My foot slips on a rock, and I pause to look down. My shoelace is untied, and I know I risk losing more than the race if I attempt to chase after him any further. Looking up again, I see he has basically won anyway, being only a foot or two from the top of the hill. Irritated, I roll my eyes and bend down to tie the lace.
My screams are muffled, as I am grabbed quickly from behind by large hands, one of which holds my mouth as I attempt to kick my way free.
“Silenzio,” the man yells, before anther shadow appears at my side and begins to tape my mouth shut. I look up, attempting to get a better look at the person through the tears that won’t stop streaming down my face. A woman, her face being mostly hidden is difficult to make out. But I do see brown hair and steel gray eyes that look as black as her soul.
I get lost in her lifeless eyes for a moment before the need to fight again takes over. Thrashing my arms, I attempt to kick her away from me, but being small and tiny gives them more than an advantage as the man behind me tightens his grip as he fastens my wrists with what feels like a zip tie and the woman finishes replacing his hand with large black tape, sealing my mouth shut completely.
“If you don’t stop, Maria, the next breath you take will be your last! Even a girl as young, as beautiful as yourself, can understand that,” the man growls, as he begins to touch me in a way that even I know is inappropriate.
Tears fall faster, and my muffled yells now come out as whimpering sobs as I fall void of any life in the man’s arms. If this is the end, I want it to be over, now, before I remember anything more and can block everything that has happened from my memory. Forever. I look up as suddenly the woman in front of me falls to her knees in pain. Quickly, I glance up and catch the eye of the person responsible.
Leo.
My eyes widen, knowing he has taken on more than he even knows before I hear him yell up the hill for help. I look down at the woman at my feet and see her rub the back of her head, attempting to take away the sting of where Leonardo just hit her.
“You fucking brat,” the man behind me yells before throwing me to the side and charging forward towards my friend. “I’ll teach you to interfere!”
Leo stands before him, steel, unmovable, as the man approaches. “No one touches Maria like that and lives!” I hear him promise, but the man just slows his speed and chuckles to himself before coming to stand in front of him.
I attempt to stand, to run, to break free, but the woman grabs my ankle and pulls me back down with her. I try and catch her eye, to kick dirt in it, but it’s as if she knows and purposely keeps her face hidden from me. With my captors back turned, I can’t make out his face either as I attempt one last time to reach freedom.
I hear Leonardo yell again before the man’s fist collides with his head and sends him spiraling backwards making him fall on a small landing down the hill. I scream out but it only comes out as soft whimpers with the tape around my mouth. The woman besides me drags me to my feet as my eyes fall on Leo’s lifeless form a few yards away. A black shadow cascades over me as the man approaches, but I still can’t find it in myself to look away from where Leo’s body rests. Soon, I hear movement on the top of the hill. Leo’s mothers shrill yell fills the air before my mother shouts for help from Soldati,Soldiers, and a small amount of hope fills me.
But it is too late. The man in front of me slips a cover over my head as the woman behind begins to force me backwards. I feel the woman hold a wet rag up to my face through the hood, and soon, my entire world goes black and my only choice is to welcome the numbness. The void. The amnesia that quickly kicks in blocking everything out and taking me to a place I won’t have to remember.
Chapter 14
Leonardo
Giovanni waits alongside me impatiently as maids scurry back and forth. Restless, I push off the wall and begin to pace again in front of the room I carried Maria into after she fainted in my arms. The memory of her past, of this place, of us, having more of an effect on her that I originally thought.
When I discovered it this morning, it was too much for me to process as well. Another phone call to Giovanni and he gave me at least enough information to confirm my suspicion. Before I could decide what to do, she was in front of me in my office, wearing practically nothing at all and I took what the young boy in me could have never even dreamed of when we used to play side by side in the Italian country side and I first fell head over heels for her.
The door to her bedroom opens, and her mother, Sofia Lombardi, comes out into the hallway. I rush to her side before the older woman even gets a chance to speak. “Is she OK?” I urgently ask.
“Mia figlia ha bisogno di riposo,”she smiles at me.“My daughter needs rest, Boy.It is all too much to process, too much to think about.”
The doctor comes out of the room behind her and I search his eyes, wondering if what I have just been told is the truth. “She will be OK, Leonardo. But too much could send her into a relapse. She just got her memory back. Give her some time to rest. Process it all.”
My body aches because I don’t want to give her any damn time at all. I want to push past them all and take her in my arms, finally, after she knows all I have only just began to scratch the surface of as well. That she is Maria. The girl I used to play with before my parents disappeared, were later presumed dead. Before both of our worlds went black and there was nothing either one of us could do to stop it.
She’s the girl I swore, if I ever found again, I would protect like I couldn’t protect her that day she was taken. Taken away from all of us right before everything in the world I knew changed and hate, evil, hell was all I grew to know.
Soon, I feel Giovanni’s hand on my shoulder, “Come Leo, there is still much you don’t understand.” He leads me to a room down the hall and I shake out of my dress jacket as we enter, tossing it on a nearby chair as I cross the room and make myself a much-needed drink.
“Francesca,” I hear Sofia call out to one of the maids. She instructs her in Italian on a meal fit for a king she wants prepared for the evening and I can’t help but think it will all go to waste. If Maria is anything like me after finding out the truth, her appetite will be the last thing on her mind.
Taking a glass, I toss two ice cubes in it and fill it full of two fingers of the houses finest scotch. Giovanni motions for me to do the same for him as he walks to the counter. Fulfilling his wish, I slide the tumbler towards him before taking a bottle of the nicest red I can find and pouring a glass for Sofia. A woman I haven’t seen since I was a child. She takes it gracefully, and stands like royalty behind Giovanni, much like I would expect the wife of a Don to behave knowing full well her history and that she belongs to Lombardi.
“Does Luigi know?”
It is the first question out of my mouth, and truth be told, it was the only thought on my mind as we traveled the last few miles to land this morning. Something like this, he has to, otherwise why theneedfor me to bring her in?
But then the question surfaces, Angelo said dead or alive, and I can’t for the life of me understand why.
Giovanni looks to Sofia with a sadness I have never seen in his eyes. “He knows, Leonardo.” I hear him whisper as I take a drink and the alcohol sides down my throat. Slamming my cup down on the counter, I glare at the both of them angrily and can’t find the words to respond. Thankfully I don’t have to, and Giovanni continues for me instead. “He knows everything.”
“What do you mean he knows everything? That she is his daughter? That she was kidnapped? At the age of six?” I shout, intending to scare them, shake them up, get the damn truth and the answers that I want, instead of the bullshit I feel like they are feeding me.
