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‘Be serious for once, would you? You were sitting in that crypt with a look of terror on your face, Leo. It scared me.’
‘I’m a grown man, Dara—’ He protested, sitting up on the makeshift bed and grabbing his jeans from the crumpled pile of clothes on the dusty stone floor.
She sat up too, placing a hand on his shoulder, stopping him from moving away from her. ‘Even grown men have nightmares.’
He laughed. ‘Nightmares would have made my childhood a little more entertaining. As you can see, I suffered from boredom.’
‘Children don’t run away from home because they’re bored.’
He sighed. Standing up, he walked over to a small chest of trinkets, his jeans draped low on his hips.
‘My mother liked silence.’ He spoke in a monotone, tracing his finger along the silver lid of the box. ‘She would fly into a rage whenever her peace was disturbed. I imagine it had something to do with the multitude of medication she took daily. Anyway, on occasion a young boy likes to make noise. When I got too loud she would send me there for quiet time.’
‘To the crypt?’ Dara felt shock pour into her veins. She remembered how pale and terrified he had looked, pushed tight against the marble wall.
‘I don’t know when I realised there was something wrong with her,’ he continued. ‘She would be fine some days, and then others...she just wasn’t. I was maybe five or six when she first put me in there. I lost my first tooth and I ran to her room to tell her. I forgot myself. It seemed like I was in that place for hours before she let me out.’
Dara felt tears choke her throat. How could a mother be so cruel to her own son? His reaction when the men had dropped the table suddenly made sense—he was used to being punished for touching anything in that room. He was used to being kept out. She sat up, forcing herself not to cry for fear he would stop.
He kept talking in that monotone, turning the trinkets over in his hands one by one.
‘When I was twelve she came to find me one day. It had been months since the last episode. I had learned not to speak to her or provoke her. I had learned to be silent. She was in a blind rage—kept calling me Vittorio. Apparently I was beginning to resemble my father a little too strongly. I wouldn’t go to the crypt that tim. She never physically hurt me so I knew she couldn’t make me go. I just remained silent until she walked away.’
‘It sounds like you were forced to grow up much too soon.’
‘I thought I had learned how to keep myself safe. How to keep her happy. But I woke up that night and she was trying to set my bedroom on fire.’
Dara gasped, her breath stilling in her throat.
He turned to face her, his eyes grim and lined, ‘Nobody was hurt. The housekeeper had been awake and she heard my shouts. She and her husband put out the fire before it could spread too far. It was finally enough for my father to fly home from his business to take me and put me in a boarding school in Sienna.’
‘What did he do with your mother?’
‘She stayed here. The housekeeper knew how to keep it quiet. Father ordered more medication to help her sleep. He said she suffered with her nerves. I didn’t see her for six months after that night.’
Leo shook his head. Running his fingers through his hair, he walked across to the window, staring out into the distance.
‘She continued in her cycle of madness for years after that. I’d spend Christmas and summer with my father. He would bring me to see her occasionally, but she never spoke to me. I sometimes wondered why we even bothered. Boarding school changed me—I became rebellious and loud, and going back to the castle would make me feel like I was suffocating. Home became a distant nightmare. A few weeks before my eighteenth birthday I got accepted into Oxford in England. My father was determined his future CEO would get the best education. I don’t know what possessed me to travel down to see her. I felt like maybe if she knew I was leaving the country I might get some sort of reaction. When I got here the castle was empty. I’ll never forget the silence.’
Dara could tell by his posture that this was difficult for him. She wanted to tell him that it was fine, that he didn’t have to tell her any more.
‘I went to her room and she was lying on the bed wearing her best dress. I remember thinking she looked like Sleeping Beauty. I didn’t touch her. I just knew. There is a certain heaviness to the air when you’re in the presence of death.’
Dara covered her mouth with her hands, tears welling up in her eyes.
