Take Me Home

twelve

"How was I taken?" I ask my father after our conversation about Victoria, papa pauses on his spot when I ask him, followed by Raffaele and Armano. Francesco drops his hand from my back. I look back at him and he has a shocked expression on his face.

Raffaele stands there staring at papa, the same as Armano. Papa takes a step forward, he walks closer towards me.

"Lets have this conversation in private tesoro." I nod, papa offers me his hand and we leave the living room, leaving behind my astonished brothers. Papa leads us to the second floor where all the bedrooms are. We pass my own, heading towards to the end of the corridor to papa's bedroom.

He opens the door, letting em go inside first. Papa's room was pretty basic, all of his furniture was dark mahogany. It gave me Edwardian or Victorian vibes with the classic leather and dark furniture.

He tells me to sit on the bed, while he goes into the closet. He returns with a a silver plated box, it was no bigger than a large jewellery box. He sits down beside me, breathing in deeply.

"Principessa we have spoken about a lot tonight, this can wait." He acknowledges, he was looking at me with sympathy, his hand was on my shoulder.I shake my head at him in response.

"Papa I would rather know now, I don't know why but I feel awful. You went through so much pain when it happened, I at least want to understand it." He chuckles but he nods in response. He places the box on my lap.

"Alright, but I need you to promise me something." I look at him in confusion. "This also means that whenever you are ready, you can tell us whatever you are hiding."

"I'm not hiding anything." I was quick to reply.

Papa quirks his brow. "Gaia, you can't lie to me. Whatever it was hurt you, I don't want to see my little girl hurting. You have told us some little truths, but you're still hiding from us." I put my head down, not in shame of lying, but in shame of myself.

He had just opened a can of worms, something I had locked away from my memories. I was now going to be haunted from my past, it was going to haunt me all over again.

I don't want my brothers or papa to know what happened to me yet, I don't think I could tell them. But if the memories return like last time.

I will be telling them a lot sooner than I imagined.

Papa instructs me to open the box, I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but photos definitely wasn't it.

On top was a sonogram, written on the back was: 'Our little girl, Una piccolo dea, Gaia Fiorella'

My middle name is Fiorella?

This is news to me

The next photo I had seen before, it was the photo papa showed me the day he brought me home. It was me probably the day I was born. I was swaddled in his arms, he had the biggest, brightest smile I had seen ever, I didn't think it was possible to smile that bright. His eyes were filled adoration.

"It was quite possibly the happiest day of my life. Each time any of you came along it became the best day ever. But with you was completely different. It was the same with the boys." He pointed down to the next photo.

I let my eyes fall onto the next photo. Tears came to my eyes. It was all of my brothers in one photo. The biggest of the boys, Assuming its Raff who was holding me to his chest, he was the only one not looking at the camera. His eyes were set onto mine, so were mine. His fingers were on my cheeks. I had never seen Raffaele smile.

The boy in the picture and him now are two completely different people. Francesco was sat on one of the boys' lap- I think it was Eliseo as the two identical boys were grinning brightly at the camera.