I’ll be able to calm down when I know what I’m dealing with. “I’ll be fine, especially once I know you’re safely on your way to the compound.”
Candace and Sophia are getting to their feet, along with Ginevra. They all implicitly trust Salvatore and would follow him anywhere. Nicole, however, seems hesitant.
I go over and sit down next to her. “I promise I’ll tell you everything as soon as I can. Will you go with Salvatore and Vinicius? I know you might not trust them, but I hope you trust me.”
She glances at the men and then back at me. “I trust you. And you know what? After everything that’s happened, considering the people who have let me down and the people who haven’t, I trust them, too.”
19
Lorenzo
Beside me in the front seat, Chiara has both her arms around her belly and she’s hugging it tightly as she gives directions. We drive for forty minutes north of Coldlake to a wooded, hilly area that I don’t know well. It’s where the wealthy residents of the city build holiday homes, so it’s not somewhere I ever went as a kid.
Finally, we head down a deserted road, turning into a driveway and stopping in front of a house.
It’s a lake house. An immaculate, sprawling weatherboard lake house with a broad veranda all the way around. A triple garage off to one side. An immaculate garden with the lake just glimpsed through the trees.
We get out of the car. I heard about places like this as a boy, but we never took a holiday, let alone considered having a whole other home to use only a few weeks of the year. This is the world that Chiara and Salvatore grew up in. That Cassius would have grown up in if he’d been raised in Coldlake instead of Italy. Pristine. Perfect. Children playing. Wives in dresses and husbands discussing investments and stocks.
Even deserted and with dusk creeping in, it looks idyllic, only Chiara is staring at the house like it wants to eat her.
“It doesn’t look like anyone’s home,” I tell her.
“I would have been surprised if they were. How do the two of you feel about some breaking and entering?”
Fog is rolling in off the water and it’s getting dark. I dig the lockpicks out of my pocket and grab a flashlight from the trunk of my car. “Fine by me.”
A sticker in the front window of the house declares that there’s an alarm system.
“Give me a minute,” I tell the other two, and wade into the bushes until I find the electricity meter. I lever off the locking tab with the lockpicks and get to work switching it off. A few minutes later, I return to Chiara and Cassius.
“I turned the mains power off so hopefully the alarm won’t go off,” I tell them, heading for the back door. “There’s a chance the backup battery in the alarm is flat seeing as this house is only used for part of the year.”
“And if it’s not?” Cassius asks.
Then the alarm is definitely going to go off. The alarm panel will be hidden somewhere in the house where I can’t reach it. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.
I hunker down in front of the back door and start working with the lockpicks.
“You’ve led an interesting life,” Chiara observes.
“Who, me? Vinicius taught me all these tricks, the sneaky criminal that he is.”
He’s better at picking locks than me, and fifteen minutes later I’m sweating and starting to get frustrated. “Fucking stupid fucking lock,” I growl under my breath.
“Take a breather and try again,” Cassius suggests. He’s leaning against the verandah railing holding the flashlight, directing the beam at the lock so I can see what I’m doing. “Or we could just break the door down.”
I take a deep breath and stare at the lock. Breaking shit has always seemed like a perfectly acceptable way of getting what I want, but I can picture Vinicius’ smug expression if he hears that the back door of some suburban asshole’s lake house defeated me.
I shove the picks back in the lock and try again, and two minutes later, the lock tumbles open. Thank fuck for that.
I get to my feet, my hand on the doorknob, and turn to Chiara. “If the alarm goes off, we shouldn’t stay for longer than five minutes.”
“That’s fine. What we need to do won’t take longer than two.”
“Okay, here goes.” I push the back door open—
And silence. The battery’s dead. I toss the lockpicks up and down in my hand as I swagger through the door into a sparkling, expensive kitchen. People shouldn’t make this so easy. “Okay, princess, where now?”
“The basement.”
Suddenly, all the hairs stand up on the back of my neck.
Chiara shoots me a tense, apologetic look as she heads past me, down the hall and over to a door. She opens it and there’s only darkness beyond.
My stomach’s suddenly churning and I’m rooted to the spot, which is ridiculous as Chiara never saw the basement where our sisters were killed. She doesn’t know more about that basement than what I told her. Does she?
“Did you watch those videos?” I demand. “Tell me the truth. Why this basement?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t even know where you keep those videos. I suddenly had a feeling and a few things connected in my mind. I thought we should find out for sure. Please don’t be angry with me if I’m wrong.”
“Of course I won’t be angry.” As much as I want to find out who killed our sisters, I feel an almost overwhelming desire to bolt out the back door and never look back. Whatever gut feeling Chiara has, I hope in a few minutes we’ll be laughing it off.
I want to go home.
I want to be anywhere but here.
With a grim expression, Cassius moves past me and shines the light through the doorway as he begins to descend. Chiara tries to follow him but I grab her arm.
“Stay behind me,” I mutter and pass through the door. The steps are steep and it’s a long way down. “Hold onto the rail and be careful,” I tell her over my shoulder.
Ahead of me, Cassius’s back is blocking my view. At the bottom of the steps, he moves aside and passes the flashlight beam over the walls—and I feel like someone’s punched me in the guts. I step forward, and my ears are filled with terrified screaming. Women beg for their lives and make pitiful, inhuman noises.
Memories hit me like a tidal wave. I stagger back, fall on my ass and sit there, one arm raised in front of my face and panting for breath. Slowly, I lower my arm and take another look. The patterns made by the different shades of brick in the walls. The narrow vent up by the ceiling. The slightly askew light fitting. Every detail is the same. Useless fucking information that I branded into my mind along with our sisters’ torture, hoping in vain that I might recognize something. Discover something. Do anything with the nightmares I witnessed, again and again.