Chapter 2

I'm not mute.

But I'd learned a long time ago when to keep my mouth shut.

During my first month in the old house, I searched for a way out almost every day. Back then, Vito hadn't sealed off all the underground passages yet. The cellar had been built to serve the vineyard. Besides the main door, there was a narrow service passage for wine deliveries that led to the kitchen at the back of the old house.

On the first anniversary of my parents' deaths, during the memorial Mass, I heard footsteps everywhere above me. My guard had been drinking, and the door wasn't fully latched. I waited a long time, until things outside finally quieted down, then squeezed through the gap.

At eight, I'd lost so much weight that I could easily squeeze through the wine hatch I'd never been able to fit through before. I stumbled and fell my way up to the surface, scraping both knees.

The covered walkway outside the chapel was nearby. People dressed in black passed in front of me. I hid behind a stone pillar, so frightened that I barely dared to breathe.

Then I saw a familiar figure. Luca.

He was only in his twenties, but he was already wearing the black coat our father used to save for formal occasions. He had grown much thinner.

I stared at him until I forgot how afraid I'd been.

"Lu—"

I managed only one sound before someone clamped a hand over my mouth from behind. He dragged me back to the old house. I kicked him, bit him, and clawed at his hand until it was covered in blood, but he still managed to drag me back underground.

Vito came down half an hour later.

He didn't hit me. Nor did he say, like some villain in a fairy tale, that no one would believe me.

Instead, he placed a handgun on the table. The magazine lay beside it.

I knew guns. Moretti children learned early how to tell whether a gun was loaded. But no one had ever taught me what to do when I was the one afraid of it.

Vito pulled out a chair and sat down.

"If you'd made it to Luca just now, what do you think would have happened?"

I bit my lip and didn't answer.

"Do you think he would have hugged you right away?"

He looked at me.

"To the guards, you'd be a filthy, unidentified child rushing toward the head of the family. They don't know who you are."

He tapped the gun on the table.

"They'd shoot first and ask your name later."

I was too young to know how much he was exaggerating. But I understood one thing. Moretti guards really would shoot. I had seen it. When my father was alive, someone climbed over the estate wall late one night. The next morning, I asked why there was blood on the lawn, and Gabriel turned my face away. Vito knew I remembered things like that.

"If you go out there now, you're not saving yourself."

He stood up.

"You're forcing people who don't know you to kill you."

After that, the underground passage was sealed for good, and the servants who cared for the old house were replaced. The only people allowed near me knew me as "Eva," an emotionally unstable orphan under the family's protection who kept claiming to be Elena Moretti. Vito never had to order them to abuse me. He only had to convince them that keeping me locked up was for my own protection. As Sophia grew older, she learned to use the same story to block every escape. Before she turned 12, she still came downstairs to ask strange questions.

"Do you remember what Mom's favorite flower was?"

"Was Luca afraid of heights when he was little?"

"Who really gave Samuel that blue music box?"

At first, I thought Vito had sent her to question me for information. Then one day, I asked, "Do you know who I am?" She didn't deny it. She only stared at me, her expression tightening.

"So what if I do?"

She was twelve that year. After that, she stopped asking those questions. She began checking the cracks in the walls, searching under my mattress, and ordering the guards to keep every pen out of my reach.

Even so, at 15, I managed to write a note.

"Samuel, I'm in the old wine cellar."

I slipped it into an old record sleeve that was going back to the main house. Samuel loved collecting records. When we were little, he used to secretly play music for me that our father wouldn't let me listen to.

I didn't know if he still liked records, but it was the only idea I had.

The note never made it out.

Sophia came down that same night.

She threw the record sleeve in front of me.

"Did you write this?"

I didn't make a sound. She pulled out the note and set it on fire before my eyes. The paper was thin, and it burned quickly.

"Stop writing these."

She watched the ashes fall.

"Do you really think he'd come if he saw it?"

"What are you afraid of?" I asked. Her face went cold. For the first time, I saw something beneath her spoiled arrogance: panic. It lasted only a second.

Then she lifted her chin.

"I'm afraid you'll go crazy, run out there, and cause trouble for the family."

After that day, the cellar lock was changed. The door had once been bolted from the outside only at night. Now it stayed locked around the clock. Sophia even told the guards that if I rushed the door again, they should call me an impostor sent by a rival family to test the estate's security.

"Our brothers hate betrayal more than anything," she said. "What do you think they'll do first: hear you out or pin you down?"

I never tried again. That didn't mean I'd given up. I found better hiding places for the few things that reminded me who I was. My mother had given me a tiny silver pendant. My initials and date of birth were engraved on the back. It wasn't a family heirloom that could prove I was a Moretti. It was only a small pendant my mother had bought for my fifth birthday after I complained that all my brothers' gifts were too big and begged for something that would fit in my pocket. I happened to be wearing it the day my parents died. Later, I hid it in a crack in the wall and touched it from time to time. It couldn't save me, but it reminded me that my memories of home were real, and so was my name. The fall from the horse when I was six had also left a scar on my left wrist.

When Gabriel stitched me up, he scolded me for squirming, and I sobbed that I was going to tell Mom. He told me to go right ahead, but then came back in the middle of the night to check whether the wound had opened up.

Vito didn't know little things like that. Neither did Sophia.

I'd always believed that if I ever made it back to my brothers, memories like these might mean something. But nine years had worn that hope almost completely away.

The day before my 17th birthday party, Luca returned to the estate early. The sound of his convoy coming through the gates in the distance made me sit straight up in bed. Outside, I heard the guards saying, "Mr. Luca is home."

Sophia soon realized I'd heard them.

When she came downstairs, she had a small tape recorder with her.

My stomach dropped the moment I saw it. She placed the recorder on the table.

"Read it."

I didn't move.

"My name is Eva," she read slowly. "I've had delusions since I was a child. I keep imagining I'm the Moretti family's daughter."

I looked at her.

"Keep going."

"I am not Elena."

My fingers curled into fists. Sophia leaned against the table.

"Don't look at me like that. This isn't going to the police."

She smiled.

"It's for our brothers."

My throat tightened.

"If they ever see you, the first thing they'll hear is your own voice admitting you're not Elena."

She pushed the recorder toward me.

"Haven't you always wanted to see them?"

"Then give me something I can use."

I didn't open my mouth. Her smile faded.

"Luca's in the main house right now."

I looked up.

"If you don't read it, I'll send you somewhere much farther away."

For a moment, I almost wanted to laugh.

Nine years ago, I'd heard Luca outside and desperately tried to call out to him. Nine years later, I knew he was out there again, yet I didn't even dare call his name.

Sophia lost patience and ordered the guards to take me to the storeroom at the very back of the cellar. The door closed behind me.

Through it, I heard her say, "We'll record it after the party."

Her footsteps faded.

I sat down against the wall. There were no clocks underground, so I had no idea how much time had passed. I could only tell how late it was by the sounds upstairs.

Eventually, the fireworks began. Later, Sophia came down carrying the place card.

After she left, I sat alone staring at that door. I used to think that if I could just scream, everything would change. But this time, I didn't make a sound. I only thought the words. If you could hear me, just once. Even just once.