Valentina

“Stop crying. They’ll hear you. And if they hear you, they’ll come down.”

My voice is frail in the damp dark. Thin. Scared. But sharp.

The cellar smells of wet earth and the cheap moonshine my father spills on the concrete when his hands shake. It smells like hell. A small hell, dug beneath a rundown house at the edge of the woods, where sunlight never dares enter.

From the corner, the whimpering stops for a second.

Then comes the clink of a rusted chain. Metal on metal. A dry, grating sound that claws at my eardrums.

“P-please. Let me out. I’m cold.”

The boy is huddled in a dog cage. A cage of thick wire mesh and jagged iron edges, where grandfather used to lock a rabid shepherd before it died. The cage is too small for him. Even though we are both eight years old, he is lanky, with slender bones and a blue velvet coat now caked in mud and dried urine.

Rich kids wear clothes out of fairy tales. Fairy tales that tear easily when you drag them through gravel.

I take a step forward. The dirt floor is ice-cold beneath my bare feet. I’m wearing a faded nightgown with ragged hems that falls to my knees.

“If I open it, they’ll kill me,” I whisper, crouching down before the bars. I don’t sound like a six-year-old girl. I was never a little girl. In this house, if you cry, you get slapped. If you ask for a doll, you catch a fist to the ribs. I learned long ago never to ask for anything.

The boy lifts his eyes.

His face is smeared with tears and crusted blood at the temple. But his eyes... his eyes are different. I’ve never seen eyes like that. They’re green, cold, carved from some strange crystal. It’s as if a sword hides behind them, even with his cheeks wet with tears.

“I’m thirsty,” he says. His lips are chapped, bleeding.

“I don’t have water. If I turn on the tap upstairs, the pipe creaks and mom will catch on.”

I settle back on my heels, ignoring the dampness seeping through my nightgown. I reach out and open my fist.

“But I have this.”

I show him half an apple, which I swiped from the table while they were screaming at the television, and a green plastic toy soldier missing an arm. And most importantly: a blunt nub of a colored pencil. Red.

The boy stares at them as if I had offered him worthless pebbles. There is a strange arrogance in the way he keeps his chin tilted up, even like this, folded in two inside a filthy cage.

“What am I supposed to do with that?” he asks, pointing at the red pencil.

“You draw on the wall. When I’m scared at night and dad slams mom against the walls, I draw doors. I draw windows. I pretend I can walk right through them.”

“That’s stupid,” he says with the unvarnished cruelty of a child who had never known hunger until yesterday. “Drawn doors don’t open.”

I pull my hand back, stung. My pride is all I have. A ragged pride, but mine.

“Then starve, prince charming.”

I move to stand up, but a small, dirty hand shoots through the bars and clamps around my wrist. His grip is surprisingly strong for someone shivering to the bone. His fingers are like cold claws.

“Wait,” he says quickly. “Give me the apple.”

We look at each other. Two pairs of wide eyes in a pitch blackness cut only by a thin sliver of yellowish light creeping beneath the door at the top of the stairs.

There is no pity between us. Only a strange, feral recognition. He is prey refusing to be devoured; I am the wolf pup that learned to walk on tiptoe so as not to be crushed.

I hand him the apple. He snatches it and bites into it with a fierce desperation, swallowing almost without chewing. The crunch of his teeth tearing through the fruit’s flesh sounds deafening in the dead silence.

“What’s your name?” he asks between swallows, wiping his mouth with his mud-stained sleeve.

“Valentina.”

“I’m Christian. Christian Sinclair.”

“Sounds weird. Like on TV.”

“It’s my father’s name. And my grandfather’s. We’re rich.”

“I know,” I say simply. “That’s why you’re here. Dad said your father has palaces and big ships. He said if he gives us two million, he’ll let you go. And if not...”

I stop. I shouldn’t have said that.

Christian stops chewing. His green eyes widen, then narrow into two dark slits. A strange shadow crosses his face. It isn’t the weeping from before. It’s something else. Something I’ve never seen in the kids I know. A cruel, venomous cold.

“If not, what?” he asks me. His voice doesn’t tremble anymore.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me!” He lunges toward the bars again, rattling the cage. The iron groans with a heavy rumble.

“Shut up, you crazy idiot!” I hiss at him, trying to clap my hand over his mouth.

But it’s too late.

Above us, the ceiling boards creak violently. A heavy footstep. Then another.

A bottle shatters upstairs, followed by a thick, guttural curse.

“Dammit! I told you I heard something down there!”

My blood turns to ice. My heart begins to hammer so fast it pounds in my throat, choking me.

“They’re coming,” I whisper, paralyzed.

Christian grabs my hand again. His eyes bore into me, but this time there’s no rage in them. It’s pure terror.

“Valentina... open it. Open it now!”

The padlock hangs heavy, but the key isn’t there. Dad keeps it tied with a filthy piece of string to his belt loop. I don’t stand a chance. I never did.

The door at the top of the stairs is slammed against the wall. The light spills violently down, a yellowish cascade that sears our eyes. The shadow of a misshapen giant stretches across the steps.

The stench of cheap cigarettes and cheap booze rolls down ahead of them, suffocating.

“What the hell are you doing down here, you little runt?”

Dad takes the stairs two at a time. He’s massive, unshaven for a week, wearing a white tank top stained with sauce and sweat. Behind him, mom sways on her feet, glassy-eyed, clutching a half-empty bottle of vodka by the neck.

I try to scramble up, to run toward the corner with the barrels, but dad is too fast.

His thick hand clamps into my long red hair. He yanks me off the ground with a violence that rips a sharp scream from my throat. I can feel my scalp tearing.

“Didn’t I tell you you’re not allowed down here, you idiot?” he roars, spraying me with spit.

“Let her go!” Christian screams from the cage.

Sweet Mother of God, this boy really is insane. Instead of keeping his mouth shut, he clings to the bars and screams at dad. A worm yelling at a monster.

Dad stops. He turns his face toward the cage. He grins, his rotten teeth looking like the fangs of a beast under the dim glare of the bare bulb.

“Well, look at the little prince. Found his voice, did he? You think because your mom and dad have a mansion in London, you’re hot shit down here, huh?”

Dad tosses me aside like a rag. I crash shoulder-first onto the concrete floor. The pain is a blinding white burn that knocks the wind right out of me. I lie there, breathless, dust filling my mouth.

Mom laughs, leaning against the banister. A cracked, ragged laugh of a woman who’s fried her brain with substances.

“Get him, Vasile. Break his legs. His dad said on the phone he won’t go higher than a million anyway. Says he doesn’t have liquidity. Liquidity, listen to the prick! Piece of shit.”

“Won’t pay, huh?” dad mutters, unbuckling his wide leather belt with the brass buckle. “Won’t give the whole cut? Fine, we’ll send him a finger in an envelope. Let’s see if he finds some liquidity after that.”

He steps toward the cage.

Christian doesn’t back down. He keeps his back straight, pressed against the cold rear wall, but his chest heaves wildly.

“My father will kill you,” Christian says. In a voice so low and so cold that the air in the room feels like it drops ten degrees. “He will find you. And he will butcher every single one of you.”

Dad goes rabid. He loses every shred of sanity. He shoves the belt through the bars, lashing out blindly. The thick leather shreds the air. There’s a sickening thwack as the metal buckle slams into the boy’s ribs.

Christian doesn’t make a sound. He just curls inward, his teeth clenched so hard I can see his jaw turn white beneath the skin.

“Think you’re tough, you little whelp? Think you’re a king?”

Dad strikes again. And again.

“Vasile, stop it, you’ll fucking kill him and we won’t get a single dime,” mom whimpers from the stairs, but she doesn’t step in. She takes a long swig from the bottle.

Dad stops, wheezing. The belt is flecked with fresh droplets of blood.

He turns his gaze toward me. I shrink against the wall, my heart tied in a tight knot in my throat. I know what comes next. In this house, violence is shared equally.

He takes two steps toward me, hoists me up by the collar of my nightgown, and cracks a slap across my face that sends me flying into the darkness beneath the stairs. I feel my lip split, the metallic taste of blood flooding my mouth.

“If I ever catch you down here again, I’ll tie you up right next to him and set you both on fire. You hear me?”

I don’t answer. I look down, teeth clenched, refusing to let the tears spill down my cheeks. Rina, my mother, always said tears were for weak girls. And I refuse to be weak. Not in front of them.

Dad spits on the floor, inches from my head, then grabs Christian by the collar through the bars and slams his head against the iron.

“No food. No water for three days. Until I get the bag with the money. If it’s not all there... we bury him in the woods.”

Then he drags me up by the arm, hauling me up the stairs. Mom trails behind us.

The door slams shut. The bolt upstairs slides into place with a heavy scrape. Dad lets go of my arm, and I bolt under the bed so they’ll forget about me.

I lie motionless for endless minutes, listening to their footsteps. They scream at each other. The music starts up—a heavy bass that rattles the ceiling. Then comes mom’s laughter, the sign that the pills are starting to kick in.

“I’m the girl who knows where dad keeps his tools,” I whisper to myself as my plan takes shape.