Forgotten Luca (The Four 1)

It took just a minute for the nurse to get Gio to his room and settled. I watched from around the corner until she was gone, then made my way to the open door. The area we were in didn't have a lot of foot traffic, so no one intervened when I approached Gio’s room. The teenager was lying in bed and staring out the window.

I cleared my throat a little so as not to startle him, but when he turned his head to look at me, he barely reacted.

"Hi, Nick," I said carefully. I managed to change the name to his preferred one at the last second as I remembered his near violent reaction the day before when he’d been called Gio. "Do you remember me?"

"You're with them," he muttered. "What do you want?"

"I just wanted to introduce myself. And say I was sorry for what my friend is putting you through," I lied. "I'm Remy, by the way. And this is Violet."

"You should get new friends, Remy," he said coldly. "Yours are murderers."

I was able to quell my instinctive response to deny his claim, since I already knew what had happened to Gio when he’d been found. Aleks had filled me in. It had been Ronan's men who’d found the teenager living in Texas. No one knew for sure exactly what had happened to Gio after he’d been abducted, but he’d ultimately ended up being traded or sold to a man who'd managed to brainwash the teen into believing he was someone else. Gio had believed himself to be in a loving relationship with the pedophile who'd hurt him. When Ronan's men had stormed the house where Gio was being kept, that man had killed himself rather than face the consequences of his actions. Gio, in turn, had tried to take his own life as well because he hadn’t seen his rescue as a rescue at all.

I couldn't even fathom the mental torture the young man had been through to be so far gone that he believed that he loved the man who'd held him captive, and that the men who’d rescued him were his true abductors.

So no matter what I said, I needed to tread carefully.

"Someone died?" I asked.

"Like you don't already know," Gio whispered.

I ignored his jab and said, "It's hard trying to figure out your new normal, isn't it?"

Gio had turned his back to me, but I figured since he wasn't telling me to leave, it was still a victory of sorts. "Even when things aren't good, it's still hard to let them go and try to start over. Whoever you lost—"

"I didn't lose him!" Gio snapped. "He was taken from me. They murdered him! The things they said about him—" Gio’s outburst ended as quickly as it had begun.

"I'm sorry," I repeated. "He obviously meant a lot to you."

"He was all I had. I loved him," the young man responded vehemently. "And he loved me."

"What was his name?" I asked.

"Kurt."

"Kurt," I murmured with a nod. Part of me just wanted to tell Gio that Kurt was a sick son of a bitch and that I hoped he was rotting in hell, but I tempered my words and instead said, "I'm sorry, Nick. I know how scary all this must be to deal with. Is there someone I can contact for you? Your family? Or maybe someone from Kurt's family?"

Gio didn't respond, so I figured my attempt to keep him talking had failed, but just as I was about to stand, he whispered, "There's no one."

"How about a friend? Someone who knew you and Kurt and who can tell everyone you're not this Gio person they've been searching for?"

I watched Gio's body as I spoke and saw him stiffen slightly when I said his name.

"It was just me and Kurt. We were each other's family."

Gio's despondent voice broke my heart. "I don't have any family either," I returned.

My heart just about leapt out of my chest when Gio looked over his shoulder at me. "You're with them," he accused.

I shook my head slowly. “I’m alone,” was all I said. I’d intended to come in here to see if I could get anything out of Gio, but somehow it was me who was having to face the harsh truth.

Gio didn’t respond to me, but I figured it was a win that he hadn’t asked me to leave his room.

And when Stan told me it was time to go a good hour later, Gio and I hadn’t said a single word to one another, but when I bid the young man farewell, I was certain I heard him murmur “bye” under his breath.

It wasn’t much, but it was something.

Chapter Eighteen

Luca

"How do you think he's going to take all this?" Vaughn asked.

I kept my eyes on Remy as I murmured, "Not good. He's gotten attached to her."