One Month Later

I always thought I was a prisoner. Just some valuable trophy kept locked away until the time was right. Everyone in my life had been taught to pretend I wasn’t, but I still remember how profoundly I the old Jim Carrey movie, The Truman Show, messed with my head when I first saw it. Like the character in the movie, I felt surrounded by smiling actors living double lives. They played caring family friends, fathers, and mothers. And like Truman, I realized if I ever tried to leave the bubble my father had built around my life, he’d use every resource at his disposal to drag me back, kicking and screaming.

Truman found his way outside the bubble, but it looked he was the lucky one. The decorations and fantasy has been stripped away now, leaving me with nothing but bare walls, grim-faced men, and locked doors. Oddly enough, I prefer this. At least it’s real. At least I don’t have to pretend to be the dutiful daughter. I can openly glare at father now, when he decides to grace me with his presence, at least.

The person I see most is my father’s doctor, who is bribed heavily enough to make house calls to a clearly imprisoned young, pregnant girl.

I’m watching the local news, because it’s one of the few channels I’m allowed, when Joe steps into my room. My room is actually the basement. I found myself unimpressed but relieved that my father’s promise of making me impossible to find just meant moving me down to the basement instead of my room upstairs, but after a month, I’m starting to wonder if hiding me in plain sight wasn’t such a bad idea, after all, because I haven’t seen any sign of Angelo.

“Hey, Ana,” says Joe, who sounds subdued and sad. I have hardly seen him ever since I started dating Angelo, if it can even be called dating. Part of my father’s attempts to keep me quarantined seemed to involve keeping Joe away from me, and from the look on Joe’s face, it’s because Joe looks upset at how I’ve been treated.

“You’re not one of them?” I ask bitterly.

He huffs a laugh and moves to stand behind the far wall, giving me space. “I’m not going to pretend I’m some knight in shining armor. I knew you were here, after all. Not like I’m sticking my neck out to bust you out or something.”

I sigh. I want to be pissed at everyone right now. Even thinking about Angelo makes my stomach turn and fills me with a deep, profound kind of sadness and anger. I want to be pissed, even at Joe, but it’s impossible when I see the look on his face.

He hates this as much as I do.

“I don’t expect you to risk your life to get me out of here, Joe.”

“This is fucked up. You’re his own daughter, Ana. He won’t even talk about what’s going on with any of us. It’s like nothing is happening.”

“What do you expect?”

“Compassion? Humanity?” suggests Joe.

I flash a half-smile. “Unlikely. My mom hasn’t even come to see me.”

“She’s just scared. I’ve been by to check on her. Your dad has fucked her up pretty bad over the years, Ana, up here, I mean,” he says, tapping his temple. “Not making excuses for her, though. I wish she was stronger for you.”

“Yeah, well, being strong apparently isn’t enough.” An image of Angelo falling forward unconscious and landing on his face flashes into my mind, making my stomach twist again. If I wasn’t sure I loved him or that he was the right man to raise this baby with me before, all my doubts were erased when he risked his life in that room. It should’ve been some dumb act of chivalry. A sane woman would’ve wanted him to calmly react and tell me to go with my father because it was the smart thing to do. But I realized I wouldn’t have wanted him to react any other way. He wouldn’t give me up. He wouldn’t risk losing me, no matter the cost, and I can’t think of that, even a month later, without chills trickling across my skin. I don’t know if a man like Angelo would ever say as much out loud, but he loves me. I knew he did after that, and the knowledge only makes my imprisonment that much harder to bear.

“Being strong ain’t everything,” agrees Joe. “Look, Ana. I’ve got to be straight with you. I don’t really know why I came down here to see you. Your dad didn’t tell me I couldn’t, but he didn’t hide the fact that he wanted me to stay clear. Guess I felt guilty, but now I think I only feel worse, seeing you like this.”

“Do I look that bad?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “No. You look like someone who belongs out in the world, who’d bring happiness to everyone she met, but who got dealt a shitty hand in life.”

He waits for me to say something, but when I don’t respond, he purses his lips and nods his head slightly before slipping out of the room and sliding the lock back in place from the other side.

A few days later, my dad has Franco and Donnie bring me upstairs to meet him at the kitchen table. It’s one of the few times I’ve been allowed out of my room since they took me from the seventh floor of Angelo’s club over a month ago, and it’s already strange to see the sky outside and hear the world without the steady hum of the huge radiator I share the basement with.

I put a hand to my belly, which is tight and round now, and sadness floods me. If my confinement has any negative impact on the baby, I’ll never forgive my father. Then again, I realize he passed into unforgiveable territory as soon as he ripped me from Angelo’s club. Before, even.

I always thought I saw through the acting job he and his men put on, but now I realize he was pacifying me to an extent. Maybe I thought there was more love hidden behind the mask than there really is.

Father is sitting at the head of a table with a steak and macaroni and cheese on his plate. He may be the Don of the Torretti’s, but my father was always like a kid when it came to macaroni and cheese. Mom used to give him a hard time about it, so he’d only have it a few nights a week, but he broke her at some point. I still shudder to think about what he must have said or done to do it. All I know is that one day she was bright eyed and kind, even if she was complacent in his plans for me, the next there was a dullness to her. It was like someone had snuffed out a light deep inside her. She withdrew and let herself go. It got worse every year until I hardly thought about her anymore because she’d haul herself up in her room and let my father’s men bring her whatever she needed.

“You summoned me?” I say once Franco has released my arm to let me stand beside the table opposite my father.

Father glares up at me. “You’re going to get one chance to redeem yourself, Anabella. One chance.”

My chest tightens and I try not to let my eagerness show. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing how desperate I am for a way out of this for me and my baby. All I’d need is a small window of chance. A minute where I could lose the men he has guarding me. That’d be all. I could hitchhike somewhere he’d never guess and contact Angelo once things had calmed down. I could start a new life for me and the baby.

“What kind of chance?”

“I’m going to let you out tomorrow. Under strict supervision. You’re going to go to Angelo and say whatever you need to say to make sure he stops looking for you.”

I frown. “What? How would I make him want to stop looking for me. I’m carrying his baby.”

“You’ll say whatever you have to say if you care about sparing his life. Tell him you were fucking some other guy and the baby might not be his. Tell him you were just using him to get information for me to take his family down. Tell him you don’t love him anymore because he wasn’t strong enough to break you out of here. Frankly, I don’t give a shit what you say. All I care about is that he stops digging around to find you.”

A refusal itches to leave my mouth, but the long weeks of silence and loneliness help me to exercise patience where I might have normally blurted something out. “If I redeemed myself,” I start carefully, “what would happen?”

“You’d be given more privileges. I’d allow you to start your classes again. You would have your life back, more or less. You’d need to stay in shape and be ready to marry Sergio when the time came, and there would be more supervision than before, but your life would be yours again.”

Sergio. It’s the first time my father has given a name to the faceless man he has been trying to marry me off to.

My mind races, struggling to pick out the wisest path to take of the many that seem available to me now, like dozens of open doors full of dead ends or perils, where only one leads to a life I want.

My heart wants me to refuse him just to wipe the smug look from his face. He chews a mouthful of steak, watching me with vague disinterest, like my acceptance of his offer is a foregone conclusion. I want to prove him wrong so badly it hurts, but I’m not sure that’s the smartest choice. Refusing means I go back into the basement and Angelo keeps looking for me, which hasn’t seemed to do much good so far. Then again, if Angelo wasn’t getting close, why would father care about getting me to stop his search?

If I accepted his offer, I could try to warn Angelo before my father’s men snatched me back up. I’d have to hope I wasn’t bringing a war down on Angelo’s head in the process, which makes me think that’s not the way.

Or, I could do what father wants.

I could lie to Angelo. He might believe me if I said I slept with some other guy and the baby might not be his. I could claim I lied about my father’s lack of success in setting me up. I could say I had been forced to go on dates with a guy and had let him sleep with me, and Angelo was just my way of rebelling against my father.

Even thinking up the lies makes my heart ache painfully and my stomach feel sick. Angelo is the strongest man I’ve ever met, but I can picture the devastation I’d see in his face if I sold him these lies.

It’d only be temporary though. I’d use whatever freedom my father gave me after I proved I’d done as he asked and I’d wait for an opening. Once I had my chance, I’d slip away, get in touch with Angelo, and I’d explain everything.

“Ana,” prompts my father. “I need an answer.”