Chapter 27
ISABELLA
They moved me after I refused Flavio’s offer.
The new room is smaller. Darker. No fluorescent lights here, just blackness so complete my own hands disappear when I hold them in front of my face.
The floor is rougher concrete, cold seeping through my clothes until the chill and my body are the same. The walls press closer.
Punishment. For saying no.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Minutes? Hours? Time loses meaning when there’s nothing to measure it against. No light cycle. No sounds of routine. Just darkness and silence and the inside of my own head.
In the other room, I could hear the compound. Doors and footsteps and things I didn’t want to name. But at least I could track what was happening. At least reality had a shape. Here, there’s nothing. Just quiet that isn’t peace.
“Okay,” I breathe. “Okay, okay, okay.”
I’ve spent years researching the Benedettis. The files. The survivor testimonies. The reports from raids that came too late. I know what happens in places like this. What these people do to the women they take.
Sofia has endured this since she was fifteen. The thought cuts through everything else. Years under their control. Years of whatever happens in the rooms I can no longer hear. Learning to disappear inside herself until there was nothing left to hurt.
My baby sister. The one who talked through every movie, unable to sit still in her own skin.
Who left rambling voicemails that went on for three minutes because she couldn’t figure out how to end them.
“Okay, Izzy, I think this is the part where I hang up, but wait, one more thing.” Always one more thing.
Sofia was never quiet. Not once in fifteen years.
I’ve been here, what? Six hours? Eight? I’ve already lost track.
I wrap my arms around myself. My thumbnail goes to my teeth. I bite down until I taste copper.
“I’m coming, Sof.” The words escape me before I catch them. Cracked. Useless. Swallowed by the dark. “I’m right here. I’m so close.”
No answer. Just concrete and silence.
I left her. I saved myself and left her in that house, and now she’s been living this nightmare while I was free.
“Stop.” My own voice, sharp in the silence. “You can’t fix this from here.”
I force myself to breathe. In. Out. The cold air tastes like concrete and dust.
“Focus.” The word, cracked and thin. “Come on, Vitale. Focus. Not on the horror. Not on Sofia.” I press my back against the wall. Let the cold center me. “What do you know. Start there.”
I know I’m in a Benedetti building. I know Flavio wants what I have. I know they moved me here as punishment for refusing his offer.
“What do you have.”
Nothing. No tools. No screens. No code to run. Just my brain, my body, and a room I can’t see the edges of.
“Then use the brain. That’s always been enough before.”
Lorenzo. His name surfaces like it’s been waiting for an opening. I’ve been pushing it down, pushing it away, focusing on Flavio and the offer and the choice I had to make. But now there’s nothing left to focus on. Just quiet and the man who locked me in a room.
I’ve replayed it a hundred times since they took me. The hallway. His grip on my shoulders. Shaking. The forehead kiss. And then the door swinging shut between us. The last thing I saw was his eyes. Wild. Desperate. Like he was watching me slip through his fingers.
“I can’t lose you.” He said it through the door. His voice cracked on every word.
My wrists ache. I shift them against the cold concrete and the pain flares fresh, grounding me.
He was scared. More scared than I’ve ever seen him. And Lorenzo doesn’t do scared. Lorenzo walks into violence like other people walk into their kitchens. But he was scared of losing me.
“That doesn’t make it okay,” I say to the dark. Testing the words. I sound foreign in this room. “You still locked me up. You still took away my choice.”
The fury is still here. Hot. Mine. He treated me like glass. After the files I’d cracked and the intel I’d gathered and the risks I’d taken.
“Bastard.” The word feels good in my mouth. Solid. “You absolute bastard.”
The anger burns. I let it.
Something drips in the corner. Steady. Rhythmic. I count the drops because my fingers need a task and there’s no keyboard in the black. Seven. Eight. Nine.
But.
I press my back harder against the wall. The cold bites through my shirt, into my spine. My teeth are chattering. When did that start?
“She asked for me. At the end.” In my memory. The kitchen. The rosary between his fingers. He couldn’t look at me when he said it. “I wasn’t there.”
Over a decade carrying that. The last time he let someone he loved face danger alone, she died without him. And then I showed up.
A sound outside. Footsteps, maybe, in the corridor above. I freeze. Listen. They pass. Just the building being a building.
My breathing is too fast. I slow it down. In through the nose. Out through the mouth.
“He panicked,” I say out loud. Sorting it. The way I sort data when the patterns won’t show themselves. “He didn’t calculate. Didn’t strategize. He broke.”
A desperate, terrified choice to keep me safe the only way his broken wiring knew how.
It’s still wrong. Fear isn’t an excuse for taking away my choices. But panic and calculation aren’t the same animal.
I pull my knees tighter to my chest. The concrete is stealing my heat. My hip throbs where I hit the road, and the scrape on my cheek stings every time I shift.
“Izzy, you hold grudges like they’re paying you rent.”
Sofia. She was twelve. I’d been ignoring our cousin for two weeks over a borrowed hoodie.
“You’re right, Sof.” I whisper it. “That was always your department.”
She forgave everyone. Even when they didn’t deserve it. Even when I wanted to fight her battles for her and she’d just shrug and say, “It’s fine, Iz. People are just messy.”
“People are just messy,” I repeat to the dark. Sofia’s words in my mouth.
Another voicemail surfaces. The last one she ever left me.
Two days before she was taken. “Okay, Izzy, I know you’re in class or whatever, but I made these brownies and they’re terrible, like, impressively terrible, and I saved you one because you have to witness this disaster with me.
Call me back. Love you. Oh wait, one more thing.
” A pause. A giggle. “Never mind, I forgot what it was. Bye.”
I never called her back.
My eyes burn. I press the heels of my palms against them. Hard enough to see sparks.
“Focus, Vitale.” Rough. Commanding. “You can fall apart later.”
Lorenzo is messy. The man who locked me in a room is the same man who learned how I take my coffee before I told him, who told me about his mother, who kissed me like I was the first thing he’d wanted in years and it terrified him.
Not because what he did was okay. It wasn’t. We’re going to have words about this. Loud ones. But I can choose not to let this destroy us before we’ve even had a chance.
“We’re going to have a screaming match,” I tell the ceiling. “I’m going to throw something at his head. Something soft. Maybe a pillow.” A pause. “Maybe a book.”
In the cold, alone, shivering on a concrete floor in a trafficking compound, my lips pull. Not quite a smile. Near enough.
I’m so tired.
“I want to give us a chance.” The sentence lands between us. Quiet. Real. Tested on the air like I’m checking if it’ll survive outside my head. “I want to see what we could be if we both stopped running.”
I’m shaking. Not from the cold.
“I want—”
Sound. I freeze. Listen.
Distant. Muffled by concrete and distance. But unmistakable. Not the routine sounds of the compound. Not doors or footsteps or the things I’ve trained myself not to imagine. This is different. Sharper. The rhythm of chaos instead of routine.
Gunfire.
I strain to hear, pressing myself against the wall. More sounds. Shouting, maybe, though I can’t make out words. Something crashes. An alarm starts wailing, high and piercing even through the concrete.
The building is waking up. And not in a good way.
“Come on.” I’m on my feet. Shaking. But steady. Pressing my palms flat against the wall like I can feel the answer through the concrete.
He came. I don’t know it for certain. Could be law enforcement. Could be a rival operation. Could be anything.
But I know.
Lorenzo is here.
And I’ve already made my choice. I’m done. With the fear. With the running.
“Done,” I say to the dark. And mean it.
If I survive this, I’m choosing him.
The sounds outside are getting louder. Closer.
I orient toward the door even though I can’t see it. Ready.
“Come find me,” I whisper. “And when you do, we’re having a conversation about locking people in rooms.” I swallow. “But first, I’m going to let you hold me.”
The gunfire is closer now. I stand in the black and wait for him to tear it apart.