<<
"My princess," Isadora whispers with a smile, brushing golden strands of hair behind her daughter's ear.
The little girl beams, arms wrapped tightly around her favorite stuffed lion as she climbs onto the kitchen counter. Isadora playfully gasps and shoos her off with the back of her hands.
"Alessia! Cadi! Scendi giù!"
"Mamma," Aleesia pouts, dragging out the word, "why can't I go outside today?"
Isadora hesitates. Her smile fades a little as she returns to slicing fruit—slower now.
"Because Papa said so," she says gently. "It's not safe today."
"It's never safe," Alessia mumbles with a sigh.
"I just wanna play… with the kids across the street."
Isadora lowers the knife as her knuckles turn white around the handle.
"There are no kids across the street," she says carefully. "Only big men with guns."
Alessia frowns. "Then why are they smiling?"
Isadora doesn't answer. She lifts a piece of strawberry to her daughter's lips as a form of distraction.
"For the princess," she says with a smile.
Alessia grins and takes a bite, forgetting about her earlier pleas to go outside.
Isadora watches her for a moment—this tiny, bright, stubborn soul—and a sharp pang coils in her chest.
She never wanted this life.
As the wife of Giancarlo Costa, leader of the La Fossa Mafia ring in Sicily, no one knows she has a child, and she doesn't understand why her husband wants their daughter to be kept a secret.
It breaks her heart to see the golden bundle jogging around the house, trying to break the guards from their post just so they can play with her.
She knows her husband has enemies—dangerous ones. But lately, it seems he's hiding something deeper.
Suddenly, the front door explodes inward.
Isadora barely has time to scream before wood splinters into her arms and legs. The kettle on the stove shrieks as little Alessia shrieks, grabbing her mother.
A man in a black ski mask steps through the wreckage, dragging something behind him.
It's a hammer.
A bloody one.
This is it, Isadora thought. Her husband's enemies had come for them when he was away.
She stumbles to grab her daughter. "Run, Alessia! Go to your roo—"
The man lunges, grabbing a hold of her hair.
"Please!" she cries out, voice cracking. "She's just a child—"
But the words dissolve in a wet scream as the kettle lifts and tips a hot stream of boiling water onto her pale face.
The sound and smell of sizzling flesh fill the room as little Alessia watches from the stairs, paralyzed.
The masked man suddenly dumps her mother into a heap on the ground and stalks for the stairs with the hammer—towards Alessia, who's too shocked by what she just saw to run away fast enough.
A blood-curdling scream tears through her chest as the hammer swings toward her—
CRACK.
<<< PRESENT DAY >>>
AURELIA
"Stand!" a voice barks from outside my cell.
I eye the expensive leather boots beneath the door.
If I had boots like that, my feet wouldn't be freezing on this damn concrete slab.
"Don't make me repeat myself."
Rough fingers clamp around my arm, yanking me upright. My teeth grit as the cell spins around me. The sharp stench of bleach floods my nostrils as my bare feet sting from the cold floor.
"Don't get killed, Goldie," someone sneers as the guard pulls me out.
The door screeches shut behind me.
"She's definitely getting it today," another laughs.
"They should take that crying imp too. She's been disturbing my beauty sleep."
They're talking about the girl in the cell opposite mine.
She's been crying all through the night.
Even now, as I spare a glance behind me, she's still sobbing quietly—shaking, even, as snot leaks out of her nose.
If only she knew—crying never helps. If it did, I'd have cried my way out of this hellhole long ago.
As I'm dragged past the last row of cages, a girl with busted lips drags a bloody finger across her throat, mouthing, "Good riddance, bitch."
How sweet.
More heads peek out from the bars, watching me get dragged away.
I don't even know what I did wrong this time.
I've always been quiet. Always.
Ever since I found myself here.
I think I was nine when the Drevane took me… or eight.
It's been years now. I've stopped counting. The days blur together.
Sometimes I forget what season it is. What year it is.
The Drevane doesn't waste time reminding us how miserable our lives are.
The guards are the worst of them all.
From beating girls who rebel to killing the ones that don't get sold in an auction, it's sickening how they get away with kidnapping more of us, piling us up in disgusting cages and selling us like cattle after we come of age.
It's even harder to make friends when all the girls brought here are always crying, keeping to themselves, or being downright bullies.
"Stupid bitch—"
The guard groans, retrieving a taser from his back pocket. He points it at the cage to our left, and I hold in a wince as the occupant falls face-first into the bars, blood spurting from her mouth.
"Anyone else want a taste?" he growls.
No one dares say anything after that.
"I thought so… noisy bitches."
"Back to you," he sneers, tightening his grip on me. "You're up for the next sale," he says as he drags me down another hallway lined with gold-trimmed doors.
"Try not to fall apart before the bidding starts."
He leans into the side of my face, and I hold in a grimace as he runs his slimy tongue down my cheek to the base of my jaw.
"If no one bids on you, I'll be more than happy to fuck that sweet virgin cunt of yours," he laughs, adjusting the bulge in his trousers.
My skin crawls.
Wait—
Did he say… bidding?
"Who's bidding on me?" I ask.
"No one, I hope," he chuckles. "I still haven't had my feel of you yet."
I roll my eyes as he leads me through another hallway with round fluorescent lights.
My worst nightmare has finally come true.
The Drevane made sure we were clean and perfect virgins because buyers always spent good money on something that hadn't been touched.
I grit my teeth thinking about all the worst possibilities.
If no one buys me, I'll be punished—maybe even killed.
We stop in front of a wide metal door.
The guard opens it and pushes me unceremoniously inside. I hear the door click behind me.
At the far end of the garish, sterile-looking room, a bald woman with a fat, disinterested stare eyes me down like a lab rat.
"Strip! And toss those rags in the basket in front of you."
I do as she says as she tosses me a transparent black gown.
"Our buyers need to see those tits," is all she says.
After dressing up—no shoes, typical—I'm given a bowl of fresh water to wash my face.
I brush my hair, and for a brief, hilarious second, I wonder if she'll offer me lip gloss.
She doesn't.
"Smile," she instructs, handing me a mirror.
I don't.
I look like a ghost trying to play human.
My cheeks are so hollow you could shape an apple into them—and don't get me started on the huge scar on my lips that runs down to my neck.
My reward for fighting off a guard who thought jerking off over my head was a fun way to spend the night.
Some guards still found ways to get off—jerking off through the bars, making us touch them.
They called it restraint. I called it routine.
"Do I get a cut of the sale price, or is this strictly a no-benefits situation?"
She blinks at me like I've grown two heads.
I honestly think I have.
"Being funny, huh? Let's hope someone actually spends a penny on your skinny ass."
I almost spit back, Maybe I'd have an ass, if you fed us more than moldy scraps—but I choke it down.
They brand my file number onto my wrist with invisible ink—something that glows under the light in the auction room… so I'm told.
I've seen it once when one of the girls was dragged back to the cell half-conscious and naked.
Her offense? No one wanted to buy her.
"Three-oh-four," they'd called her, like she was a bag of flour.
Today, I'm 306.
The bald lady instructs me to keep shut whilst in the auction room and to speak only when a buyer asks me to.
The next thing I know, I'm being shoved into a holding room with velvet curtains and harsh light streaming down my face.
A wall of tinted glass separates me from the crowd. I can't see them, but they can see me.
"We have prettier girls, sir—" I hear from outside the door in the back.
"He said move," a heavily accented voice cuts in, and the next thing, I hear the sound of a whimper followed by a sharp thud—like a fist connecting with someone's face.
Almost instantly, the door creaks, and I gasp, looking up—just slightly—as a tall figure steps into the private viewing room.
I can't quite see his face since all the light is focused on me, shrouding the spaces where the light doesn't touch in shadows.
All I see is the shape of the person—a man. Probably a buyer?
He moves in the shadows, and I catch the swirl of smoke as he brings a fat cigar to his lips and lights it, taking a long drag without taking his eyes off me.
He's massive. Broad shoulders. Sharp edges. Like a statue carved for violence.
Feeling suddenly self-conscious and more than aware of my blatant nudity, I cross my arms over my chest, trying to hide the worst of it.
It doesn't help.
He says nothing as he prowls around me, leaving thick clouds of smoke in his wake.
I find myself staring back at him—the shadowed figure.
My mouth aches to break the silence, but I quickly remember the bald woman's warning: speak only when spoken to.
My breath hitches, throat tightening, as I feel his gaze burning into my skin like acid.
I tell myself it's the temperature of the room that's making my nipples harden and not the heat of his stare.
He takes a step closer, and a low, unnatural tingle crawls up my spine—like a hand ghosting across the back of my neck.
It doesn't feel human. Not like a chill or nerves. It feels… wrong.
I gasp.
"What are you—" I whisper.
A knock at the door interrupts me—or rather, saves me from getting in trouble with the Drevane.
"The show's about to start, Boss," a heavily accented voice calls out, and all at once, the weird feeling recedes.
I stare wide-eyed at this—this man.
It's almost like he had me in a trance for a moment.
After one last drag of his cigar, he turns his back to me.
"Wait—"
Too late.
He disappears through the door without sparing a glance back.
I didn't even know I'd been holding my breath till I heave a sigh of—relief? I don't even know.
What the hell even was that?
The sound of a buzzer disrupts my thoughts as I swallow the lump in my throat.
Drying my sweaty palms on my sheer dress, I brace myself for the worst.