It was an august afternoon, in a year of relentless storms, in which, surrounded by nuns in a convent outside the province of Sicily, Cecilia Di Piezaro gave birth to the fruits of her treason. They were two, a robust boy and sickly girl.
The girl, whom Cecilia named Jane, was given to the convent, knowing that as a nun she would have an assured future and not a life adrift, as the boy's life would be. The abbess reminded her that it was a house or prayer, not an orphanage and that to dedicate her life to God; a woman not only had to come from a good family but to have a worthy dowry as a present to the Lord.
Cecilia not only came from a wealthy family, she was also the wife of a Spanish marquis. But both, her family and husband turned away when they proved her state. As Cesar Piezaro was barren, unquestionably the child had to be of another man, which made Cecilia a sinner, treacherous, and dishonorable. They exiled her to Italy.
In the position she was, Cecilia couldn't promise a prominent dowry. The abbess, seeing her so rueful, decided to help her and the children after all, she was a catholic who was tempted and lost but knew and accepted her mistakes. She proposed to Cecilia that Jane could be a nun and she could live in the house of tools outside in the garden with the boy, both would get education and food, for ignorant kids are just a burden. But in return, Cecilia would be willing to help the nuns and all those in need as for cooking, cleaning or any other work.
It was probably the best words the abbess could've said. She accepted immediately. The kids were baptized a week later, Alec and Jane Lorenzetti, her last name Cecilia's last name when she was a maiden.
And the years passed by. Cecilia worked hard and the kids grew to become intelligent, noble and beautiful. She was filled with pride when she saw them both reading and writing. She almost cried after hearing them recite the creed and couldn't help to sight when she heard her daughter singing the Ave Maria with her soprano voice in the choir.
Jane had mesmerizing green eyes and a gorgeous golden cascade coming from her head that she proudly wore. As she was a very sick girl, she made a vow to the Blessed Virgin to keep her hair long and immaculate to death, as she needed to intercede so that moment did not come for a long time. Alec had blue eyes, brown hair, sweet traits and big dreams, the only inheritance left by his father.
They always remembered a time in which the abbess locked them with her in her office and told them all they had to know of their origins: "You were born of a misfortune, you both are a calamity for poor Cecilia, you shall never ask anything to her": That is why they grew up without knowing a single track of who their father was, they never asked and their mother was never capable of telling them.
The day of the thirteenth birthday of her twins, Cecilia was for once completely convinced that things would emerge as the nuns always predicted. Jane would be a nun. Alec would leave the monastery with his head held high, knowing the scholastic head to toe, both in Italian, French and Spanish. He would get a good job and take her out of the convent so she didn't have to work again and get the life of queen she still deserved.
But while cleaning the windows of the chapel, when at the distance she glimpsed a figure that brought up to her mind every little detail of her past and mistakes, she knew that wouldn't be so. Aro Volturi, the key to the top of her problems and the only man she had ever loved, appeared once again in her life, as always, making everything in her tremble.
His departure was as brief as his arrival, he just let her know that he knew everything that occurred to her in the past thirteen or so years, and that he would take his son with him. Jane already had a destiny, while the Alec's was still uncertain. The he made sure that Jane's dowry was paid for he saw the devastation that caused so many years of work in Cecilia, which when he met was a fine woman. It was pitiful to see her.
Then he left without saying goodbye, leaving in Cecilia the grief and shame that he never loved her and taking with him her only hope, Alec. He was renamed Alexander Volturi.
Aro took his son to live in Spain with his wife, Sulpicia Volturi, his brothers, Caius and Marcus Volturi and their wives, Athenodora and Didima Volturi. To Alec, the change was from heaven to earth. He was accustomed to sleeping in a mattress in a little house shared with his mother. The opulence of the Volturi mansion blinded him. He sorely missed his sister and mother, who was a good and beautiful woman with compassion towards people, not like Sulpicia who besides being ugly was pretentious and jealous.
He was accustomed to the kindness and firmness of the nuns and abbess, not to the meanness and lack of responsibility of Athenodora and Didima. Hi also liked the way the abbess herself thought them, not how some stupid tutors with a popularity bigger than deserved, tried to teach him. Also the relation with his father was way different than the one with his mother, he trusted and loved her, but to him he was cold and just answered his questions. Their conversations alone lasted minutes.
But in the inside, he knew that the fact that his father had sought him and took him from the convent to have a better life was like a miracle. Besides there was something good in the Volturi mansion and it was the company of his cousins, Santiago and Demetri, who were also thirteen and Heidi, a charming eight-year-old, sister of Santiago and daughter of Marcus and Didima, which was already betrothed to a man for the time when she had the capacity of delivering heir.
They, unlike his uncles and "stepmother" didn't treat him as inferior or called him "bastard" in his back. For them, Alec was an equal and only with them, he felt at home. So he decided not complain and live with what faith and his father brought to him.
Occasionally he sent letters to his sister telling her many things she never imagined, like the toys and beautiful clothes of Heidi, luxuries that Jane could never enjoy. Since she was Heidi's age, she was dressed in modest old habits. In them, he also told her his disagreements and questions, pains and longings and promised that one day he would return to Ital, as a marquis and would take them both out of the convent and would build them a house with a chapel where she could pray comfortably, live well and dress like a princess. He stopped writing them when he didn't receive any response, mistakenly thinking she never received them, not knowing that she kept them longingly under her bed.
When he turned sixteen, Alec was a coveted youth among goofy girls in Spain. He was also the most prominent among the Volturi cousins for his intelligence, dedication and love for arts. Aro had many plans for him, one of them involved marriage. His tutors foresaw very good things and he ad aspirations, which helped him a lot.
But those plans, dreams, omens and aspirations were corrupted by the American fever that was entering in Spanish veins. If before his tutors praised him by saying things like "You are a good kind, very smart, surely Mr. Aro will trust you his fortune without hesitation". Now they sounded like this: "Very clever boy, I am sure you will make a huge fortune in the Americas". Alec got tired of it. The only conversation topic everywhere was the huge containers packed with bars of gold that had come from America. Every Spaniard commented that nine out of ten people would make fortune because it was said that gold grew on trees and that the Indians were so submissive that in a few months everyone would come back with their pockets full.
And that was how, the three Volturi brothers, driven by greed and convinced by their wives, left for the Americas in the year 1540 in a huge boat just for them. Alec, along with his three cousins accompanied his father and uncles, not knowing what he would find in there.
Hello everybody. This is the translation from my fic in spanish called "La india". I hope you like it. To those who have read my fanfiction before, know I have two fics pending and waiting to be finished. If you are interested in those fics, I will update them tomorrow I promise I wont leave until I finish the four fics and I hope you trust me and keep reading. Its good to be back.
Thanks a lot for reading!
-C.C Vulturi
