The Devil Claim
1074 Words
Elena’s mind was spiralling.
Her father’s silence. Her brother’s voice.
Payment in flesh.
She had pleaded with them to help, she had called their names, and their reply had been chains and betrayal.
Her stomach twisted. She was terrified, yet what was more stinging and bitter, was to shape itself under.
A vow.
Were her own blood sold her, there was no kin under her. No one to protect her. No one to save her.
But she still had herself.
And had Dante Marino believed she would break—had he believed that she would be another of his possessions in his empire—then he was mistaken.
She would endure, learn him, discover cracks in the walls which he had created around himself. And with time, she would send the Devil to wipe out the men who had betrayed her.
The sound of Dante’s footsteps was long lingered after he had left.
Elena was rooted to the spot with the effects of his words depressing her. You belong to me now. You will see tomorrow what that means.
Her pulse pounded in her ears.
What tomorrow was, she did not know. But she knew one thing.
He had underestimated the final Rossi, had Dante Marino thought her to be yielding.
Locked in a gilded bedroom, Elena gazes upon the closed door and moans her first vow at the darkness: I will survive you, Dante Marino. And when the time is right I will burn them all with your help.
The house even in silence was breathing one thing: Dante here was god.
Very early, another person came to open her door. Smaller and softer, with a wary smile.
“Elena right?” The young lady said. She was hardly older than Elena, wide eyes, brown face framed with dark hair secured in a heavy braid on the side. She bowed slightly. “My name is Alessia. I am told to be your maid.”
Elena studied her. The voice of Alessia was not mocking, cold. Just nerves.
“They gave me you, as a present,” said Elena bitterly.
Alessia smiled, and did not retreat. “I don’t choose who I serve. But… I will try to get you at home.”
Comfortable.
The strike against Elena seemed to be a poisonous blow.
She walked, jerking at the iron-locks, to the windows. “Of course.” She put her palms to the cold glass and looked down, guards pacing like wolves, gates stretching up into the distance. No escape.
It was a cage no matter how many jewels that hung on its bars.
“There are clothes in the wardrobe, you see,” Alessia said. “Dante Marino has them ready to you. Dresses and shoes, anything you want.”
Elena spun, fury flashing in her chest. “Does he think I will thank him for this?”
Alessia started back, and went down her eyes. “I don’t know what he thinks. No one ever does.”
The answer was an explanation in itself to Elena.
Hours passed. She would not accept a tray of dinner brought by Alessia. She rejected the silk dresses neatly folded at the end of the bed. Rather, Elena sat on the floor near the locked window, and pulled her knees in, her hair curling around her like a blanket over her face.
Whispers from earlier echoed in her ears.
You belong to me now.
How was it possible that there had come before her more women? Bought, and brought in.
By the time Alessia went back to pick up the tray which had not been touched at all, Elena posed the question which had been tearing at her throat the entire morning.
“What happens to them?”
Alessia stood still and her hands clenched around the edge of the tray. “Them?”
“The others.” Voice of Elena sharp, stare sharper. “The women. The ones who didn’t last long.”
The lips of Alessia clenched. Elena wondered whether she would answer, momentarily. But then, in a whisper barely audible:
“They disappear.”
Her spine was tingling. She wanted going farther, but her own shaking hands told her not to.
There was a great silence between them. At last Alessia lowered her eyes. “You should rest, signorina. Tomorrow… it begins.”
The lines were a restatement of those of Dante the previous night.
Tomorrow, we begin.
Elena waited till Alessia left, then moved. She got up and wandered to the huge wardrobe. Dresses were there, in rows, inside, silks, satins, lace of blood-red and black. She touched with her fingers. Each garment wasn’t a gift. It was a costume, like a chain that passes as beauty.
She banged the wardrobe closed.
Night swallowed the estate later on.
Elena was alone yet once more at the closed window. The gardens below shone in the moonlight dimly and the shadows of the guards were shifting like anxious creatures. Her forehead was against the glass, and her fists.
All her body nerves shouted to flee. Still the colder, side of her mind was telling her to wait.
She couldn’t run, not yet. She would be caught should she escape tonight. Beaten. Maybe killed. No. She felt a need to be smarter and stronger. She needed time.
The glass looked back at her reflection— hard burning eyes full of hatred and resolve.
“Father.” Whisper, whisper, she said, and her voice was framed in the darkness. “You sold me. You betrayed me. But I’m not gone. I’m still here.”
Her chest rose and fell.
“I’ll survive this house. I’ll survive him. And in the end when I am free I shall destroy all that you love.”
The vow was streaming down her lips like a pledge.
When Elena turns her back, there is some noise, her bedroom door being unlocked on the outside. Footsteps approach. And she knows with a sinking heart that night is not yet over.
The invitation was no request. It had been a silk-dressed command.
Alessia came into the room of Elena—carrying a black velvet dress, which was hanging loosely over her arms. Two guards behind her. “Signore Marino wants you to dine with him to-night, he wants you to join him for dinner,” she said, but she, unusually soft-voiced, had already guessed that there was seriousness in this particular evening.
- Writer
