Suddenly, the men emerged through the locked door, each of them one-upping the other on tales of torture they’d heard about. Grasping every ounce of my courage, I darted through the door, hearing it click shut behind me as I sunk down in the shadows next to yet another stairway. Feeling more fortunate that I’d dared to believe was possible, I headed for the set of stairs made not from fine marble and other exotic materials but from what appeared to be hewn slabs of grayish stone.
There was a humidity that hadn’t been present upstairs, a coolness, too, as if the temperature controls they’d regulated in my room didn’t exist down here. I’d expected there to be some sort of extra security. More goons maybe or at least more barriers, but there weren’t. As soon as I touched the bottom of the stairs, the space opened into what must have been the basement. There were three alcoves right in front of me, each separated by a brick wall. One was empty but the next had a man in chains. I gasped at how painful being partially suspended by chains over a pool of water must be, and the man looked up.
“L-Lucia?” my brother Giorgio stammered out, and though his voice was recognizable, the rest of him wasn’t. All he had on was a set of rags that may have been the clothing he’d been wearing months ago. His black wavy hair, which he’d always worn fashionably and a bit on the long side hung in his face, the bottom half of which had been covered completely by a gnarled beard.
“Giorgio? Santa Maria…” I sobbed out for the horrendous state he’d been left in.
“D-don’t step in the l-liquid. They k-keep an electrical c-urrent r-running through it.”
Considering the putrid odor of the dungeons and how filthy, bone-thin, and neglected my brother was, I didn’t want to ask what might be in that liquid.
“But I need to get you down,” I protested.
“C-can’t. Not s-safe,” he juddered out as if to still protect me, and I sobbed even harder. “Luce, is Antonio st-still alive? I haven’t h-heard him make a n-noise in a l-long time.” Giorgio jerked his chin toward the last alcove, the one I hadn’t quite made it to yet.
“Giorgio, I can’t leave you like this.”
He shook his head at her. “Ch-check on Antonio.”
Tears streaming so thickly that I had to wipe at them to see, I stepped in the direction Giorgio had indicated. The alcove was similar but without the pool of rancid water inside. There were chains here, too, but they were unoccupied. This one was dry and bare except for the figure in the back, a lump of man that wasn’t even moving. Was he breathing?
Wary of possible booby traps, I crept towards him. But as I neared him, I noticed he wasn’t even restrained.
“Antonio? It’s me, Lucia.”
My eldest brother made no sound and didn’t move a muscle. What would I do if he was dead?
“Antonio?” I said again and laid my hand on his back. While his skin was chilled, he didn’t feel like a corpse, and once I made contact, he flipped over and went from a prone position to crouching so quickly that he took me by surprise. “Oh, thank God you’re alright. I need to get you out of here.”
But while he seemed in slightly better condition than Giorgio physically—particular since he was free of chains—when he looked at me, his eyes flitted around like an injured bird’s. He began whispering some phrase I couldn’t quite make out.
“Speak up a little, Antonio, I can’t understand what you’re saying.”
“Hafta ssstttt,” he whispered, unintelligibly.
“What?”
“Hafta… hafta… hafta stay.”
“Have to stay?” I repeated back at him.
He nodded vigorously. “Hafta stay. Hafta stay.”
“You want me to stay with you?” I asked him, my heart breaking at seeing him like this. I didn’t even know if he had recognized me.
“Hafta stay,” he murmured quietly, pointing at his chest. “Hafta stay.”
“You mean you have to stay?”
He nodded again.
“You don’t, though. I’m here to rescue you. To take you away.”
He shook his head. “Hafta stay.”
“Antonio, I need to get you some help. I need to get you out of here.” I lifted him by the arm, and he felt much lighter than he should’ve. Then, I tried to lead him out, but the closer we got to the perimeter of the alcove, the more he resisted me. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m getting you out.”
I began to push him, shoving him from behind, but he panicked, throwing up his hands to free himself of me, and hurried back to the far wall mumbling, “Hafta stay. Hafta stay.”
“Giorgio,” I raised my voice just enough for him to hear. Everything echoed in here. “He won’t come with me.”
“C-can you p-pull him over t-to see m-me?”
“I’ll try,” I said. Then, I went back to my oldest sibling. “Come on, Antonio. You know me. I’m Lucia and you’re my big bro, remember?”
He just stared at me, unblinking. I saw nothing of the brother I knew in his eyes and it scared me. Although he stood seven inches taller than me, he was so lightweight that when I dragged him by the hand, I actually made some progress.
Maybe this could work after all.
Using all my strength, I tugged and tugged on him, and even though he didn’t go willingly, I managed to bring him around to the end of the alcove so he could see Giorgio.
“H-hey, man. You okay?” Giorgio asked him, so far from okay himself as to be laughable.
But something about making eye contact with Giorgio caused a change to occur in Antonio. Instead of racing back to his alcove, he ran toward the door I’d snuck through earlier. No, he zoomed toward it, moving far faster than I would’ve thought possible in his current state.
“Wait, Antonio,” I called him back. “We have to get Giorgio.”
The next things that happened occurred one after another with a horrible inevitability. First, just as Antonio reached the door, it opened, and the same huge man I’d seen close the door of my room appeared. In his hands was one of those sawn-off shotguns, and I heard the distinctive click-clack of the weapon being cocked. Instead of turning around to flee, Antonio kept going as if the man wasn’t there, and once within inches, there was a terrible boom as the Cavetti goon fired both barrels at once.
The echo of the cavernous dungeons made the sound reverberate, multiplying in volume as Antonio stood there before the much bigger man, staggering backward. It seemed to take ages for him to fall, and only once he’d landed on that damp stone floor did I see the two blast patterns across his chest. I skated over to him just after he went down, watching the blood pouring out of his ribcage.
“No, Antonio,” I wept, soothing my hands over his burly face. “Stay with me.” Then, I thought of his phrase. “Hafta stay, remember? You hafta stay with me, okay?”
His breathing sounded like a death rattle, but I couldn’t let him go. I’d already lost so much. Too much. His eyes had been unfocused, revolving around without being able to find anything, but then they found me. For the space of a few crucial seconds, I watched as Antonio’s gaze linked to mine, and I knew he’d come back to me as he reached up his hand and touched my cheek.