Chapter 18 The Lullaby
The chain was six feet long.
It gave me enough range to reach the bathroom door and the bed, but not the window, not the balcony, and certainly not the closet.
I spent the next twenty hours learning the exact radius of my humiliation.
I slept in fitful bursts, waking up every time the metal links clinked against the floorboards. The room had been stripped bare. No books to read. No lamp to light the corners. Just the bed, the rug, and the silence.
They brought food, a sandwich on a paper plate with no cutlery, and slid it onto the floor near the door. I ate it like a dog, sitting on the rug, hating Dante with every swallow.
I let the hatred sustain me. I visualized his face. I visualized the ring on his finger. I visualized driving a knife into the hollow of his throat. It was a comforting meditation.
By nightfall, the air in the room was stale. My ankle was chafed and raw beneath the steel cuff. I sat on the bed with my knees pulled to my chest, watching the moonlight crawl across the floor, waiting for the inevitable exhaustion to drag me under.
Then, the screaming started.
It began as a low whimper vibrating through the walls and escalated quickly into a high, piercing shriek that shattered the stillness of the family wing.
“Mama! Mama! Help me!”
Jasmine.
The sound tore through me. It was not just a child crying. It was the sound of pure, unadulterated terror.
It triggered a phantom echo in my own chest, the memory of hiding behind curtains, hearing boots on marble, and wanting my mother to stand up from the floor.
I heard heavy footsteps running down the hall. Then Dante’s voice came muffled through the heavy door.
"Jas! Jasmine, wake up! It’s Papa!"
The screaming did not stop. It got worse.
"No! Get away! I want Mama!"
I stood up, the chain rattling. I walked as far as the tether would allow, straining toward the door.
"Shh, piccola, please. You're safe. It’s just a dream."
Dante sounded frantic. He sounded helpless.
The screaming went on for five minutes, then ten. It was a jagged, relentless noise that scraped against my nerves.
I could hear the exhaustion in Dante’s voice turning to desperation. He could not help her. He was a man of violence trying to fight a ghost, and he was losing.
I looked at the chain on my ankle. I looked at the door.
I had a choice. I could stay here and let him suffer. I could let him feel the powerlessness he had forced on me. It would be justice.
But then Jasmine screamed again, a sound so full of despair it made my stomach turn.
I was not doing this for him. I was doing it for the girl. And I was doing it for the leverage.
I hammered my fist against the door.
"Dante!" I screamed. "Dante!"
The screaming down the hall paused for a microsecond, then resumed.
Footsteps approached my door. Heavy. Angry.
"Quiet!" The guard outside shouted.
"Get the Don!" I yelled back. "Tell him I can stop it!"
"He's busy."
"He's failing!" I kicked the door, the chain pulling tight against my ankle. "Tell him I can help her! Unless he wants her to scream all night!"
A pause followed. Then, the sound of a radio clicking.
A moment later, the electronic lock beeped.
The door flew open.
Dante stood there. He looked wrecked. His hair was standing up in wild tufts, his eyes were wide and bloodshot, and he was wearing only grey sweatpants.
He looked nothing like the tyrant who had chained me up yesterday. He looked like a father watching his world burn.
"What?" he snapped, breathless.
I pointed to my ankle.
"Unlock me."
"You think I’m going to—"
"She’s terrified, Dante," I cut him off, my voice hard. "She’s caught in a night terror. She doesn't know who you are right now. To her, you're just a shadow. She needs a woman’s voice. She needs softness."
From down the hall, Jasmine let out a wail that sounded like her throat was tearing. Dante flinched as if he’d been struck.
"I can help her," I said, holding his gaze. "But I'm not doing it in chains."
He looked at me. He looked at the chain. He looked down the hall where his daughter was screaming for a dead woman.
He swore, a harsh Italian curse, and pulled a small key from his pocket.
He knelt at my feet. His hands were shaking slightly as he unlocked the cuff. The steel sprang open.
"If you try to run," he said, not looking up, "I will break your legs."
"I'm not running," I said, stepping out of the cuff and rubbing my raw skin. "I'm fixing your mess."
I walked past him. I did not run. I walked with purpose down the hallway to the open door at the end.
The nursery was chaos. Sheets were tangled and pillows thrown. Jasmine was thrashing in the center of the bed, eyes wide open but unseeing, fighting off invisible attackers.
"Mama, no!"
I climbed onto the bed. I did not hesitate. I grabbed her wrists gently but firmly, pulling her into my lap.
"Jasmine," I said, pitching my voice low and steady. "It’s Lily. I’ve got you."
She fought me, stiff as a board. "No! Let go!"
"Shh. I've got you. The bad men are gone."
I wrapped my arms around her, pinning her flailing limbs against my body to create a cocoon of pressure. I pressed her cheek to my chest so she could hear my heartbeat.
And I started to hum.
It was the same lullaby I had used on myself a thousand times in the dark. Dormi, dormi, bel bambino...
The effect was almost chemical. The vibration of the song seemed to cut through the panic haze. Jasmine’s thrashing slowed. She gasped, a wet, ragged sound, and collapsed against me.
"Lily?" she whimpered.
"I'm here. I'm right here."
I rocked her back and forth, smoothing the damp hair back from her forehead.
I looked up.
Dante was standing in the doorway.
He was leaning against the frame as if his legs could not hold him up. He watched us with an expression that was terrifyingly open. Relief. Agony. And something else, something like hunger.
He was starving for the peace I was giving her, and he hated that he couldn't provide it himself.
I kept humming, staring right at him.
Look at this, I thought, my internal monologue cold and sharp in contrast to the gentle song.
Look at how much she needs me. Look at how useless you are without me.
I was not just comforting a child. I was carving out a place in his fortress that he couldn't touch. I was making myself essential.
Jasmine’s breathing evened out. She fell asleep, her small hand clutching the fabric of my shirt.
I sat there for a long time, letting the silence settle.
"She hasn't slept through the night in weeks," Dante whispered. His voice was rough, like he had swallowed glass.
"She feels your stress," I said quietly. "She knows the house is at war, even if you don't tell her."
He pushed off the doorframe and walked to the bed. He reached out to touch Jasmine’s hair, but his hand hovered, afraid to wake her.
"Thank you," he said. The words seemed to cost him something.
"I didn't do it for you."
He looked at me then. The connection snapped back into focus. Captive and captor. Enemy and enemy. But the dynamic had shifted. I was not just the girl in chains anymore. I was the girl holding his heart in her lap.
"Come," he said. "I'll take you back."
I laid Jasmine down gently, tucking the duvet around her shoulders.
I followed him back to my room.
The chain lay on the floor like a dead snake.
Dante looked at it. He looked at me, rubbing my chafed ankle.
He did not pick up the cuffs.
"Stay in the room," he said. He sounded exhausted and defeated.
He turned to leave. But in his fatigue, or perhaps in a moment of subconscious surrender, he did not check the nursery door. The door that connected Jasmine’s room to the hallway was only twenty feet from mine.
And then, he did something else.
He took the ring of keys from his pocket to lock my door. But his hand fumbled. He pulled the brass closet key off the ring. Maybe he thought he needed to lock something else, or maybe he was just distracted by the adrenaline crash.
He set it on the hallway console table while he engaged the deadbolt on my door.
Click.
He locked me in.
But through the crack under the door, I saw it. He had left the brass key on the table outside.
It was not inside the room. But I realized something with a jolt of adrenaline.
The tray the maid had dropped yesterday. The fork she had dropped. I had kicked it under the bed during the struggle.
I retrieved the fork. I bent the tines.
The gap under the door was wide enough. The hallway table was close enough.
I wasn't going to sleep tonight. I was going fishing.