11. Victoria #2
“And some do it because Elena has no shame.”
“I have plenty of shame,” Elena says. “I just leave it at home.”
A few women laugh.
The sound dies quickly.
Near the centre of the room, the man from Lorenzo’s clinic stands watching the floor.
Charcoal suit.
Clean shoes.
Not a hair out of place.
His eyes move across the tables.
Then settle on me.
Elena lowers her voice.
“That’s Salvatore.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Yes.”
Nadia seals a packet and drops it into a crate.
“Depends how attached you are to breathing comfortably.”
Elena shoots her a look.
“What? I’m helping.”
Behind reinforced glass, machinery hums.
I only catch pieces of it through the glare.
Distinct shapes of industrial glassware.
Distillation columns.
Massive steel reactors hum against the concrete floor.
A man in a white hazmat suit tilts a large glass beaker, managing a precise crystallisation process.
“Welcome to the Garden of Eden, babe,” Elena whispers, her gum snapping softly. “The white stuff keeps the accounts fat, but my green girls keep the supply lines smooth.”
My stomach knots.
I spent years teaching students what drugs do after they leave places like this.
The families they destroy.
The lives they hollow out.
Now I am standing where it begins.
Elena notices my expression.
“Yeah,” she says quietly. “Nobody puts that part in the brochure.”
“How do you joke down here?”
She shrugs.
“Because if I stop joking, I’ll start screaming.”
Nadia nods.
“That’s usually how it starts.”
The smell hits me again.
My skin turns to ice, takes me back to Chicago some years ago.
My mother stands in the foyer at three in the morning, her voice raw as she hurls an empty glass at my father’s chest. It shatters against the wall behind him.
He barely flinches. Scotch pours off his breath, but it’s the smell clinging to his wool coat that turns my stomach—the same bitter, synthetic stench of chemicals and rot.
The smell of a cookhouse.
My mother is screaming. About other women. About apartments on the North Side. About the filth he keeps dragging back into our home.
I hate it. Hate the shouting. Hate the smell. Hate the way the Vitale name stains everything it touches.
Years later, I bury myself in stereochemistry. Four years of lecture halls, laboratories, and peer-reviewed journals. Four years hiding behind clean formulas and academic certainty, trying to put as much distance as possible between myself and the world my father inhabits.
Now I’m standing in the heart of that same machine, wearing a grey uniform, my future balanced on a ledger.
“Enough talking.”
Salvatore’s voice cuts through the room.
The tables go silent.
He points at Elena.
“Back to vegetation.”
She sighs dramatically.
“Always when things get interesting.”
“Now.”
Before leaving, she squeezes my arm.
“Don’t let him get inside your head.”
“I heard that,” Salvatore says.
“I know.”
The greenhouse doors close behind her.
The room feels colder.
Salvatore points toward an empty station.
“Table four.”
I walk over to table four.
The stainless-steel surface gleams beneath the fluorescent lights. A digital scale sits in the centre, surrounded by stacks of empty packets, blue nitrile gloves, and a metal scoop resting beside a large glass bin filled with white crystals.
Everything is already laid out.
Everything is waiting.
Nadia watches me from the next station while sealing a packet of her own.
“You know numbers, university girl?”
“I know numbers.”
“Good.” She drops the sealed packet into a crate without looking up. “That’s about the only thing they care about down here.”
Salvatore comes to stand behind me.
I can feel his attention before he speaks.
“Five hundred grams per unit,” he says. “Not close. Not almost. Exact.”
I pull on the gloves and look down at the scale.
The powder sits inches away.
For a moment, my hand doesn’t move.
The sight of it drags against something deep inside me. Years of lectures. Research papers. Students asking questions about addiction and chemical dependency.
Entire communities destroyed by products that began in rooms exactly like this one.
“Problem?” Salvatore asks.
I force my fingers around the scoop.
“No.”
“Then work.”
The metal feels cold in my hand.
I fill the scoop and tip the contents into the first packet.
The numbers climb rapidly across the screen before settling.
498.5.
“Short,” Salvatore says.
“I can read.”
Nadia lets out a quiet snort.
I add a little more.
499.8.
Then a fraction more.
The display settles.
500.0.
For a second, nobody says anything.
The silence feels strangely satisfying.
“Well,” Nadia says at last. “She can count.”
I seal the packet and place it in the crate before reaching for another.
Then another.
The work quickly becomes familiar.
Scoop.
Pour.
Adjust.
Seal.
Around me, the room continues its endless rhythm. Scales blink. Plastic crinkles. Crates scrape across concrete floors.
By the fifth packet, I become aware that people are watching.
“What did they say her name was?” someone asks from farther down the table.
“Victoria,” Nadia answers.
Salvatore’s gaze remains fixed on my hands.
“Professor Vitale.”
The title draws a few curious looks.
I keep working.
Fear is still there.
So is disgust.
Neither has disappeared.
But another thought has begun to push its way to the surface.
If I panic, they will ignore me.
If I fight, they will overpower me.
If I become useful, they will have to listen.
I seal another packet and place it neatly into the crate.
500.0.
Nadia glances sideways.
“You’ve done this before.”
“No.”
“Then why are you so good at it?”
My eyes remain on the scale.
“Because I understand what they’re wasting.”
The words leave my mouth before I can stop them.
The change in the room is immediate.
Nadia stills.
A worker across the table looks up.
Even Salvatore lifts his head.
“What did you say?”
I set the scoop down and turn toward him.
“I said you’re wasting product.”
A muscle shifts in his jaw.
“You think you understand this operation after ten minutes?”
“No.”
I hold his gaze.
“But I understand loss when I see it.”
For a moment, neither of us speaks.
The room seems quieter than before.
Then Salvatore points toward the bin.
“Work.”
I pick up the scoop again.
This time, I can feel him watching me differently.
Not because I managed to hit a target weight.
Because I noticed something.
Because I recognised a flaw between the process and the features of the large-scale synthesis.
The cold air burns the back of my throat as I fill another packet.
The scale flashes 500.0 once more.
And for the first time since arriving at the estate, my thoughts drift away from escape.
Lorenzo Nero believes he brought a hostage into his house.
Standing beneath his operation with a scoop in my hand and a room full of eyes suddenly paying attention, I begin to realise he may have made a mistake.
A hostage is powerless.
An asset can negotiate.
And if I intend to survive this place, I need to become one.