Chapter 147: Isotta, Calypso

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[Lorenzo Castelli]

Isotta was still in the blue dress she had picked out that morning, though the fabric was torn near her shoulder, stained with blood he prayed wasn’t hers.

Her dark hair fell loose around her face, and a bruise was already forming on one arm where the guard gripped her too tightly.

When she spotted Lorenzo covered his own blood, she stopped resisting. "Oh, Enzo!"

Her voice shook as she took in the blood pouring from the deep cuts on his chest and stomach, and the look in her eyes was so full of agony that he wished she had never been brought in.

"My boy! What have you bastards done to my son!" She screamed, her voice cracked and raw. "You monsters! DEMONS!"

"Mother, I’m fine," he lied, though he could hardly stay upright and could barely account for how much blood he had lost. "Don’t... don’t worry about me."

She shook her head, tears streaming down her cheeks, and tried to reach him, but the guard pulled her back.

"Please," Lorenzo pleaded, glancing at the older man. "I’ll cooperate. I’ll tell you everything I know about my dad’s business. Just let them go."

"You’ve been saying you know nothing," the man replied. "Maybe your mother can explain why we should believe you this time."

"I’m telling the truth!"

His voice cracked, and he couldn’t hide the fear anymore.

"I don’t know where the warehouses are or the security schedules, but I will find out. I’ll give you whatever you want if you just let her go. Please, she’s pregnant, can’t you see? My sister hasn’t even been born yet!"

His mother closed her eyes for a moment, gathering the strength to stand, then looked at him again with the same tenderness she had shown when he was a small boy scared of what others thought about him.

"Don’t look, Enzo..."

He shook his head, tears welling in his eyes.

"No, Mother, please!"

"You haven’t done anything wrong," she said softly, her voice shaking but certain. "None of this is your fault."

Lorenzo couldn’t fathom why she was comforting him when she was the one in danger, why she was still trying to shield his feelings when he failed to protect her from the men around them.

"I can get you out of here," he insisted, straining against the restraints. "I promise, I can find a way. Just give me a little more time!"

His mother looked at him with such unbearable sadness that he felt something inside him start to crumble.

"I love you," she whispered. "I love you, Enzo. Do you hear me? I love you, Dante and Matteo."

"I love you too."

He wanted to say it desperately, as if those words could somehow keep her safe.

But his it felt way too difficult saying it, never in his life...

...had he ever said he loved anyone or anything.

And when the older man stepped toward her, Lorenzo began shouting again, offering names, locations, and promises he couldn’t possibly keep.

He would have given them everything if he had anything to offer, but his mind was empty, and for the first time in his life, he couldn’t find a single answer that might save someone he loved.

The men forced him to look, holding him against the wall as he struggled to turn his head away from her.

Then everything happened too fast for him to process.

He heard his mother gasp as the older man drove a knife into her neck, the blade sinking deep with a wet, sickening sound.

Blood immediately bloomed across the front of her blue dress in a rapidly expanding dark stain. She made a small, broken sound as the man twisted the knife once before yanking it free.

More blood poured from the wound, thick and heavy, soaking the fabric and dripping onto the floor. Her legs gave out and she crumpled, one hand weakly reaching toward her belly as if trying to protect the child she would never meet.

The sound that escaped Lorenzo seemed to rip through his entire being.

He threw himself against the restraints with such force that the metal ring rattled violently against the wall and blood from his own wounds sprayed across the concrete.

"Mamma!"

She lay still, her dark hair splayed across the floor, the familiar scent of her perfume mingling with the metallic smell of blood.

Lorenzo stared at her, unable to reconcile the stillness of her body with the memory of her laughing beside the carousel just hours before, waiting for her to move like she always did when he called her name.

She didn’t move.

Calypso was gone too, the little sister he had never met, whose stuffed rabbit was supposed to be waiting for her at home when she was born.

The man restraining Lorenzo struck him hard across the face when he began screaming again, and the room tilted violently as pain blossomed behind his eyes.

"Shut the hell up," the man hissed. "Your fucking little brother is next if you make another sound!"

Matteo.

The threat silenced Lorenzo more effectively than the blow, as he couldn’t bear to think about his younger brother suffering the same fate.

He forced himself to stop fighting, though his whole body shook with the effort, and stared at the floor while tears fell freely from his eyes.

He had offered himself.

He had endured their cruelty.

He had begged until his voice gave out.

And his mother was still dead.

He had no idea how long it took for the building to erupt in gunfire and chaos, but the sudden commotion made the kidnappers rush toward the corridor.

A door crashed open somewhere close, followed by the unmistakable sounds of armed men moving through the place.

"Find my wife and sons!" Frederick Castelli shouted amid the chaos. "I want every room searched!"

Lorenzo tried to call out, but his throat was raw, and only a faint squeak escaped him.

Moments later, several of his father’s men burst into the room, weapons raised until they recognized him.

One rushed to unshackle him while the other shouted for medical help, and Lorenzo barely noticed when the cuffs fell away because he was already searching the room for his mother.

The kidnappers were being hunted through the building, and the leader had apparently slipped away during the confusion, but none of that mattered to Lorenzo as he was guided toward the doorway.

"Mamma," he whispered. "Please, we have to take....take Mother home."

The men exchanged glances they tried to hide, and Lorenzo understood before they spoke.

They carried him into the next room, where Matteo was sitting on the floor, cradling his injured arm against his chest, crying with a guard kneeling beside him.

His younger brother looked terrified and worn out, but he was alive, and when he spotted Lorenzo, he tried to stand despite his injuries.

"Big bro Enzo!"

Lorenzo reached for him, but his strength faltered before he could cover the distance, and the guards rushed to catch him before he could fall.

"He’s alive," someone assured Matteo. "Your brother is alive."

Lorenzo wanted to tell him he was sorry, that he should have protected him, that things would be different now, but the words got stuck in his throat as the men took him back toward the room where his mother lay.

Frederick was already beside Isotta, holding her close with one hand in her hair and the other gripping her dress desperately.

The man who could command an entire organization without hesitation was crying openly, pleading for his wife to wake up, calling her name as if love alone could bring her back.

"Isotta, please..." he whispered, his voice breaking. "My love, look at me. Please, don’t...don’t leave me."

She didn’t reply.

Lorenzo had never seen his father so broken, and the sight terrified him more than any weapon ever could, because if Frederick Castelli couldn’t protect the woman he loved, then maybe the world wasn’t as orderly as Lorenzo had thought all his life.

Maybe intelligence wasn’t enough.

Maybe courage wasn’t enough.

Maybe love wasn’t enough either.

His father finally looked up, and when their eyes met, the mixture of rage and grief on Frederick’s face shifted to horror at seeing his injured son.

"Lorenzo."

He reached out, but Lorenzo couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore, and the men carrying him hurried to take him outside, where an ambulance waited under the cold night sky.

As they lifted him onto the stretcher, he caught one last glimpse of his father holding his mother tightly as of trying to keep her soul in her body, and he thought of the door that had closed between them earlier that night when he had still believed being separated from his family was just a temporary hassle.

His mother’s voice echoed in his mind, gentle and certain, even as darkness began to swallow him.

"You have done nothing wrong."

Lies...

It was all his fault.

All because he wanted to play hero.

And prove he wasn’t the psychopath everyone else thought he was.

He wanted to believe her, but all he could feel was the crushing weight of everything he hadn’t been able to stop, and at fourteen years old, Lorenzo Castelli hadn’t yet learned how to live with the knowledge that sometimes a person could do everything in their power to save someone and still lose them forever.