I feel a chill run down my spine but she doesn’t elaborate, only moves me down a series of hallways toward the family’s private wing. I haven’t heard much about the Don’s former wife, only that she died when the kids were young before he married Elise, and the way she’s talking makes it sound like the Don had something to do with that death.
This section of the house isn’t off-limits, but it’s clearly reserved for only the core members of the Bruno family, and it’s where Fynn and Gavino and Casso keeps their suites, along with Nico and Karah. But instead of going down toward that part of the house, we descend a final flight of stairs, just bare wood with an untreated wooden railing, dropping into a dark basement.
It’s cool and dry. There’s a storage section and a wine cave complete with climate control set back behind glass. Inside, honeycombs of bottles line the walls. “The bottles in there are worth a fortune and I plan on drinking them all before I follow my dear late husband into the grave,” Elise says wistfully, but keeps going, through a green metal door littered with rust, and walking down a concrete-lined tunnel lit by a bare bulb.
We reach the end, push through another barred door, and step into a large space cut into the surrounding bedrock. I feel a sudden dire sense of being crushed, like the stone above might break and fall at any moment. The walls are veined red and black, and the ground’s a smooth concrete, but there’s no other door out. Only a drain in the floor, leading somewhere else.
Elise stands on the threshold and turns the lights on.
“Domiano showed me this room once about a year into our marriage,” Elise says, staring straight ahead. I stay slightly behind her, unwilling to go further. The room beyond gives me terrible vibes, and that lone drain is copper-colored, almost as if stained by something rusty. The bare walls are cragged and pocked and darkened by water, and it’s like the end of the world down here, a place where only bad things can happen, safely hidden away. “Back then I wasn’t so careful with him as I learned to be later on. I wasn’t as afraid as I should’ve been. I was naive enough to think he was a normal man.” She laughs softly to herself. “He brought me down here one night instead of heading into the winery, and I suppose looking back he wanted to scare me a bit. And I’ll tell you, it worked. I think he wanted me to know that there are rooms beneath Villa Bruno where nobody will hear me scream and beg.”
“What is this place?” I whisper, but I know already. I don’t want to know, I don’t want to hear, but I know. Sometimes it’s easy to forget what the Bruno family is and what they do. But sometimes it’s impossible not to see what they are.
“Domiano used to punish Fynn and Gavino in here. Sometimes he’d just put them inside, turn off the light, and shut the door. He said they used to scream and he laughed as he remembered it like it was a funny prank to lock his children in a pitch-black cave. Sometimes he’d hit them with a belt and make them bleed. Sometimes he’d make them hit each other, and the loser would be locked alone in the black with his injuries. That’s why Fynn and Gavino are so close, they grew up beating the piss out of each other. They’re comrades in trauma.”
I’m breathing fast and it echoes into the empty space. This is a nightmare; this room is a torture hell. I try to picture two young boys ruthlessly fighting each other, though doing it against their will, as their father looked on. The idea’s too horrible to imagine.
“Casso had it hard,” Elise says. “He was forced to take on too much responsibility much too fast. He learned to do terrible things at an age most boys are busy thinking about sports and grades and girls. Most of the family thinks Fynn and Gavino had it easier, but they didn’t. Not even a little bit. Domiano made his two young sons learn to be animals before they even understood what was happening to them, and I’m afraid they’ll never quite relieve themselves of that burden.”
Elise takes a step forward into the room. She doesn’t go further—one step, as if the ghosts of the past hold her out. I’m shivering, trembling. Fear pulses down my skin. I knew these people were sick, but I had no clue the bleak depths what Fynn went through as a child. It’s too much, too painful. I have to look away but I can’t bring myself to do it. This chamber is a torture room, a hellhole. The site of so much sickness and pain. I can’t begin to guess how many people were murdered in this room and how many more were maimed and brutalized, and it’s like their pain leaves a thick, sticky tar behind, coating the air invisibly.