The weeks that followed that night were a blur. I would wake up in the morning before dawn to watch the sunrise and breathe in the fresh morning air.
Then I would take a quick shower and spend all my remaining time getting dressed and making my bed as I waited for the phone to ring and that beautiful and sweet voice to call me and inform me that breakfast would be served in thirty minutes—always thirty, not a minute later.
After that I would spend the next twenty-five minutes pacing around the room wondering which sibling would escort me to breakfast in that fateful day.
For a while I would pray it was not Antonio because out of all of them he scared me the most, followed by Mario. Dante too had scared me though he had never talked to me by then, it was the spark in his eyes it reminded me of Antonio.
At some point I would start crying, I would not make any noise, tears would simply leave my eyes and I would quickly dry them when a knock sounded on the door. I would open the door and greet my morning escort with a small and strained smile to which I would get varying reactions depending on who it was.
Nikolai would smile politely and greet me like a well-mannered gentleman.
Rosy would study me briefly before giving me a small smile I could not place.
Antonio would occasionally leer at me, his eyes going up and down my body making me tense, he would smile savagely at my reaction before turning and leaving. Sometimes he would make a comment about my clothes, hair, eyes etc. that if it were anyone else could have come off as a compliment but he had thought of me as a toy.
Mario’s reaction had always communicated clearly how he had felt about being in my presence; he had despised it. He would scowl the minute I opened the door, his eyes darkening as he assessed me finding something that displeased him. With each day he saw me, whether as my escort or at the table, the shadows on his face would be darker than the day before. It took me a long while to understand that he hated being in my presence because he did not want me in his home, and longer still to find out why.
I had found Dante’s presence to be the most unnerving because I could never figure out what he thought of me, or was thinking really. Whenever he came to fetch me he would stand there in front of the door his eyes slowly going up and down my body, lingering in some places and then he would look at my eyes.
Staring at Dante’s eyes had been worse than looking at Antonio’s or Alessandro because in Dante’s eyes lurked shadows with no names. Gazing into his eyes would always leave me shaken and feeling naked, more metaphorically than literally. Dante would look at me like he was staring at my soul and every time he had made me shiver and then his eyes would darken and something I did not know then but still frighten me would ignite in his eyes.
That spark in his eyes had scared me, and even today, the memory of it still haunts my mind.
Out of all of them, Geovanni had confused me the most though. He would greet me with a cheerful smile and a wink and make small talk while we walked—side-by-side—to breakfast. Like Antonio he would occasionally make a comment about me, then he had moved on to the weather, my room, their house and at some point his family.
He had behaved normally—like we had known each other and it had both puzzled and angered me because I had felt like he was overlooking the fact that I had been abducted by his brothers. However, in some days—though rare and far apart—I had yearned for his presence because more than anything else, he had a way of distracting me, freeing me from the dark thoughts that had been slowly eroding my mind.
Though it would always be brief, being in his presence had triggered a defensive mechanism that had manifested itself after I had been betrayed so thoroughly; I would try to figure him out, because it too improbable that he was trying to befriend me just for that.
In being a puzzle I had needed to solve Geovanni had kept my mind from shattering completely and he had known, which is why he had tried more and more with each passing day, week and month to make me smile or laugh.
I had made it my daily goal not to fall for his tricks and smile—much less laugh—because it would not only be while he escorted me to breakfast where he would try, even in front of his brothers he would do it. And when he succeeded in making me smile or laugh, especially if I laughed, it would always seem as if he had done the best thing in the world, and he had.
He had eased my pain, even if just by a little.
YOU ARE READING
Rooted from Betrayal
ActionI would have had a normal life, with mundane problems and simple joys. I would have started practicing as a general doctor by the age of 24 with intentions of specializing and later becoming a neurosurgeon. I would have lived a normal life far from...
