Chapter Seven
Morena
Three weeks later
Ispent the last hours of daylight sitting on the edge of the mattress with the collar around my throat.
Dario had dropped it off that morning along with the rest of what he called “the merchandise package.”
A thin black box. Inside: the same collar I wore every night, only this one had a small silver ring at the front for a leash. A pair of black stilettos with heels high enough to make walking feel like a controlled fall. And nothing else.
No lace. No scraps of fabric. Just the collar, the shoes, and a folded note in his handwriting that said Be ready by eight. They want you sparkling clean, shaved and gorgeous.
I had showered twice already. Scrubbed until my skin felt raw and my nipples ached from the cold water.
The apartment smelled faintly of the cheap soap I used and the fear I couldn’t wash off.
Every time I looked at the empty box on the floor I remembered the things Dario had listed in the car three weeks ago, the cutting, the branding, the cages, the men who bought girls like me and never gave them back.
Camilla’s latest photo sat face-down on the kitchen counter. My stepfather had let me keep that one. I hadn’t been able to look at it since he left. He smiled while he watched my face change.
“Last one until after,” he had said. “Be a good little hole tonight and maybe you’ll get another. Run, and she disappears for real.”
I believed him.
The sky outside the window turned the color of old bruises.
I stood on legs that felt disconnected and walked to the bathroom mirror.
The girl looking back at me was gone behind the eyes.
Dark hair hanging damp past her shoulders.
Collar dark against her throat. Naked except for the shoes I hadn’t put on yet.
I looked like something that had been prepared for slaughter and was only waiting for the knife.
I forced myself to dry my hair. Forced myself to leave it loose the way they preferred.
Forced myself not to think about the man with the tattoos who had walked into that private room and taken Dario’s knife like it belonged to him.
The man who had looked at me over Dario’s shoulder and told me to leave in a voice that lived under my skin.
I had dreamed of him almost every night since. Sometimes the dreams were soft. Most nights they were not.
I hated that my body reacted to the memory of him while the rest of me prepared to be sold.
Eight o’clock came too fast.
A black car waited at the curb. Not Dario’s.
One of the club’s. The driver never looked at my face.
He only opened the back door and waited while I climbed in wearing nothing but the collar and the shoes and a thin coat Dario had allowed me for the ride.
The coat was taken the second we reached the staff entrance of After Dark.
The back rooms were colder than usual. Two women I didn’t know waited with clinical expressions and latex gloves.
They checked me the way livestock is checked.
Mouth. Teeth. Between my legs. They made me turn, bend, hold myself open under the harsh lights while they noted things on a tablet.
I kept my eyes on the floor and counted breaths so I wouldn’t scream.
Secretly, I was thinking about making myself come a few weeks ago. Would they be able to tell?
When they finished one of them fastened a pair of delicate silver chains around my wrists and clipped them together in front of me. Decorative. Inescapable. The other woman adjusted the collar so the silver ring sat centered at the hollow of my throat.
Neither of them said a word.
“Lot twenty-three,” someone said from the doorway. “They’re ready for her.”
My legs almost refused.
They walked me down the narrow hallway that led to the main floor.
The bass from the club throbbed through the walls.
I could smell the expensive perfume and the fear and the old blood that lived in this place.
My bare skin prickled with cold and shame.
Every step made the chains whisper against each other.
Dario was waiting just before the final door.
He looked me over the way a man looks at a car he’s about to sell, assessing, slightly bored, calculating the number. His eyes lingered on the places the women had touched. Then he stepped close enough that only I could hear him.
“Smile if you can manage it,” he murmured. “Or don’t. They like the scared ones better. Remember what happens to the kid if you make this difficult.”
I didn’t answer. There was nothing left to say.
He pushed the door open.
The main floor of After Dark opened in front of me like a throat.
Men in expensive suits packed into every booth and chair.
The air was thick with smoke and money and the particular silence that falls when something helpless is about to be offered up.
I felt every pair of eyes land on my naked body at once.
My nipples tightened under the cold and the scrutiny.
They brought me to the center of the stage.
The auctioneer’s voice rolled out over the speakers, oily and excited.
“Lot twenty-three. Morena Caruso. Eighteen years old. Previously unclaimed. Beautiful. Broken in just the right way. Starting bid… two million.”
I stood under the lights with my hands bound and my eyes on the floor and the collar tight around my throat, and waited for the first paddle to rise. I felt the weight of a familiar stare settle between my shoulder blades like a hand.
I did not look up. I knew what was coming. I only didn’t know yet how much worse it would be.
Paddles lifted immediately. “Two point five.”
“Three.”
“Three point five.”
The numbers climbed like something alive.
I kept my gaze locked on the black stage floor between my feet.
Every time a new voice called out, the chains on my wrists rattled softly.
Cold air moved over my bare skin. My nipples were tight, painful.
I could feel the eyes of every man in the room dragging over me, between my legs, over my breasts, across the faint red marks the collar had left.
They were buying the right to own all of me. To use me. To break whatever was left.
Shame burned so hot I felt sick. I wanted to cover myself.
The chains made it impossible. I wanted to run.
The silver links and the two men standing just offstage made that impossible too.
Somewhere in the crowd Dario was watching, probably smiling, counting the cut he would take.
Camilla’s face flashed behind my eyes, with longer hair, smiling at someone who wasn’t me.
She was the only reason I was standing here instead of dead or worse.
“Four million.”
“Five.”
“Six.”
“Eight.”
I stopped tracking the voices. They all sounded the same, hungry, entitled, imagining what they would do once they owned me. My shoulders curled inward on instinct. Another tear followed the first. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood and forced myself to stay still.
Then the room went quiet in a way that felt wrong. A single voice cut through the club like a blade. “Thirty-five million.”
My head snapped up before I could stop it.
He was standing now, stepping forward into the red light from the shadowed place near the back column where I had felt him watching for weeks.
Tall. Dark hair. Sleeves rolled over the tattoos that covered his forearms and the backs of his hands.
The same cold, focused eyes that had looked at me over Dario’s shoulder while he held a knife to the other man’s stomach.
The stranger. The presence.
The auctioneer’s mouth opened, closed, then opened again.
“Sold,” he stammered. “To Matteo Ventura.”
The name hit me like a second set of chains.
Matteo Ventura.
I had felt him watching for weeks. I had watched him take Dario’s knife without raising his voice. Now the entire underworld knew the man who owned me.
My stomach dropped so hard I thought I might vomit on the stage.
Thirty-five million. The number didn’t feel real. Nothing about this felt real. He had bought me.
There was no delay.
A judge I had never seen before stepped onto the stage carrying a black folder.
Two of Santino Moretti’s men closed in on either side of me.
Their hands were impersonal and hard as they dragged me forward.
I stumbled in the stilettos. The chains clinked.
My bare skin brushed against expensive suits and I flinched so hard one of them tightened his grip.
They held me up to stand beside him.
Up close he was even more dangerous. The kind of handsome that felt like a threat. Sharp jaw, with a short beard. Mouth set in a line that gave nothing away. He didn’t look at my face. Not yet. He looked at the judge like this was just another contract.
The judge cleared his throat and began speaking in a flat, bored tone. “Matteo Ventura, do you take this woman as your wife, to bind your bloodline to the Five Families and secure your seat?”
“I do.”
Exactly as empty as the look in his eyes when he finally turned his head and glanced down at me.
The judge turned to me. “And you, Morena Caruso… do you take this man as your husband?”
Silence stretched. The entire club seemed to lean forward. My lips trembled. For one wild second I thought about screaming. About refusing. About begging someone, anyone, to stop this.
Then I saw Camilla’s face again behind my eyes. I whispered the only word that would keep her breathing. “…I do.”
It sounded like a death sentence in my own mouth. The judge nodded once. “By the power vested in me by the Five Families, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
Matteo took my left hand. His fingers were warm.
My hands were closer to ice. He slid a heavy gold ring onto my finger, ancient, with a sharp diamond that looked almost translucent under the lights.
It sat on my skin like a brand. A shackle.
I stared down at it and felt something inside me crack cleanly in half.