Chapter 25
ISABELLA
He waits until the silence has done its work.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Hours, at least. Long enough for my throat to turn to sandpaper, my lips to crack, my stomach to stop growling and start aching instead.
Long enough for the cold of the concrete to seep through my clothes and settle into my bones.
Long enough to hear the sounds this compound contains.
The building isn’t quiet. I thought it was, at first, when they dragged me in. But in the hours since, I’ve learned its sounds. The industrial hum of machinery somewhere below. Footsteps in corridors. Doors opening and closing. And sometimes, from somewhere far away, sounds that might be screaming.
I tell myself it’s pipes. Old building, bad plumbing. The metal shrieking when pressure builds.
I don’t believe my own thoughts.
She’s alive. Healthy enough. Flavio’s words from before. Sitting in my chest like swallowed glass. Hours of them. Hours of Sofia’s name rattling around this room with me, bouncing off concrete walls that don’t care.
My hip throbs where it hit the gravel. A bruise spreading deep under the skin, flaring every time I shift against the chair. The scrape along my cheek has dried to a tight crust that pulls when I move my jaw.
The door opens. Flavio is back. Same chair. Same crossed legs. Same patient civility. He’s let me marinate long enough.
“Have you been thinking about our conversation?” He adjusts his cuffs. “About your sister?”
“She’s been with my nephew ever since. Stefano. He’s particular about his toys.” Casual. Conversational. Like he’s discussing the weather. “She doesn’t talk anymore. Hasn’t in over a year. But she’s alive. Which is more than most girls in her position can say.”
Stefano. His nephew. Particular about his toys.
The screams that aren’t pipes.
Sofia has been living with those sounds. Has maybe made those sounds herself. All this time. While I was hunting ghosts on message boards and tracing shipping manifests.
“She doesn’t talk anymore.” My own voice, repeating his words back. Hollow. “What did he do to her.”
Not a question. Flavio hears it anyway.
“She could be with you tonight.” He uncrosses his legs, leans forward. “I’m offering you a trade, Ms. Vitale. A simple business transaction.”
“What do you want?”
“Everything you have on the Santoros. Security codes. Financial records. Weaknesses. The compound layout. Guard rotations. Everything you’ve learned in your time as their guest.”
Bile rises. But I don’t look away. “And in exchange?”
“You and your sister walk out of here tonight. Free. No interference. You disappear, we never see you again. Sofia goes back to whatever life she can build. You go back to being invisible.” He gestures. “Everyone wins.”
The offer hangs in the air between us.
Everyone wins. Except the women who stay. The ones who don’t have information to trade. The ones who are “product” and “inventory” and nothing else.
Sofia. I could have her back. Tonight. In hours. All of it ends with one file transfer. One small betrayal. One word.
Yes.
“She’s here?” The question falls from my mouth, shredded. “At this compound?”
“Close enough. One phone call to Stefano, and she’s in your arms within the hour.” Flavio checks his watch, a casual gesture that makes everything worse. “It’s not even midnight yet. You could be gone before sunrise. A ghost again, if you’ll forgive the pun.”
Within the hour. Sofia, with chocolate on her chin, laughing at burned brownies. Sofia, waving from the porch as I drove away to college. “You’ll come back, right, Izzy?” “Of course I will. I promise.”
I broke that promise. I left her in that house with Paolo and our mother and all the chaos I was so desperate to escape. And then she was gone. And I’ve been hunting ever since, trying to fix what I broke. And now she’s an hour away. In a place where women scream and no one comes to help them.
Say yes.
Lorenzo flashes through my mind. The way he looked at me in the hallway before he pushed me into that panic room. The forehead kiss I still feel on my skin. The words he didn’t say. But also the door closing. The lock engaging.
Flavio is watching me. Reading every flicker.
“Think about it,” he says, soft and reasonable. “Lorenzo Santoro locked you in a room and left you behind. Is that the act of a partner? Or a jailer?”
The words hit hard. Because they’re not wrong.
“You owe him nothing,” Flavio continues. “You gave him information. He gave you a cage.”
Say yes. The voice is louder now. More insistent. You can end this. Tonight. One word. Sofia has been suffering the whole time. In a place like this.
My throat aches for water. My wrists burn. Somewhere in the building, something crashes and someone cries out.
I close my eyes.
And I think about Lorenzo. Not the cage. Not the lock. The other things.
The mug on my desk every morning. Made right. Without being asked.
Giada hugging him and him just standing there. Rigid. Learning to tolerate it because his sister needed to show love that way.
The garden before dawn. His mother’s space.
The way he said my name like it meant everything to him.
Flavio watches me, tracking every micro-expression.
He locked me up because he was terrified of losing me. Not cruelty. Fear. Still wrong. Still a fight we’ll have, if we survive this. But not the same as what Paolo did. Not even close.
And I think about Paolo. My stepfather, who taught me to ride a motorcycle when I was twelve.
Who helped Sofia with her homework. Who sat at our dinner table every Sunday and laughed at our mother’s bad jokes.
Who sold his stepdaughter to cover his gambling debts. Who put Sofia in a place like this.
If I say yes to Flavio and hand Lorenzo’s trust to his enemy, I become the same thing.
I won’t be Paolo.
I open my eyes. Look at Flavio.
“No.” The word comes out quiet but steady.
Flavio’s eyebrows rise. “I’m sorry?”
“No.” Stronger now. Clearer. “I’m not doing it.”
“Ms. Vitale.” His tone takes on a patient, almost paternal quality. “I don’t think you understand what you’re refusing. Your sister is—”
“I understand exactly what I’m refusing.
” I meet his eyes. Hold them. “I’ve spent years hunting the people who betrayed my sister.
My stepfather sold her. My mother knew and said nothing.
Everyone she trusted turned into a knife in her back.
” I don’t shake. I might be trembling against the restraints, but the words hold strong. “I’m not becoming one of them.”
Silence.
“That’s very noble,” he says. “But noble people die in this world, Ms. Vitale. Frequently. Painfully.” He stands, straightening his jacket.
“The Santoros think they’re noble too, you know.
Salvatore built his empire on the same violence every family uses, then drew a line at trafficking and called himself righteous.
” His lip curls. “He held the other families hostage with that rule. Anyone who moved product through his city, he crushed. Not because he cared about the women. Because he cared about control.”
“You’re wrong.” The words are out before I’ve decided to speak.
“Am I?” He tilts his head. “I’ve met men like Salvatore. They don’t ban trafficking out of mercy. They ban it because it’s the one thing that makes the public look too hard. And looking too hard is bad for everyone’s business.”
“Lorenzo Santoro is a weapon. Empty eyes, blood on his hands, nothing inside but violence. Do you think he’ll come for you?”
“Yes.”
“You’re very certain.”
“I am.”
“Even though he locked you in a cage? Even though he left you behind?”
“He was trying to protect me. Did it wrong.” The words taste strange in my mouth. Not a defense, exactly. Just truth.
Flavio laughs. Soft. Amused. “And you know this because?”
“Because I saw his face.” A pause. “He looked destroyed.”
“So you’ll die for a man who imprisons you because he looked sad about it?”
“I’ll trust a man who made a terrible choice because he was afraid. There’s a difference.”
Flavio’s smile fades. Ice replaces it.
“He might not come for you. You understand that? His family, his operation, his life. And a hacker he’s known for a few weeks.”
“Then I die knowing I didn’t sell him out.” I don’t waver. “Knowing I didn’t take someone’s trust and turn it into a weapon. Knowing that when it mattered, I chose to be someone my sister could be proud of.”
“Rather than being alive to ask her opinion on the matter?”
“You love him,” Flavio says. Not a question.
I consider the word. Do I love him? I don’t know. I’ve spent years not letting myself love anything except a sister I couldn’t find. But trust. Trust is harder to find than love.
“I trust him,” I say. “That’s more important.”
Flavio stares at me for a long moment. Then he turns toward the door.
“I’ll give you some time to reconsider. The offer remains until morning.” He pauses at the handle. “After that, I’ll have to find other uses for you. Less pleasant ones.”
The threat hangs in the air. I hold steady.
“He’ll come before morning.”
Flavio smiles. Cold. Sharp. “We’ll see.”
The door closes behind him. The lock engages with a heavy click.
The fluorescent light hums. The concrete doesn’t answer. Somewhere in the building, someone screams.
My eyes shut.
He’ll come.
He has to.