Chapter 2 #8
I felt hands straighten my naked body, my aching and painful body, my body covered with fingerprints, hickeys, and bites.
My body that was no longer mine. I was cleaned, dressed, and led to a car that took me far from Seattle, far from my apartment, far from what could have been a peaceful new life with my sister.
The fresh air after twelve days of confinement made me shiver.
I lifted my face toward the sky, which was gradually turning blue.
It was dawn, a new day was beginning, but not for me.
Hours later, maybe days later, I had no idea, I was like a puppet being controlled, I hadn't eaten anything substantial yet and my insulin levels were playing tricks on me.
I felt cold and hot at the same time, I was shaking and sweating at the same time.
The Las Vegas sign caught my eye, but I couldn't react.
An hour later, we arrived at a gate and very high fences.
The gate opened and the car turned onto a dirt road that made the car shake.
I grimaced as I felt the pain in my lower back, remembering the pain of the last two days in that bed with the Master, my cries and pleas that had been useless.
"Get out," said the man sitting in the passenger seat suddenly, pulling me out of my thoughts.
He was the one who had accompanied me from Seattle to here, I didn't know him.
It was the first word he had spoken to me since we first met.
"Where are we?" I asked in a hoarse voice.
The last time I had used it was when I had screamed in pain with the Master, when he had.
.. I closed my eyes and held back a retch.
"Get out and you'll see," said the man without looking up from his phone, as if I were an insignificant insect.
I looked again at the building outside. I could read the sign above the entrance: "Training Institute for Young Girls. "
"Come on, damn it! I don't have all day!
" the man suddenly shouted, startling me.
I opened the door and got out with only the sweater on my back.
I had nothing left, no belongings, no phone, no bag, no wallet, I had nothing.
I was nothing. The car drove off, leaving me alone in front of the entrance, alone, trembling and lost. I was scared.
Where was I? What was going to happen to me?
Tears welled up as I wrapped my arms around my trembling body, my lips quivering.
Hesitantly, I climbed the first few steps, still wearing the little white sneakers I had bought with my sister a few months ago.
We had spent the whole day together, eating, shopping, having fun like crazy.
My sister, who was now in the clutches of a monster.
I froze in the middle of the stairs, my empty gaze fixed on my shoes, my trembling hand slowly rising, sliding under my collar to grab the pendant against my skin.
My icy fingers wrapped around its familiar presence, warming my heart, and I closed my eyes, letting out a trembling sigh.
So this was how the Floros family would end?
Our parents dead, my sister a slave to an Italian mobster, and me a prostitute under the Russian mafia?
I shook my head, refusing to accept this reality, refusing to bow to the will of the sons of bitches who thought they could decide for me, refusing to bow to fucking fate.
The pain in my body gradually turned to anger as I looked up at the building.
I couldn't give up, I couldn't abandon my fucking sister!
What I had experienced over the last two days with the Master, my sister had to experience every day with Antonio, because of me.
Esteban, the man I trusted most, had sold me out.
I had been locked up, starved, psychologically tortured, and finally raped.
I had been stupid, my sister was innocent, and Esteban was a son of a bitch, but he had been right about one thing: Antonio Rasili was a monster, and only another monster could defeat him.
No matter what was behind those walls, no matter what monsters they harbored, I was going to survive.
I had killed once before, and I would do it again.
I was going to become a monster, the worst of them all.
I was going to save my sister, I was going to make Esteban pay for what he had done to me, and I was going to kill the Master.
And if I had to go through hell to succeed, then I would do it.
They would think I was Stella, that I was bending to their rules, that I was submitting, but I would remain Sienna, Selina's little sister, Amelia and Marco's daughter, and I would remain so until my last breath.
I finally pushed open the door of the old building and entered the place that would become my home for the next few years, where I would experience pain and joy, where I would taste blood and tears, where I would lose myself without ever losing sight of my goals. I was in The Halo now.
Present
Wasn't it ironic? It all started because I killed a man to avoid being raped, my sister fell into Antonio's hands because of it, and in the end, I was raped anyway.
I wrapped my arms around my knees and rocked myself gently, becoming that sixteen-year-old girl again, alone in that cell, at the mercy of the freezing cold, the darkness, and the monsters.