Chapter 44
“How many days has it been?” I whispered to myself, voice foreign, hoarse, broken.
My throat burned, dry and raw, each breath rasping through the pain of days without enough water, each scream clawing out only to be swallowed by the cold concrete walls.
My wrists throbbed where the ropes bit deep into my skin, purple halos forming around the marks. My ankles ached with every tiny shift. My ribs felt like splintered wood, each inhale stabbing through me.
I dared not to count the blows, the sharp punctuation of hands, rods, boots, all delivered with an intent to erase me.
The mirror was cheap, crooked, mounted haphazardly on the wall. I didn’t want to look at it. I told myself I wouldn’t. But like some cruel magnet, my eyes drifted, drawn despite me. And when I finally forced myself to meet that reflection, I didn’t recognize her.
Was that…me?
Bruises darkened my cheeks, swollen and angry.
My lips cracked, bleeding, the corners stiff with old blood.
My hair hung matted and greasy, sticking to my face.
My body slumped, wrists and ankles chafed and raw, ropes still biting deep.
I was hollow. A shadow. The shell of the Versace they wanted me to be. Small, weak, broken, utterly human.
I hated it.
I hated how tired I was. How much I had become nothing.
A cough ripped through me. My lungs burned. My throat screamed for air that never seemed enough. I forced my eyes back to the mirror, swallowing bile and shame.
The reflection didn’t just stare. It mocked me. This is who you are now. The princess? The mafia heir? Just a girl chained and broken.
Tears traced down my cheeks, silent at first, then streaming, burning hot. My mind frayed at the edges. Pain, exhaustion, humiliation—they collided inside me, overwhelming every rational thought.
My eyelids fluttered. I felt detached, floating somewhere between consciousness and nightmare.
And then I saw it.
Faint, blurry, curling like smoke in the corners of my vision. Shapes shifted. And suddenly, I was running.
Free.
Chains gone. Ropes shredded on the concrete floor. Cold steel replaced with warm grass under bare feet. Sunlight, bright and piercing, kissed my skin, made my bones ache with Its warmth. The men who had hurt me? Gone. Screaming, stumbling, chasing shadows I couldn’t see.
And then I saw him.
Aurelio Kashani. Arms outstretched. His eyes ablaze with urgency and relief. “Run, Vee! Come to me!”
I ran. Legs pumping, muscles screaming with disbelief and elation. Each stride shook off the weight of ropes, pain, betrayal. Behind him, Dominic shouted my name. “Come to me, Ara!”
I split the difference, reaching toward both of them. Heart hammering like war drums. But no matter how fast, how desperate, how feral I became, they slipped further, distorted, mocking my hope.
And then—pain.
Sharp. Blinding. Hair yanked violently. I crashed to the concrete, knees scraping, arms flailing, breath stolen.
Zorian.
Eyes wild, bloodied, insane. Hands gripping my hair, holding me in place. “You stupid mafia bitch,” he spat, voice raw, hoarse, mirroring the rage and fear I had once trusted him to feel for me.
“You think you can hurt the high people and go free? Survive this?”
Everything went cold. Sunlight, grass, hope, all vanished. Replaced by the stark, violent reality of him.
“I’ve betrayed you,” he screamed, shaking me as if my head alone could carry all my sins. “And now I will take your life for it!”
I screamed. Raw. Ragged. It cut through the hallucination, through chains of pain.
I woke up.
Mirror glinting back at me. Broken reflection. Blood on my lips, throbbing wrists, splintered ribs. Concrete cold, unyielding under my back.
I gasped, curling into myself, trying to anchor. But terror lingered, clawing at my mind, the twisted face of Zorian, the fleeting hope of Aurelio and Dominic. They were relentless, mocking, inescapable.
I reached for the mirror, fingertips grazing the cracked surface as blood seeped through my finger.
The Reflection staring back—hollow, broken, alive but barely. Not the Versace who commanded respect, walked the world as heir and shadow. Hollow.
I closed my eyes. I tried to remember. Tried to hold onto the version of myself who could fight, survive, escape. Memory slipped through me like water. My head throbbed. Every movement sent sparks of agony through my ribs, wrists, ankles.
I wanted to scream. Lash out. But what good was screaming when no one would hear? Fighting? Pointless, Zorian had betrayed me.
Of all people.
I remembered his face. Bloody. Wild. Eyes full of hatred and fear, shaking me, dragging me down into pain and humiliation.
I whimpered alone under the crushing weight of isolation, betrayal, exhaustion.
Footsteps again. I froze. Not from fear, but calculation, hunger in their movement, watching and waiting for me to break.
“She’s losing it,” one whispered.
The words cut sharper than any fist. I was losing it. Maybe they were right. Maybe Versace, the one who could fight, who could command, who could survive, was already long gone.
But no.
I am Versace. I will survive and I will fight my way out.
And then they started again.
The first blow landed on my ribs. Pain exploded. I gasped, tasting blood, trying to curl into myself. Another strike. Head snapped, pain lanced through my skull, lungs on fire.
Then the cold.
Water poured over me.
I choked, sputtered gasping for air, every drop igniting raw nerve endings. My muscles burned, my mind screamed: Fight! Fight! Fight!
I spat blood and water. “You bastards,” I rasped. Eyes burning. Body trembling, bruises forming like a map of pain, yet I refused to break.
Dragged across concrete, palms scraped raw, ribs screaming, head pounding. And then… alone again.
Curled, trembling. Hours or days, time was meaningless. It reminded me how no one was coming for me.
Time mocked me.
First food came. Hard bread, dented water cup. Even the prisoners in the House of Versace got clean cutlery. I barely touched it. Tiny bites, tiny sips. I forced it down my throat, feeding myself with the delusion that it was my favourite meal.
Hallucinations flickered.
Aurelio was running, Dominic screaming, Zorian’s bloody face appearing, tearing hope from my chest. Each time, I screamed. Every time.
The ropes bit deeper. Pain flared. The mirror reflected hollow, broken me. But I pressed my face into the concrete and whispered, hoarse, “I am Versace. I am Versace. I am Versace?”
I didn’t know how much longer I could endure this. How many more blows or cold-water torture or hallucinations my mind could take.
I- I want my mother.
I wanted her arms around me. I remembered how she had thrown a teacup at me the year I left home.
I’d take that teacup to my face any day over this agony.
I was strong. But it was becoming impossibly hard not to beg.
I couldn’t take it anymore.
Is—is anyone there? I-I’m ready to beg. To beg for my sanity.