrocious how totally accustomed Scarlett appeared to this humiliating treatment.

The vicious woman we were told about—the wild one—no longer existed. She had been broken and destroyed. I doubted she would ever be able to resemble a happy human being again, no matter what we did for her from this moment on.

Motionless long and delicate fingers hung in the balance of life and death. The only sign of life was her dark hair puffing out as if Scarlett’s breathing was labored.