Solace

24 | buried alive

| Alessia |

Time passes, but the good times pass in the blink of an eye. Christmas flew by, and tomorrow was already New Year's Eve.

I went down to the living room but found Rafael standing in front of the fireplace. He didn't notice me standing at the other end of the room because his attention was on the ring in his hand.

From here, it looked like a fancy ring, and if he bought it, he really had good taste.

Of course, I wondered whether he had a girlfriend he wanted to propose to, but that turned out to be wrong as he threw the ring into the burning fire.

I left the room as silently as I had entered it, but with questions that I knew, only one person would answer.

I entered Pietro's room without knocking to show him that you get what you give and found him inhaling a white powder through his nose.

When he noticed me, he pushed it aside and looked at me questioningly. I sat down on his bed and filled him in on what I had seen, and I could have sworn I heard him mutter finally.

"What's the story behind this?"

"Ask him."

"Please?" I didn't have to put in much effort to persuade him as it was obvious he just wanted to get rid of me.

He told me that Rafael had a fiancée called Elena. They had been together for six years, and from what I heard, he really loved her. But at the beginning of this year, he found out that she was betraying him by working for the Russians.

"What did he do with her?"

At this question, a wide smile spread across Pietro's face. "Buried her alive."

If I thought drowning was unpleasant, I could hardly imagine what torture it must have been to be buried alive. What it must feel like to have your lungs filled with earth when you only want to scream for help.

I didn't question Rafael's judgement because she knew what she was getting into, but if I had to choose between a death like that and drowning, I would choose to drown.

This revelation, however, made me wonder if that was the reason why he distrusted me so much. Every woman in his life had betrayed him, starting with his mother. And me showing up out of nowhere a few months after Elena's death might have made him suspicious.

A realization hit me. "Did she had any connections to Henry?"

"No," he replied briefly, but I hardly heard it as his blood-red eyes distracted me, something I had noticed a lot lately.

I wanted to ask him if he was all right, but on the other hand, I didn't want to interfere in something that may be none of my business.

After wishing him a good night, I made my way to my room at the end of the corridor. As I attempted to open my door, however, I felt a light touch on my shoulder and tried to shake it off, but it remained.

"What-" I turned to the person, but there was no one to be seen. I tried to take this imaginary hand off my shoulder, but nothing changed, the feeling remained, and I convinced myself that it was just the air.

This was a thing that had been happening to me quite often recently. It started with me perceiving things differently. One morning I woke up and saw white walls instead of dark colours. Silver cutlery turned into grey handcuffs, and I interpreted the black back of the remote control as black sunglasses. Shortly afterwards, quiet noises, footsteps and voices joined in.

Maybe I was on the verge of going crazy, but as long as I wasn't officially declared so, everything was fine.

• • • •

There were still six hours until the new year.

Rafael and the twins were working out, Alessandro and Ricardo were working, and I was sitting in the living room staring at Ricardo's laptop, which was lying on the table in front of me.

Since I once watched him enter his password, it was no problem for me to open it, but I wanted to do it for the right reason. Not to spy on him, not because I didn't believe his words but because I was bored and curious.

I didn't want to waste a lot of time and risk someone seeing me, so I quickly clicked through the files but went back to one image.

It was a wedding picture from 1996. In the picture, Ricardo and his ex-wife, Allegra, were walking down the stairs hand in hand, looking genuinely happy. It's funny how one second you're happy with the love of your life and the next you're cheating on her or profiting from her death.

I clicked on and found everything from real and forged birth and death certificates to torture methods and upcoming shipments.

At some point, I came across a picture taken in Saint Petersburg on December 10. The picture showed three men and a blonde woman sitting at a round table in a cafe. From the windowpane behind them, snow could be seen lying on the street, and the road signs were in a different language.

I had the feeling that I didn't notice something in the picture and zoomed in till I noticed a neck tattoo with my name on it. At first glance, I hardly recognised him since he wasn't wearing his usual black suit and sunglasses, which infuriated me more and more every second.

In this world, he could be whoever he wanted, but I was as lost up here as I was down there because of him.

I took out my phone to take a picture of it, but when I heard a voice behind me, my phone dropped out of my hand, and I slammed the laptop shut a bit too quickly.

Even I knew that what I had just done looked suspicious. Only God knew what was going through Henry's head when he decided to send me here.

"I was looking for my tape. I wanted to hear it," surprisingly, it sounded pretty convincing, but it only seemed that way to me.

Ricardo held out his hand, and I reached him his laptop while he watched me wordlessly.

"When you lie," he began. "You always make conspicuous hand movements."

I hid my hands behind my back. "I wouldn't say lying."

"No pressure. Tell me when you're ready," he said before he left, and I was surprised by how patient he was with me. Electronics may not be my thing, but I knew that if he opened the laptop, the first thing he would see is that picture.

I spent the next five hours talking to Antonio on the phone and watching TV until gradually more people joined me.

Leandro and I talked about how much he disliked me at first when he suddenly blurted out a word that took me by surprise.

"It's not that bad having a sister."

"Did you just call me your sister?" I asked after I processed what he just said, but his attention was no longer on me.

I turned to the others. "Did he just call me his sister?"

Pietro, however, shushed me because of the movie that was playing, and Alessandro pretended not to hear anything, although he was sitting right next to me.

Since the movie didn't seem as exciting to me as it did to them, I rested my head on Leandro's shoulder and observed the night sky that slowly began to fill with different colours.

Back then, I didn't know that would be the last time I would look up at the sky without having the feeling of my heart shattering into pieces, my breath hurting more than keeping me alive and the wish that I had stayed in that dark cellar.

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Thank you so much for reading!!

xx Leyla