Without a word, I switch on the flashlight of my phone and shine it down the stairs.

“This is it,” Bastian says. “I feel it.”

I know what he’s feeling. A dark thing. I think you could keep bars of gold unlocked down here and they’d be safe. My skin is crawling, and if I didn’t have to go down there, I wouldn’t.

Bastian switches on his flashlight and follows me down the rickety stairs.

“Careful,” I tell him about a step that’s broken. We get down to the concrete floor and I shine my light over the bare walls, the boxing bag hanging from a beam at the far end, the small outdoor table that’s rusted, the empty beer bottles on top and broken glass on the floor. I walk to the cooler and find more bottles of beer inside, these unopened. I check the date on one. It’s long expired. I assume there was ice in there once, but that water has long since evaporated.

But apart from that, I don’t see more.

A large flashlight sits on the floor by the chair. I pick it up and switch it on. It blinks, then, to my surprise, goes on. I shine the brighter light over what I’ve found, but there’s nothing more.

“Brother,” comes Bastian’s voice from behind the boxing bag. I know from his tone that he’s found something. I walk over and duck my head to follow him into this second room. It’s as large as the first but even more isolated. No small windows, no nothing. Just black. But I turn the flashlight onto the room, and my blood turns to ice.

“Fuck.”

Along the far wall is a grimy mattress on a cot with a missing leg leaning half on the filthy floor. Chains hang from the ceiling, the cuffs empty now. A bucket lies on its side by the cot, and another table, chair, and more cans of beer are in here, too. In the farthest corner is a cage like you’d use for a big dog. Inside it is a dog dish. And attached to one of the bars of the cage is a set of handcuffs. On the wall over the cage is an old clock with a bullet hole through the center of it.

“They kept her here for six days,” I say, remembering the image of Vittoria on that screen, the look in her eyes, the senseless muttering, her asking for bleach to clean her hands. To clean the blood of the bastards who hurt her off her hands.