One

For the last few months, there had been, only about, four days, when I had a good night's sleep. I had demons. And the night reminded me exactly why. My demons appeared vividly in my dreams. Each time I tried to forget, they reappeared. I couldn't escape them, no matter how hard I tried. This was something I was sure I would never escape, something that would always remain a part of me. Sometimes it felt like my past was embedded into my soul, I could feel its remnants flow through my body every passing day.

My dreams - nightmares - were characterised by similarity. Most days, it was like an episode on repeat. Some days though, it was more real, more horrifying, and I felt everything down to my bones. It was like reliving that night over and over again. Those were the days I woke up screaming, and my roommate, Aiden, had to cradle me back to sleep. The other days, I just cried silently. Some times I would wake up in a cold sweat with my own hand around my throat. I’d walk around the apartment aimlessly till morning.

No one knew. No one but Aiden and I. My family, and almost all of the small town I originally lived in, before shifting to the city to attend University, knew what happened. But no one knew that it still had me ripped down to shreds. People assume so often that punishing the culprit just brings you peace, but it doesn’t. Because the trauma lives with you, it grows and festers like mould and chokes the life out of you. Sometimes the trauma is you. You are nothing but that. A living, breathing reminder of someone else’s cruelty.

I stopped making a lot of friends after what had happened. It got really hard to meet new people, to connect with anyone at all. I could barely speak to the friends I’d had in school, or even my family. There was Aiden, who I’d been friends with since we were both thirteen. We lived together now, sharing a small apartment near campus. His friends Landon and Felicia would almost always be around at our place, so I guess I was close with them, too.

I worked at a small diner – Haley’s. It was pretty close to Aiden and I’s place, so I could walk to and from easily. Cynthia, my therapist thought it was beneficial for me to get a job and increase my interaction with people. Besides, I needed the money. My parents were paying tuition and helped with the lease for the apartment. I couldn’t ask for any more from them.

I balanced a plate of pancakes in one hand, and one with meatloaf on the other, taking care of all the eight tables at my workplace, as my co-worker, Millie, was unwell and resting.

Our main customers included high schoolers, a bunch of old men who took the largest booth and played Monopoly every single day, and a few University students, sometimes. There was a man who stood out, today. He had been here for over two hours, talking constantly on his phone. I had served him a lot of coffee. He was dressed in a corporate suit, with black hair styled expertly with almost too much hair gel. I placed the pancakes he'd ordered in front of him.

"Si, Luca. Lui e morto." The man said gruffly.

(Yes, Luca. He is dead.)

The person on the other side of the line yelled at him very loudly, saying something in the foreign language I was assuming to be Italian or Spanish. He made a face. Holding the phone away from his ear, he sent a glare in my direction.

"What do you want?" He snapped at me. I flinched. 

"Do you want anything else, sir? More coffee, perhaps?" I asked, pasting a small smile on my face.

“No.” He said, so I nodded and left. I took some more orders and ringed them up in the kitchen.

“That man looks shady.” The owner, Carl, who was working the booth, said to me, pointing in the general direction of the suited-up man.

I shrugged. “He’s just busy, I guess.”

“In any case, let me wait on him, now.” I agreed and finished the rest of my shift, then, bidding goodbye to everyone, set off home. The night was young, it was barely 8 pm, and I felt obligated to take the way that passed through the pretty woods. I seldom went by there, but the beautiful night was magical. It was just a small stretch of woods with a broad road between them. It wasn’t that isolated because cars went by there all the time. The sky was unusually starry, and for some reason I was feeling daring.

It was a mistake, to say the least. As I made my way through the pebbly path, my sneakers making weird noises, I looked up at the sky. It was almost a deep red, and the stars shone brightly. I love stars, they’re so beautiful, and when you read about them you get to know so much cool stuff. Like how the Sun is actually a blue-green star.

"Tell me where he is," came a voice from behind the bushes. It startled me for a second, and I stopped.

"I don't know, Capo."

I stilled, scrambling silently to hide behind a tree and drop in on their conversation. There was no logical reason for me to do this, but I did stop, and that was my second mistake.

"He's not dead. Don will have a field day dealing with you, rat!" The other man snarled.

Don? Hm, that’s a rare name. Maybe it was a nickname for Donald, or Donner, or… Donjamin?

"I'll kill you, Luca, before you can go to Don."

Luca. I felt like I’d heard that name before.

Oh fuck, I didn't want to witness a murder. A gunshot was fired.

I screamed. Very clearly, my third mistake.

I started to run, but within moments, a man, had a gun pointed to my head, and my arm in a death grip. "I didn't see you shoot him!" I yelled!

He gave me a bored look. "What's your name?"

Oh, so we were making introductions.

"Lily." I lied.

"Full name." He snapped.

Geez, this group of people didn't know a thing about politeness.

"Lily Carson."

He pressed me into a tree. My vision felt a little hazy. I felt a pinch on the inner side of my wrist, before darkness consumed me.

I woke up in the backseat of a car. I scrambled to get up, only to realise that my hands and legs were tied with rope.

Breathe, Izzy. Remember Cynthia’s words. Calm down. Nothing will happen. Be brave.

I cleared my throat. "Uhm...?"

"So, you're awake, giglio!" The man who had kidnapped me greeted from the driver's seat.

(Lily)

"Good morning." I said sourly. " Where's my kiss, honey?" My eyes widened at what I’d said. I had no idea where this courage was coming from.

He snorted. "I'm married. But Alessandro here," He nodded to a scary looking fellow who'd taken shotgun, "Is single."

"I don't fuck no little girls." Alessandro gritted.

"Well, I don't fuck old men, too." Hell, I fuck no one.

"Do you mind untying me?" I shifted in my restraints. "This rope is cutting through my skin."

Alessandro turned sharply. I felt my throat dry up. Man, was he scary. He produced a revolver from under my seat and pressed it into my throat. "Shut up, si, puttana?"

I nodded, falling silent, before the ping sound of Candy Crush reverberated through the car. "Hey, Alessandro?" I asked nervously. It wasn't my fault I was suddenly talkative, okay? I wanted to bite my tongue off, but I just couldn’t shut up for some reason. "What level are you on?"

The other man chuckled deeply at that. "Oh, I hope Don keeps her. She's fun."

"Who's Don?" I asked.

"Seven eighty-three." Alessandro said.

"Holy Shit!" I yelled. "Don is seven eighty-three? Is that even possible?"

"He's twenty-six, Lily." The driver was looking straight at the road, but I caught a roll of his eyes. "That's the level Alessandro's on. You'll meet Don soon. Don't worry."

I felt the sudden urge to sing Don't You Worry, Child, but refrained from it.

I sang songs in my head as they drove silently.

"Hey, man in the driver’s seat?"

"Hmm?" He answered.

"Who are you?”

"You know my name."

"I do?” I thought for a while. “Are you Luca? Where are you taking me?”

"To our leader."

"Are you a cult?"

"No."

Definitely a cult then. A cult full of well dressed, handsome, Italian men.

We stopped in front of a building, but I didn't have the time to really look at it, as Luca took my arm tightly and dragged me inside. It looked dingy and shady, like no one had been here in years. The interior was pretty nice, though. Luca led me through a dark passage with a few doors on both sides, till we took a right, climbed up a few steps, and I was pushed roughly to the side and stumbled inside a large room.

When I entered the room, I noticed the nice wooden interior, the darkness inside was terrifying, and strangely compelling. a mahogany desk took up a lot of space inside. There was one chair behind it, and two more in the front. It looked like an office. An office inside a dilapidated building. Huh.

"You should knock, Luca." A deep baritone sounded. I shivered, lifting my eyes off the floor. I resisted the urge to gasp. I usually find it very hard to discern what is ‘good looking’ or ‘beautiful’. Sometimes I don’t even notice people’s faces, but this man, probably Don, was extraordinarily gorgeous. I'm not usually one to fawn over someone’s visage, or his physique, for that matter, but this one had rendered me speechless. His eyes were what struck me first. Two pools of green, boring into my soul. His jaw was well sculpted, and he clearly worked out. His hair was on the long-ish side, but still trimmed and nicely combed.

"What you have brought here?" Don asked Luca.

I grunted. "My name is Lily."

"Did I talk to you?" His gaze turned sharply towards me. I stepped back. Don was terrifying.

Luca gave me a look. "Stay still, Lily." He ordered. I didn't like it at all. But well, it was better than getting shot. There was a gun lying openly on Don’s desk.

Luca recited something in Italian to Don, who nodded, and replied back in the foreign language, which caused Luca to make me sit on one of the chairs facing Don's and leave.

For around a quarter of an hour, Don just eyed me up and down, contemplating each of my breath as I fidgeted in my seat, my eyes downcast. I crossed and uncrossed my legs, played with my hair, or fingers. It was very uncomfortable, and should have been scary, but it was like my body had shut down all its mechanisms of anticipating danger.

"What's your name?" He asked finally.

"Lily." I said, "I told you already."

His eyes narrowed and he stood up, coming from behind the desk to me. Goodness, was he tall. He walked back and sat down on the chair beside mine, then spun mine around, and pulled me close to him. He leaned in till his breath fanned my face. "Rule number one. Don't lie to me."

I gulped. He'd sounded like he was so sure we'd meet again, like he'd be in my life for a long time. Cocky bastard. I wanted to slap him. I clenched my fists.

"The answer is si, signore'." He spoke.

(Yes, sir.)

"Si, signore." I repeated.

"What is your name?" He asked again. I hated how he was treating me like a child. I was twenty. Did I look like a kid to him? Or maybe he was older than he looked. He looked about twenty-six. That’s what Luca had said, too.

"Isabelle." I whispered. "Isabelle Forte."

He nodded. "Good girl. See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?" His accent was so tantalizingly beautiful. I didn’t answer, only nodded, staring at my lap.

"Now, Bella, what did you see?"

Had he just given me a nickname?

"It’s Isabelle, fucktard."

His eyes blazed with anger, and his hand reached out to fist in my hair painfully. This was it; this is how I die. I’d be on Unsolved Mysteries! Dragging my head back to expose my neck to him, he grabbed his gun from his desk, and pressed it into the hollow of my throat. "I was trying to be nice. It seems to me that you don't like that language."

I gulped, and the metal pressed harder into my skin. “I love that language. Let’s start over.”

He smirked. "Sit still." He ordered, and left my hair with a jerk. He stood up, and I thought for a moment he'd let me go, but he turned, and bent down to retrieve something from a drawer. I shifted in my seat. "Sit still, Isabelle. Rule two - obedience." He snapped. Geez, did he have eyes in the back of his head?

"Sorry." I muttered.

He returned and sat down beside me again. "For each wrong answer of yours, I will chop off one of your dainty, little fingers. Capisce?"

I looked at the instrument in his hand. I had no idea how it would work but it did look like it could chop my finger off.

He didn't wait for an answer. "What did you see?"

"I saw Luca shoot a man. Ah, I heard Luca shoot a man." I said in a rush of words.

His jaw clenched. "Rule number three - respect.”

“I didn’t disrespect you.” I mumbled under my breath.

"I’m choosing to ignore that remark. Anything else?" He asked. I shook my head.

"Just telling you, rule number four is never to say no to me." He said casually, and flung that finger chopping instrument away. I breathed a sigh of relief.

"Do you know what will happen if this news gets out, Bella?" He taunted.

"You will kill me?"

"Very good. You are a fast learner."

"Thanks?" I croaked. He laughed.

"Go home, Bella." He said, "I'll see you soon."

"Wha-?"

He cut me off. "Rule five - Don't question me, Bella."

I rolled my eyes.