Page 40 of The Enslaved Duet

“How much is it?” I asked before I could curb myself, hoping he wouldn’t wonder why I didn’t know if I was the one sending it. “I’ve had them set up a direct deposit, you see, and I’m curious it’s everything I thought it would be.”

“Five thousand pounds,” he crowed, and I used the opportunity to let out a gusty sigh. The sum meant that Alexander was sending a monthly allowance that would amount to the three hundred thousand he has promised to send to them each year. “Honestly, Mama fainted when it appeared in her account the first month. When it was there the second time, she almost took out Elena when she fainted again.”

Despite everything, I found myself smiling at the thought. “I’m glad. Now, tell me what you are putting the money toward.”

“Giselle’s tuition is paid through the year, and she has an allowance now that she informed me meant she could buy acrylics.” We both laughed as we imagined her excitement about procuring the expensive paints. “Elena bought her own second-hand computer and has enrolled in online classes at Università di Bologna in law. We repaid the last of Seamus’s debts with creditors in town and with the Camorra, but Cosima, you should know something. We haven’t seen Seamus since August.”

I closed my eyes again and silently let out a breath of relief that I hadn’t known I was holding the past few weeks.

“Grazie a Dio,” I said, thanking God. “We’ve been wishing him gone since the beginning of my memories. Please don’t tell me that you’re saddened by this.”

“Don’t be insulting. I spent too much on a bottle of grappa, and believe it or not, I shared it with Elena.”

“You didn’t,” I said with a laugh, sinking back into the copious number of pillows lining the headboard of the bed.

Neither Seb nor Giselle got along very well with our eldest sister, and I couldn’t exactly blame them. Elena was the type of woman who believed that elegance was more important than feeling, intelligence surpassed passion, and if you wanted to know what was in her heart, you had to earn it.

Sebastian and Giselle were more easily led by the beautiful hearts they wore on their sleeves.

Once, I’d been like them, but I had always understood Elena and her philosophies.

A woman should not be easy to know for mystery was half of her power.

“And Cosima, something else has happened.”

“You published one of your stories?” I asked in the high voice of an excited young girl, but I didn’t care.

My environment had disappeared, and even the imaginary shackles I wore seemed nearly non-existent. My mind was back home in Napoli with my family.

Sebastian laughed. “No, Cosi, but you know the play I’ve been doing in Roma?”

I bit my lip, trying to remember one of the many amateur productions my brother had been participating in before I left.

“You don’t remember, and that’s fine. The moral of the story is, a theatre company director from London was visiting, and he approached me after the play. It seems he runs Finborough Theatre. He wants me to move to London to pursue an acting career as a principle at his company.”

My heart soared into my throat, and before I could stem it, I was squealing and jumping on the bed with joy even as I carefully kept the phone to my ear.

“Sebastian, you gifted man,” I shouted through my happy tears. “You beautiful, talented man! I could not be happier for you.”

We laughed together as we talked about the particulars, and he recounted local gossip before handing me over to Mama and Elena who both nearly chatted my ear off with their own material.

I spoke with my family for well over an hour and only rung off when another maid entered the room with my dinner tray. When she took the phone away, I almost attacked her, but I held myself back on the thought that I might be rewarded the privilege again.

It seemed giving up my virginity granted me new living quarters and the connection to my family I so craved.

Later that evening, after I finished a supper I was sure Douglas had prepared because it was a delicious speciality from Napoli and after I’d showered away the remnants of sex from my body, I lay in the dark curled up beneath the most luxurious covers I had ever known more troubled than I had ever been.

I wasn’t truly religious, but my parents were Catholic and a quote by Job from the Bible rattled around like a loose screw in my head.

“The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Only, I had no God in this new home of mine. My religion was servitude, and my lord was my Master. What he took from me, he rewarded me for, and in return for this unhealthy symbiosis, he expected me to worship him.

I didn’t.

But the thing that kept me up late into the night when the brain was murky but thoughts were horrifyingly clear, was that I could imagine a time when I did. When the ritual of my everyday life of a slave wore me down as surely as the generations of feet against the stone steps in this house. When looking to him for orders was route and worshiping his body like a deity felt akin to taking prayers. What was faith if not the engrained instinctual and spiritual belief that there was a higher being out there looking over you?

After five years of serving Master Alexander, was there really any doubt I would revere him even if I feared him still?