Chapter 65 Betrayal
\[Lilia\]
My ears were initially jarred awake by the sound of water dripping, and it was this ricocheting noise that brought me fully into the present moment. The subsequent pounding in my head felt like someone was hitting a mallet, splitting my skull into half, and my nostrils stung when I took deep breaths. I am also feeling a bit lightheaded and it seems as though I am on an unsteady platform.
Where am I?
Hard as it may seem, I was forced to peel my eyes open. My vision blurred at first and it seems that the world is spinning and my sight couldn’t focus on something. I tried to raise my hand to rub my head. However, it was bound to something, and it made me realize what had occurred before this. We were enjoying ourselves at the grand canal. Aya and I... oh gosh!
“Aya?”
My voice croaked as I forced my voice to speak, worried if she were near beside me or if we had been separated. I blinked my eyes several times, shaking my head before my sight finally cleared out from distortion and put focus on the place we were in. I also attempted to pull my hands free from the restraints they were in, with the hope that they would eventually get loose. But my efforts were fruitless, and it looks as though I was only succeeding in making the tightness worse.
“Aya, are you here?” I called her out again, still hoping that this time she would heed my voice and take notice, also in hopes that she was already awake.
Who could have taken us? I am sure that if it is Kael, this wouldn’t be the setting. He wouldn’t have tied me in a chair, would he?
Well, that’s most likely, knowing that we have escaped his watchful men. Is it him that took us? Had he been gone to a steel heart not to pity us for one bit?
I look around the room and notice a bare bulb light with a pull string dangling above my head. My gaze then wanders over the cement floor, which has mildew spider webbed littered across it, crawling into the rusty floor drain as though it hadn't been swept for decades, and the old dust is piled up on the new layers.
Then they came to the dirty small windows that had dead flies on the window sill, spider webs twirling in the corners, and fractured pipes flowing across the open ceiling that was the source of the water droplets. Old boxes and crates filled with who knows what. There may be decomposing bodies inside of it, or even worse, there may merely be the remnants of bones that have been bleached away by voracious maggots devouring the flesh of a dead man.
Heaven alone knows.
The mere idea of it gives me the creeps all the way down to my spine, which makes me quake and causes even the slightest part of my hair to stand on end. Even though I would be able to tell if there was a decomposing body in there since the putrid odor would have given away the location, the room, to my relief, simply smells like dust and decaying wood, which is somewhat of a positive indication, isn’t it?
Oh, I hope.
“Lilia?”
I stilled upon finally hearing Aya’s scratchy voice. “Oh, thank goodness, Aya. You’re awake!” I exclaimed out in relief, knowing that she was here with me and that we aren’t been separated. However, I couldn’t see her. “Where are you?” I turned my head over my shoulders but I couldn’t move that much with all the binds wrapped around me, and I can only hear her voice.
“Behind you,” she said, responding to my worried query.
However, I am still not satisfied and did not ease the dread ailing me without seeing her. “Are you alright? I couldn’t see you. Are you hurt?” I tried one more time to look for her, turning my head in the vain hope that I could get a glimpse of her, but it was to no use.
“No, I am fine. The only thing that's wrong is that my head is starting to feel like it's going to explode.”
I could only imagine her shaking her head just like I did to clear out the dizziness off my head.
“Where are we?” She asks, just as I stopped trying to look at her. My neck starts to hurt from straining too much and it’s as though dizziness starting to kick in again.
“I don’t know, but it looks like we were in a basement,” I look around the surroundings, confirming that my mind wasn’t conjuring such imagination that we are inside the basement and it is indeed a reality. I was kind of hoping that we are back in the car, returning to the villa and I, somehow had fallen asleep out of exhaustion from this all-day venture across Italy, and this is all just a nightmare.
But, it wasn’t. The pain nicking on my wrist from being tied too tightly was an agonizing reminder that this is real.
We have been kidnapped by some unknown people, and Flavio…oh goodness, that man was innocent. He was just doing his job to feed his family and we haven’t paid him for his service. He wasn’t at the dock when we came back, and his boat was missing as well. I hope that he, too, was alright and that he wasn’t been caught by these bad men, or else I would be dying out of guilt and carry it down to my grave, that is if I’m to die, which I hope not.
“Did master Kael catch us?” Aya queried aloud. I have thought of it just a while ago and it seems that if Kael was indeed behind all this, he must have let himself show at soon as we woke up and started castigating us for our reckless action of running away. I have threatened him over the phone call and he must have thought that I would really escape from him. Though the very idea of it was tempting, I am well aware that it would be pointless because even if I were to go to hell, he would still find a way to track me down and bring me back.
In the circumstances of where we are right now, I have my doubts about whether or not this was his doing, but I cannot say for certain. “I don’t know yet,” so, instead I told Aya that.
Silence had befallen between us as we waited, until we heard an ascending sound of footfalls coming our way. I feel a growing sense of fear rising up inside of me, and I direct my focus to the door that is located to the right of me.
“There’s someone coming,” I whispered, hoping that Aya heard it. She didn’t reply but I could feel she was just as nervous as I am while we stared at the door, startled when the doorknob rattled and then clicked open.
“Ah, they’re finally awake,” says the familiar voice soon as the door swings, and my eyes burgeoningly open wide, fearing that my eyeballs would fall out from their socket soon as the man steps into our line of light.
How…
“Flavio?”
Just… How…