"Ezio? What did they do?"
She could barely keep an eye open to meet Leonardo's stare. All she wanted to do was curl up and sleep, escape her pain that the guards inflicted. Nothing would cure the horror she'd seen. And she shuttered in remembrence.
"Did they...? Did Cesare...?"
Ezio gave a groan and scooted away, she didn't want to speak of it. There wasn't a single word that she knew that could express it all. Not one.
"Ezio, please. Just answer us." Leonardo requested with pleading eyes.
With a painfuly dry throat, she answered, "I don't want to talk about it..."
Machiavelli dug around another pocket with no avail. Then grumbled in his discontent. This was impossible. Completely and utterly impossible. No way, at all, what so ever. Ezio had hidden the key pretty damn well, and he had to give him credit. But now this was more annoying than ever.
"If I were Ezio, where would I hide a key?"
Bartolomeo chuckled, "For all we know it's right under our noses."
With bat of an eye, he turned to the door away fromthe wall in other to see the key hole, but no key. Apparently the assassin was smarter than that. Much smarter. Or he had help from La Volpe. Regardless, they couldn't find the damn key.
It wasn't in a pouch he carried around.
It sure as hell wasn't in any of his robes.
Not in the draws of his desk or the nightstand or the tables.
Not under the bed.
It definately wasn't in their ears. They tried that one already.
Not hanging off the walls.
Not under his mattrace, surprisingly... They already uncovered an old blanket, a necklace, and an assortment of other things he had stashed away. But no key there.
It wasn't glued to their backs, that would have been far too easily.
The hollowed out books showed them nothing that'd help them. And consitering the man had about maybe thirty books, and only five percent of that was hollowed, they didn't have any luck with it.
The hidden blade wasn't of any use either. Just compartments for a gun and poison.
And it sure as hell wasn't under their noses... Well maybe Bartolomeo's... he had a beard.
Machiavelli slumped down onto the chair, sighing heavily, "It's hopeless, Ezio clearly is more secretive than I thought." He glared down at the floor feircely with annoyance. It was probably close to evening, so the sun was casting a bright glow through the window. He then noticed that the light catching on the floorboard reveiled something that neither of the two had noticed. A loose floorboard.
"Bartolomeo? Could you look at this?"
Said man studied the floor board a moment, "Do you think he hid it under there?"
"It's worth a try I guess." Machiavelli responded before fiddling witht he floorboard, until it lifted up and allowed him to see the supports underneith, it looked almost like a secret compartment. On the bottom was a piece of paper and a leather bound book, but no key. "No. This doesn't help either."
"What did that paper say?" Bartolomeo asked.
Machiavelli reached into the hole and pulled out the piece of paper, and opened it to find Ezio's neat handwriting. It was like a note-to-self or something. Although it became clear that it was just a bucket list or something. Most of the things were crossed out already. "I've said it before. Useless."
Bartolomeo took the book and flipped it open. Eyes narrowed a moment before he laughed, "He has a diary!"
The write snatched the apparent diary away from the hysterical mercenary captain so he could see this for himself. Of course, why must he usually be right. The first page was writen back to the day before the Villa attack! Mainly a rant on why he had snapped at him. Which made him mentally facepalm. Why was he so surprised about the whole journal? Well he didn't expect to find all of the man's secrets so easily at his fingertips. It was almost sickening in a way.
"We should put this back." Machiavelli told him as he was about to slide the book away, but Bartolomeo stopped him.
"Wait, what if he wrote about where he hide the key in that thing?"
He did have a point, and yet again, bringing him back to the annoyance of his being right. It looked like they were stuck reading his diary... oh joy...