2

Portia

I don't know for how long I lay passed out. I don't feel anything but dryness. I don't smell anything but musty dampness. I swallow hard to keep from retching. Cold is seeping into my body, stiffening my muscles, making them hurt.

I hear the sound of cars moving in the distance.

“Get the fuck up, you animal!”

I cough as a familiar pain hits my right side. I curl away from it, turn my face the other way, but it comes again. Stronger. Harder. More cruel.

I groan.

“What are you? Sleeping beauty? If you don't get the hell up from there, I swear I'm going to kill you!”

The rough baritone registers into my subconscious mind. Vincent. My brother. No surprise there. You'd think after years of getting whipped, slapped and battered by him, I would've gotten used to the feel of his boot by now. What can I say? I'm equally a disappointment in that regard.

“Stop attacking her. She's not the one who put us here,” another voice says.

Gregory. My other brother. The slightly, less insane one.

“Besides, there's no way out even if she unlocks our cuffs,” he adds, his voice oddly resigned.

“Don't tell me that. There's a fucking window over there,” Vincent snarls before digging his toe into my ribs. I hiss at the pain. “Up you worthless piece of shit. Don't think he's going to save you — ”

“Leave her alone, you fool.”

I groan, blinking my eyes open. I roll my head, and stop instantly, the pain sharp at my neck and back. I bring my hand up to my neck to touch the spot, feeling the bump as I tried to recollect.

Clove pink and discarded daisies on the floor. Shattered shards of mirror crunching underfoot as I took flight. Or thought about running before he caught me by the arm.

I glance at my hand. The ring is gone. He's taken it, and I couldn't be more thankful. My terrible wedding day. My forced wedding. It never happened. My prayers worked.

I steel myself up to a seated position, rubbing my prickly nose. The musty dampness... it's not only in this room. I trace the smell to the veil somehow still on my head. It survived that man's cruelty.

Mother's spirit is still strong and with me.

The room tilts, and I shut my eyes in agony until the dizziness passes. When I open them again, a tall, dark shadow looms over me like a menace. I shrink as it leers down at me.

Vincent.

“A hundred years past, and look who's up. You little wretch.”

I ignore him, looking past his bulk to see Gregory sitting across the room, his back against the far wall, his head tilted to the side solemnly. Nathan, our cousin lay with his head on his lap.

“Been waiting for you for hours. Hurry up and untie me, and stop looking lost,” Vincent orders. He looks so different. Smells like a wreck. He's been beaten like never before, sporting a cut lip and numerous brusies lining his face and neck. He groans as he crouches down with his back to me.

I observe that Nathan's hands are bound, and Gregory's must be as well. They're behind him. I'm the only one they left unbound, and I can't help but wonder why.

Is it because I'm a lady?

The white satin of my dress is ruined — smudged with dirt and blood. Amma's blood. The hem is black, and the skirt ripped apart. I reach up to pull the lace off my head, the sound of hairpins falling to the ground too delicate in this dungeon room. That's what this is. A cell in a dungeon room. The walls are four, stoned, and the fourth is a wall of bars. The window Vincent is proposing we escape from is about the size of a shoebox and too high to reach. That is where the light is coming from. A too-bright square in the otherwise dark, dreary room. It's dawn already.

Fuck. I've been passed out since last night?

I wonder where we are. I wonder what the hell is going on. Were we in the cellar of the compound I was imprisoned in the basement? Given these conditions, I very much prefer the basement now.

“What the fuck are you waiting for?” Vincent barks, spittle landing on my face as he inches his neck forward. I'm sure that if his hands weren't tied, he would have dealt me a slap or two. Probably a dozen times. That's how violent he is with me.

I look up to meet his dark, hateful eyes. His black hair is tousled, falling over his forehead.

Without a word more, and dreading his anger, I reach to untie him, feeling a stab of self-loathing. What the fuck is wrong with me? Why do I keep being obedient when he keeps treating me like trash?

I look over at Gregory. He's two years younger than Vincent, but wiser. He looks sad, and like I heard in his voice, resigned. Like there's no hope of living anymore in him. His face is also decorated — bruises along his jaw and dried blood by his nose, but his face isn't as bad as Vincent's.

I bite my bottom lip before I ask. “Is Nathan okay?”

Nathan is our cousin. He's much younger than all of us, and we treat him like a brother. He's still passed out, I believe.

“Yeah. He's fine,” Gregory says, looking down at him. He exhales.

“Not for long if you don't these fucking ropes off me,” Vincent threatens.

I glance at the knot and snort internally, shifting my gaze back to Gregory.

“What's going on?” I ask.

“We were betrayed.”

“By Fernando? Oh my goodness.”

“No,” Gregory says, shaking his head. “He was used as a bait.”

“Your chummy sweetheart is gone,” Vincent announces with a disgusted look. “He puts toddlers to shame. What a dumb coward.”

“He's not my chummy sweetheart,” I say sharply. “I never liked him.”

“Well, that makes two of us. Now move it.” He gestures to the knot.

I'm about to oblige him, focus my attention on the damn knot and set him him free when I hear the sound of a metal door clanging open nearby. Light infiltrates the space just outside the cell. Heavy footsteps follow — brooding thuds and a man's voice booms. Then another one that I recognize. One that brings back so many terrible memories. That makes anger surge up my veins.

“Fucking hell,” Vincent mutters, awkwardly shuffling to his feet as the men come into view.

The sight send chills down my spine.

Soldiers match in first, automatic weapons shining on their shoulders. They're six, each of them carrying a heavy-duty flashlight. They insert a key into the lock and open our cage just as my father's brother, our uncle, comes into view, grinning like a fucking devil.

His eyes fall on me first, on my terrible position on the floor. It would make my skin crawl if I wasn't already terrified. His gaze flits between my brothers and my sleeping cousin. He's clean-shaven for once, hair neatly combed back, slick with gel. I can smell his cologne — strong, heady, annoying, all the way from here.

“Throwing your own family to the dogs. Fucking imbecile,” Vincent bristles, spitting in his general direction. It fails to touch him though.

My uncle looks at him, spreading his arms open as though he's inviting Vincent in for a hug. “Oh. We're now family, huh? Interesting.”

“Sleazy old man.”

More footsteps sound from outside. I look past my uncle as he steps aside. Three more soldiers, another man I know isn't a soldier judging by his expensive suit and casual slant to his stance enter.

And then him. The boss. He's no longer masked but I know it's him. I can feel it, and I would recognize those eyes anywhere. I will never forget those eyes. That chilling blue, and the way they looked at me as though they knew me inside out.

He stops just inside the cell, his big bulk taking up most of the entrance, sucking up more than his share of oxygen. Sucking mine as well.

I forget how to breathe. Pressing a hand to my chest, I stare, transfixed, my heart racing.

The man donning the expensive suit stuffs his hands into his pockets, and leans toward the big boss to whisper something to low for me to catch. It's a foreign language, alright. Italian. I'd have known that these weren't Esmeralda men from anywhere. He's wearing a red suit that looks just as expensive as the boss's but not as sophisticated. The boss is the one with my ring, I remember. He's also the one who somehow knocked me out.

The boss scans the cell, taking in each of my brothers in turn, and I try my best not to shrink away when his gaze settles on me and stays there.

Instinctively, I touch my neck as I take in his head of charcoal-black hair and the shadow of a beard on his chin. There's a scar running along his right cheek. It does nothing to take away from his features. Instead, it achieves the opposite result. He's dangerous, this man. Scary. Deadly. I'd know it even if I saw him out on a normal day in the normal world.

But then, I was never a normal girl, and my life was far from what would be regarded as normal.

And even though I don't know who he is, or why he's keeping us hostage, my brothers do. I see the fear in their eyes. Feel it in the anxiety wafting off them, their fear poignant in the air. Making me equally scared as well.

We're going to die.