Candace and Dominic weren’t around when we got back in so we just brought up the food the maids made and enjoyed the company of each other.
I had Tristan all to myself all day and all night.
I fell asleep cocooned in his arms, safe. But then I was stolen away by my dreams. Taken away captive to the memories that enslave me to the past.
That is where I’m truly helpless against my will. Kidnapped by my memories of the nightmares that haunt me.
Fog fills the room thick and stifling.
I’m here again.
I’m on the stairs.
I’ve been here so often I’ve become part of the fog, part of the memory that won’t leave me.
My mother screams and I run to find her on the floor. My father, that wicked devil stabs her over and over again.
Blood is everywhere. Mama’s head rolls to the side and she looks at me with cold dead eyes. Seeing me but not seeing me.
“No!” I scream as my father continues to stab her.
He doesn’t stop, but I see that man behind him.
His face comes into view clearer than before.
His crooked nose seems more pronounced and his brown eyes hold a dark sheen to them as he stares back at me .
I’m paralyzed by his stare. I wait to be taken away like last time but the arms that bound me don’t come tonight.
I realize then that whoever that person was knew what was going on. They knew my mother was being killed too and did nothing.
I wait for something to happen, anything. I’m just stuck here standing around waiting. Staring at the scene before me as everyone stays where they are, frozen in time.
the fog suddenly thickens and then their gone. Gone but replaced by something else. another memory.
I see myself this time sneaking down the passageway of somewhere dark. I’m young. Maybe twelve… yes… I remember this. I am twelve. I’m at Nikoli’s house. His was the first home I stayed in when I moved to the States.
It’s dark and I remember hearing voices.
I creep in the passageway and stop in the shadows where I can see three men. My father, Nikoli and that man from the night my mother was murdered.
“You have proven your worth,” my father says to the Italian man. “You have been a true brother in arms for enough years and now the time has come for us to accept you as a member of the fold. We will form the Kruv’ omertà. The blood code between Russia and Italia.”
They raise drinks and clink glasses then set them on the table. Then one by one they take a knife and pierce the tops of their fingers. Blood drips on to a piece of paper and one by one and they all say ‘kruv’ omertà.
“Cu è surdu, orbu e taci, campa cent'anni 'mpaci,” the Italian man says. “He who is deaf, blind and silent will live a hundred years in peace. I become a brother of the Circle of Shadows this day forward, pleading my allegiance to the order. A pact between Russia and Italia."
I watch then suddenly those arms I waited for to take me comes for me. And I can’t breathe.
Everything fades to the darkness.
“Isabella…” someone is calling me but they sound far away. “Isabella, wake up Bellezza. It’s just a nightmare, come back to me.”
It’s Tristan.
His voice pierces through the darkness like a light and I follow it. I open my eyes and see him.
I start coughing and run my hand through my hair which is matted with sweat. I’m drenched in it.
He sits me up in the bed and switches on the light, then grabs a cup of water.
I down it and need more. He gets me more and it’s only with that second glass that I feel better, but not calm.
“Isabella, it was a nightmare baby,” Tristan says taking both my hands into his.
“I keep having the same nightmare and it’s not of Eric anymore. It’s just of her… my mother.”
“Maybe it’s because you’re finally able to do something to get justice,” he suggest.
“I don’t know. Tristan… there was someone else in the room with my father. A man. He watched as my father stabbed her over and over again. He was there watching.” I recall the whole blood ritual too. I’ve heard of things like that and that was the one and only one I saw. That time it was Sacha that grabbed me and told me to never let my father know I