"Please, Luca... I'm your sister."
The words scraped out of Stella throat like broken glass, each syllable a struggle against the burning thirst that had become her constant companion. Three days. Maybe four. She'd lost count of how long she'd been chained in this basement, in the darkness that smelled of mold and her own fear.
Above her, floorboards creaked. Footsteps—familiar, measured, the sound of expensive Italian leather against hardwood. Her eldest brother was pacing again, and for a desperate moment, hope flickered in her chest. Maybe he'd come to release her. Maybe he'd realized this had gone too far. Maybe the brother who used to carry her on his shoulders when she was five, who taught her to ride a bike, who promised to always protect her, was still somewhere inside the man who'd put her down here.
The basement door opened with a metallic groan that made her flinch. Light spilled down the stairs—harsh, blinding after so much darkness—and Stella squeezed her eyes shut against the assault. When she could finally bear to look, Luca stood at the bottom of the stairs, impeccably dressed in a charcoal suit that probably cost more than most people's monthly rent. His dark hair was perfectly styled, his face freshly shaved. He looked like he was heading to a business meeting, not visiting his sister in her tomb.
"Luca." Her voice cracked. "Please. Whatever I did, whatever you think I know, I swear I'll never tell anyone. I'll leave Italy. I'll disappear. You'll never have to see me again. Just... please let me go."
He studied her with eyes as cold and empty as a winter sea, and Stella felt something inside her chest crack wider. This wasn't her brother. This was a stranger wearing Luca's face, a man who could look at her—filthy, bruised, chained to a wall like an animal—without a flicker of emotion.
"You should have minded your own business, *stellina*." The old nickname felt like a slap. Little star. He used to call her that when she was small, when she still believed her three older brothers hung the moon just for her. "Did you really think you could stumble onto information about our operations and we'd just let it slide? That we'd trust you to keep quiet?"
"I wasn't going to tell anyone!" The desperation in her voice made her hate herself, but she couldn't stop. Survival instinct was a beast with teeth, and it was tearing through her pride with savage efficiency. "Luca, I love you. I love all of you. I would never—"
"Love." He laughed, a short, bitter sound that echoed off the concrete walls. "You want to talk about love? You know what I love, Stella? I love this family. I love the empire our father built, the legacy we're expanding. I love the power we have, the respect, the fear in people's eyes when they hear the Romano name. And you know what I love more than my naive little sister who can't keep her nose out of places it doesn't belong?"
He crouched down in front of her, close enough that she could smell his cologne—something expensive and subtle that reminded her of Sunday dinners when they were all still a real family, before she knew what monsters looked like.
"I love not going to prison," he continued, his voice dropping to a whisper that somehow felt more threatening than if he'd shouted. "I love not having our entire operation exposed because you overheard a phone call and decided to play detective. I love the certainty that comes from eliminating threats, no matter where they come from."
"I'm not a threat," Stella whispered, tears finally spilling down her cheeks, cutting clean tracks through the grime on her face. "I'm your sister."
"You *were* my sister." Luca stood, brushing imaginary dust from his knees as if touching the floor near her had somehow contaminated him. "Now you're a liability. A problem that needs to be solved."
The casual cruelty of his words hit her like a physical blow. "You're going to kill me."
It wasn't a question. She could see it in his eyes, in the set of his shoulders, in the way he was already turning away from her like she was nothing. Like she was already dead.
"No," Luca said, pausing on the bottom step. "I'm not going to do anything. You're going to die down here, alone, and when someone finally finds your body—if they find it—it'll look like you ran away. Tragic, really. The beloved baby sister of the Romano family, gone without a trace. We'll even hold a memorial service. Mother will cry beautifully."
"Luca—"
"Enzo wanted to make it quick," he continued, speaking over her as if she hadn't said anything at all. "A bullet, clean and simple. But I think this is better. This gives you time to reflect on your choices, on what happens when you betray family trust. Consider it a learning experience."
"A learning experience?" Hysteria bubbled up in her throat, sharp and acidic. "I'm going to die down here, and you're calling it a *learning experience*?"
He shrugged, one shoulder lifting in elegant indifference. "Perhaps 'cautionary tale' is more accurate. For anyone else who might think about crossing us."
He started up the stairs, and panic seized Stella with clawed hands. "What about Paolo?" she called after him, voice breaking. "Does he know you're doing this? Does he agree?"
Luca paused, glancing back over his shoulder. In the harsh light from upstairs, his face was all sharp angles and deep shadows, more skull than living man. "Paolo brought you your last meal, didn't he? Two days ago, I believe. Did he say anything then? Did he try to help you?"
The memory knifed through her—Paolo, the brother closest to her in age, the one who used to stay up late helping her with homework, who taught her to drive, who she'd told all her secrets to. He'd come down those stairs with a plate of food and a bottle of water, set them just out of her reach because the chains wouldn't let her move far enough to grab them, and walked away without saying a single word. Without even looking at her.
She'd screamed herself hoarse that day, begging him to come back, to at least push the food closer. He never did. By the time she finally managed to hook the plate with her foot and drag it within reach, the food was cold and she was so weak with hunger that she'd eaten it anyway, crying the entire time.
"He didn't help me," Stella whispered.
"No," Luca agreed. "He didn't. Because he understands what you never did—that blood doesn't mean loyalty. Loyalty is proven through sacrifice, through putting the family's interests above your own selfish morality. You failed that test, *stellina*. And now you pay the price."
"I hope you rot in hell," she spat, finding some final reserve of defiance in the depths of her despair. "All three of you. I hope whatever you're protecting destroys you from the inside out. I hope you never know a moment's peace. I hope—"
The door slammed shut, cutting off her curse mid-sentence and plunging her back into absolute darkness. She heard the lock turn, heard Luca's footsteps retreating across the floor above, heard the faint sound of a door closing somewhere in the distance.
Then: nothing.
Silence pressed in on her from all sides, thick and suffocating. Stella pulled against her chains one more time, knowing it was useless, feeling the metal bite into the raw wounds around her wrists. The pain was almost welcome—proof that she was still alive, still feeling, still here.
But for how much longer?
Her body was already shutting down. She could feel it in the way her thoughts were getting fuzzy around the edges, in how her heartbeat seemed too slow, too faint. Dehydration. Starvation. Her biology textbooks from university had covered this—the stages of dying from thirst and hunger, how the body consumed itself trying to survive, how consciousness faded in and out until finally, mercifully, the brain just stopped.
She'd thought those chapters were academic, theoretical. She never imagined she'd experience them firsthand, courtesy of the brothers who were supposed to love her.
Stella let her head fall back against the concrete wall, staring into darkness so complete it felt like drowning. She thought about her mother, who died when Stella was ten—cancer, quick and brutal, leaving four children and a father who threw himself into "business" to cope with the grief. She wondered what her mother would think if she could see them now. Would she be proud of the empire her sons had built? Or would she be horrified by what they'd become?
She thought about the phone call that had started all of this—Luca's voice drifting through his office door, talking about "product" and "shipment" and "the girls." She'd thought he was discussing inventory for one of their legitimate businesses at first. The Romanos owned restaurants, real estate, a chain of high-end boutiques across Italy. But then he'd laughed, made a joke about "breaking in the new merchandise," and something in Stella's stomach had curdled.
She'd done what any curious person would do—she'd investigated. Quietly, carefully, using the access her family name gave her to look into shipping manifests and financial records. And she'd found the truth beneath the legitimate veneer: her family trafficked women. Young women, girls barely out of their teens, moved across borders like cargo, sold to the highest bidder, their lives reduced to transactions in ledger books.
When she'd confronted Luca, she'd been naive enough to think he'd be ashamed. That he'd stop. That blood and love and basic human decency would mean something.
Instead, she'd ended up here.
"I should have gone to the police," she whispered to the darkness, though even as she said it, she knew it wouldn't have mattered. The Romanos owned half the police force in their territory. Her report would have disappeared, and she'd have ended up in this basement even faster.
There was no winning. There never had been.
Time lost meaning. Stella drifted in and out of consciousness, her thoughts fragmenting like shattered glass. She dreamed of water—rivers, oceans, rain on her tongue. She dreamed of her mother, young and healthy, reaching out to her with warm hands. She dreamed of running through fields of sunflowers, free and weightless, with chains that had turned to dust.
When the end came, it was almost gentle. Her heartbeat slowed to a whisper. Her breathing became shallow, then stopped altogether. And in those final moments, as darkness pulled her down into depths no light could reach, Stella Romano's last coherent thought wasn't of hatred or revenge.
It was simply, "I wish I could have lived."
Then nothing.
Then everything.