Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
SLOANE
T he sounds of the night surround me. There is laughter from a couple as they snuggle closer into one another as they see me leaning against the storefront. I know what I must look like.
Mom’s entertaining again; who knows how long the party will last? I’m unkempt, hungry, and afraid to go home. I don’t want to have a run-in with any of her Johns.
Not again.
The last time, she’d barely kept one of them from raping me. She thought he would’ve gotten my virginity. She said as much when she tugged him off and threw him out—wanted me to praise her for doing what was decent. All because she let him go without collecting what she was owed.
So then, I owed her.
It’s always that way with her.
With her kind.
The narcissistic.
“They need to clean this area up,” a passerby tells her husband. Loud enough that I could hear her, but veiled enough to make shame stretch inside me.
I helped at the shelter downtown today. It doesn’t pay much, but it’s a job. There aren’t many places that’ll allow a street kid to work, not when sometimes you don’t look the best, smell the best, or have the best clothes.
This world is materialistic on its best day. Downright fucking rude at its worst.
A throat clears, and the hand waving a sandwich before my face is one I know well.
With a gold pinky ring on his stout finger, Giovanni looks down at me with an annoyed glint.
“How many times do we have to do this, kiddo?”
I snatch the sandwich from him, too hungry to argue over the gesture.
“I’m not dancing. That’s how she started. I won’t do it,” I answer sternly.
“Yeah?” He crouches down, coming at eye level with me. “And what happens when winter shows up? When your teeth are chattering, and your bones ache? When your belly is hungry and your soul is weary? The streets aren’t the place for you, beautiful.”
His words echo through the chambers of my heart, making the lining feel too thick to beat. “And I’m meant for a stage? That’s what you think?”
I sink my teeth into the sandwich, ripping a massive bite off and chewing the best I can.
Reaching into his pocket with a sigh, he tugs out a water bottle.
“No. But I think you’re meant to survive—at any cost. I can see it in your eyes, kiddo. You just need a place to kick off from, somewhere to start your journey.”
I swallow, uncapping the water and gulping it down. I don’t think I realized how thirsty I was before.
Pity grows in his eyes like a rose beneath the sun’s rays. I can’t stand to see it.
He’s been hassling me for weeks to come and work for him. I’m eighteen now, of age, for a club like his. But my mother started as a dancer, and that landed her regular clients and a drug problem she refuses to curb for the likes of me.
Dad left me behind. He took his own life, forgetting he had someone left to live for.
Someone to raise.
Because even at eighteen, I feel like a newborn babe who still needs her parents.
“Come on, kid. You’ll be great. I’ll keep you straight. My girls are like my family.”
I turn and look deep into his eyes, wondering if that statement means he’s a bit too friendly with his girls. It’s a gamble. But if he genuinely means it, it could be my fresh start.
It could be my chance to get out of here.
“Think about it. You’ll be able to get your own place,” he adds. “Shit, I have a couple of empty apartments now you can use as a landing pad until you get the money up for your own spot.”
My stomach twirls at the idea, but it’s likely from having food inside it for the first time in two days.
“When would I start?” I ask.
“Whenever you want. Tonight?”
I stand, holding my food tight to my chest. “I’m tired,” I admit to him.
It’s his first test. Will he push me to bend to his will? Or does he genuinely think of his girls like family?
“How about this?” he starts, straightening his jacket. “I’ll go with you and help you get your things from your mom’s house. Then we will get you settled at the apartment. You can take a couple of days to get rested. You can come on Friday night for a fitting and dance test.”
My body unfurls, letting go of the stress I’ve carried since the day I lost my virginity in the alleyway. That day marked the end of my innocent sense of wonder. The childish magic faded, replaced by a stark reality that felt both liberating and heavy all at once.
“Deal.”
His smile is genuine and warm, and when he puts his arm around me and helps me to his car by the curb, I don’t fight it.
I sink into the chair and let its plush body hug me.
This moment will either change me or be the defining moment that breaks me.
But either way, I’m ready.
Gasping awake, I try to sit up. To which my handcuffs rattle, and the railing tugs me back down.
Fuck.
I haven’t thought of that day in so long. I wipe away tears with my other hand. Sometimes, I wonder if Giovanni knew what he did that day and if he realized how my life took a 180-degree turn because of him.
He knows. He has to.
Often, I’d look around the club and know that one or more of the other girls were like me.
Orphaned girls without a direction. He stepped in and changed our paths. I’ll be forever thankful to him for that, even if I never have the words to give him.
“Dreaming of me, are you?” a voice says, and a shudder starts at the base of my spine and winds its way through my body slowly.
Turning, I find Matteo at my bedside to the right of the bed.
Beside him are machines and tubes that all lead into my body.
“Dreaming of what a sweet revenge it would’ve been to have finished the job.” I lift my lip over my teeth in pure disgust.
He shakes his head, crossing his left leg over his right. “Spiteful little creature. But girls like you are all the same. You probably grew up in some gutter with a whore for a mother and no man to teach you how to behave.”
I scoff. But I can’t deny his words. As infuriating as they are, they have some truth to them.
“Mm, just as I thought.”
I keep my mouth closed and look at the ceiling above. It’s a deluge of wires and pipes traveling across with so much purpose—unlike me, who’s halted in her tracks once again, feeling useless.
“You have guts, you know that? I’ve never witnessed such balls, not even on one of my men. Not even on the so-called mafioso men I’ve come toe to toe with.” He stands, coming closer.
My insides tighten.
“Well, you haven’t met men then,” I spew.
He laughs, and it’s not laced with malice. It’s only dripping with amusement. Something I’d think a man like him is devoid of.
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe I haven’t. But I’ve met my match in you, baby girl.”
His hand comes down on my cheek, thumb rubbing back and forth in stomach-churning swipes.
I swallow down the bile that rises at his touch.
“Don’t touch me.” It’s all I can manage over the nausea.
He leans in, breath fanning over my face. It smells of cigarettes and booze. “Hermosa, you’ll do well to get used to my touch. Because it’ll be all you feel for the rest of your days. How many days you survive is up to you.”
I swallow, keeping my voice as silent as possible as I drop my eyes away from the ceiling, my gaze connecting with his.
They’re so empty—two spheres with death floating at their surface.
“I will survive you as I survived those that came before you. For a woman like me, I’m certain more will come after you, and I’ll survive even them. It’s who I am.”
My words feed something in him, and his eyes light with something difficult to name, but I recognize it. Even though I likely have only felt it once in my life. When he brushes away a stray tear with his thumb this time, I can almost feel the excitement thrumming from his skin to mine.
I’ve challenged him, and it will be his greatest game.
The thing he gets off on for years to come.
“Do you know what I love most in the world, Hermosa? Of course, you don’t,” he says as he drops his hand and heads to the very edge of the sheet at the end of my bed, where a chest of some kind stands solemnly. “You don’t know me yet, but you will. Don’t you worry.”
A shiver worms beneath my skin as I try to sit up. My body aches from being in this bed for so long.
When he tugs, the drawer opens, metal scraping metal, and the sound only makes my worry dig deeper inside me.
“What I love most is to find the most defiant. The toughest in spirit. Do you know what I do then, Hermosa?”
He turns, a massive wrench in his hand that looks out of place in a medical setting.
“Answer me!” he shouts, veins in his throat working to the surface.
“N—No, I don’t know what you do then,” I manage, genuine fear rushing each sinew of my body.
“I break them.” He grins, coming back to the side of the bed. Ripping the covers back, he fights my movements and my one arm scratching at any part of him I can dig into as he lifts my gown.
Air skitters across my center and a scream rips from my throat as he turns the wrench around, the handle pointed with intent toward my entrance.
“Please, no!” I shout, tears and snot mixing as I fight.
My handcuff slices into flesh and feels as if it digs into bone as blood drips down my arm, wetting the sheets.
“Please, help!” I scream as loud as I can, but no one comes.
Not even the god Luca loves to pray to.
“Go on, Hermosa, let me hear you beg some more,” Matteo says.
He presses one hand into my chest, holding me down as the cold metal slams inside my body, muscle, and tissue, giving way to accept the molestation.
I continue to fight and cry.
In times like these in my life, I lose faith in humanity and the spiritual divine altogether.
How can it be real?
Then, my eyes cast down over a cord on the side of the bed, where the button for the morphine hangs diligently. It’s as if the same god I was taunting is handing me a blessing.
I snatch it into my hand and click the button as many times as I can, breaking apart as Matteo continues his torture.
“We’ll make you into the prettiest, most well-behaved flower, Hermosa. Don’t you worry.”
A blissful fog overtakes my body, and I relax into the mattress, closing my eyes and forgetting the reality around my physical body.
I sink down, down into a place where I’m back with Luca, reading before the fire with nothing but the low crackle of the hearth as music.
But in that solace, I pray.
As hard as I ever have before.