Rooted from Betrayal

Chapter 10: *Pain of betrayal.*

After dinner was over, Alessandro had instructed Mario to take me back to my room which for some reason, I thought he had looked relieved.

I had walked behind him, my thoughts too slow for me to try and decipher Geovanni’s actions, or even worry about what would happen to me now that I was a resident of the Velastro family house; I had been too tired to think.

When we had reached the door to my room, Mario had looked at me briefly, appearing as though he had wanted to say something but had thought better of it and had left me standing there.

I had walked into the room and went straight to the bathroom where I had done my business and had walked out in my underwear and went to the closet where I had picked up the sweat pants I had been wearing before slipping under the covers, and dosing off.

I had woken up with a gasp, skin sticky with sweat and my heart beating at two times the normal rate. It had been my first time having a nightmare and I had found that when people explained how it felt, they toned it down, sugar coated it even.

The feeling of being paralyzed invoked the kind of fear that did not allow for thought, just the overwhelming need to get away from the source of my fear but finding I could not do it.

When I had found out I could finally move my limbs, I dragged myself to the bathroom where I had opened the shower and went under the scalding water. I had stayed in the shower until I hadn't been able to see through the steam and my skin had felt like it was boiling.

Without drying myself I had wrapped myself in a silk robe and headed to the balcony. The cold night air had offered relief for my skin and the darkness had calmed my mind, offering me a brief second of peace.

Until bits and pieces of my nightmare had floated back into the tranquil waters of my mind causing ripples to form on the surface that had kept on growing as the seconds ticked by. Slowly, the fuzzy bits and blurred pieces of my nightmare had mended themselves and had formed vivid pictures of the people I had believed to be my friends, my family.

In a world where I'd had nothing and no one, they had been the ones to keep me going, the ones to put a smile on my face if I'd had tears in my eyes and the ones I had aimed not to disappoint but to make them proud of me because they had been my family.

In those days, I had thought it foolish of me to have believed that people I did not share blood with would love me and cherish me the same way they would their family. However, one could not blame me for hoping, loneliness is a feeling I hadn't wished to endure more than need be.

I remember the lone tear that had escaped my eyes and had fallen to my aching chest. I had closed my eyes, head leaning back on the chair and had finally let my tears flow.

For the first time in a week, I had allowed myself to cry out the pain that had been carving my chest out from the inside. I had let the truth of what the people I had cherished more than anything had done, wash over me like a tidal wave, and I had drowned.

The images of their faces had been so vivid, so fresh in my mind from the last time I had seen them that it hurt. Their expressions more than anything else had made me feel like they had stabbed me in my heart with jugged blades and had wrenched them out.

The sneers filled with disgust.

The lack of expression on a face I had known so well with eyes that had looked at me like I had been a stranger.

And the guilt.

Somehow, knowing that one of them had known that what was being done had been wrong, even felt guilty about it, was the worst blow of all.

Naledi’s last words had plagued my dreams and waking thoughts for a long time after that and even today they still do. The knowledge that somehow, somewhere along the line they had grown to hate me to the point where they were willing to sell me on the black market, had made me feel both hollow and filled with pain.

Tears had flowed down my cheeks like rivers on a rainy season, with endless waters. Any resistance I had up until that moment crumbled under the force of my pain and left me bare to drown in my sorrows.

Sobs had wrecked through my body in waves, each one worse than the last leaving my body sore and my heart hollow.

I had never thought I would cry until I passed out but that day, I did. I cried and sobbed, feeling pain that no words could describe. I had been broken and my body had offered me the only comfort it could, the silence of unconsciousness.

However, even that had not lasted because when I had woken up under the lilac sky of a new dawn, the pain had still remained and it had been worse because I known then that I would live the rest of my life where I would not have been without their betrayal.