“Oh, but I do.” She smiles wickedly.
Then she walks out ahead of Valentina, and everyone except the slave girls follow behind her. We file into the glass elevator and Valentina presses the button for floor three, and down we go, into the unknown and it terrifies me. It’s not a long way down a few floors, and the elevator isn’t particularly slow, but it feels like it’s taking forever—and I wish that it would. I catch myself looking at Emilio from behind, watching him struggle in his copper skin; the outline of his jaw rigid; his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. And I look at Francesca standing next to him, and she’s his opposite: calm and powerful, tall and dangerous, excited and vengeful, a woman who thrives on unjust punishment, who seems to have her poor brother’s nuts crushed figuratively in her hand so that if he ever opposes her, she’ll make sure he never forgets it. But their relationship is still a mystery to me, now more than ever—I don’t think I’ve ever been so confused.
Moving down one long stretch of white hallway, I see a small group of women out ahead—housekeepers, servants—standing outside a room, all huddled around it, waiting, for what I don’t know. A dozen faces all look up simultaneously when they see us—Francesca, particularly—coming toward them. They scatter, moving quickly away from the door and lining up single file along the wall on the other side of the hallway; I see one woman dressed in a white and baby-blue maid’s uniform, cross herself, mouthing a prayer.
My eyes dart from the women to the opened door still several feet out ahead when a scream pierces the air. Shouting. Angry shouting. Two, three different voices; one louder and more belligerent than the others. And amid all the shouts and screams, I hear the tiny wailing of a baby and my heart dies a little more every inch I walk further into that unknown.
“Please! Don’t take her!” the young woman’s voice roars, traveling down the hallway and into my ears uninvited—I feel like I’m being punished.
Francesca steps into the room and we follow. Like the rest of the mansion, the space is vast. And white. So much white. But this room, with a giant four-poster bed situated between two grand windows filtering in the night through the curtain-less glass, has been stained by blood; the crimson color has soiled the bed sheets; a small pile of bloody linen lies on the floor beside the bed.
The doctor, presumably, walks out of a side room; the sound of latex snapping as he removes the bloodied gloves from his hands. No words are spoken by or to the doctor; apparently he’s done here, and so he takes up his bag of tools and his brown leather long-coat hanging over the back of a chair, and he exits the room, moving past the wide-eyed women now all crossing their chests and mouthing prayers.
“Madam, I’m begging you,” the young woman in the bed who I’m sure is Sian, pleads. “Don’t take her from me. I’ll do anything…” Tears stream down her face; her long black hair is drenched in sweat; someone hit her in the left eye; it’s turning yellow and brown and black, swelling above her cheekbone.
I glance at Emilio—he’s shaking; he’s holding back the true measure of it, but it’s no mistake he’s shaking.
“GIVE ME MY BABY!” Sian tries to fly out of the bed when a nurse hands the crying newborn to Francesca, but she’s held back by the brute force of three other nurses. “DON’T TOUCH HER!” She thrashes against her captors; her screams I don’t doubt fill the entire third floor of the mansion; and Emilio isn’t the only one in the room shaking—I have to clench my fists tight to steady my hands.
Sian tries once more to come out of the bed fighting for her child, but Valentina moves toward her like a snake striking and slaps her so hard across the face that she’s momentarily shocked into submission; she falls against the headboard, the back of her head banging against the thick, detailed wood.
For a fleeting moment, so quick I’m surprised I saw it at all, I notice Emilio’s and Sian’s eyes lock on one another from across the short space, but they avert them quickly, I’m guessing so Francesca doesn’t make note of it.