Chapter 7 Savannah
Savannah
Cassio’s conference room is colder than his office, built with more space, and room for more witnesses.
It’s not for family. There’s no warmth here, no soft corners, no illusion that this is about love or protection.
This room is meant to control me, to remind me I’m being watched, inspected, and now claimed.
Italy was home for Cassio. Kansas City is where the war followed us.
I stand at the end of the long table with my hands folded in front of me, like good posture and manners can keep me alive.
The air smells like polished wood and expensive cologne, with something sterile underneath it, like disinfectant trying to pretend this is civilized.
Italian suits line one side. Cartel men line the other.
And at the center of it, like the room rearranged itself around him, sits Gabriel Gonzalez.
He looks like he owns the air. Like the chair was built for his weight and the world simply adapted.
He doesn’t move much. He doesn’t need to.
Stillness is its own kind of violence, and his is practiced and deliberate.
His eyes are on Cassio, not on me, and that should comfort me.
It doesn’t. Men who ignore you in public always remember you in private.
Men like that don’t forget. They store you away like property and decide how to use you later.
Cassio speaks first. “Today,” he says, voice flat, “we finalize what we already agreed to.” Finalize. Like I’m paperwork. My stomach turns anyway, twisting deep and slow, like my body is trying to fold itself smaller so there’s less of me to hand over.
A thick white folder sits on the table. Paper shouldn’t scare me. But it does, because paper makes things real. Paper turns bodies into contracts. Paper turns pain into terms. Paper turns a girl into a pawn. Cassio nods toward the chair beside him. “Sit.”
I sit. Not because I want to, but because I was trained.
The chair is cold through my clothes. The leather is stiff, too new, like it hasn’t learned softness yet.
The table is so polished I can see my hands reflected in it, fingers clasped tight enough to leave half moons in my palms. My spine stays straight.
My face stays blank. I will not show them weakness.
I will not give them the satisfaction of watching me fall apart in a room full of men who think women are easier to handle when they’re trembling.
The Italians don’t look at me like a sister.
They look at me like my only value is in what I can be traded for.
Peace, time, territory. The cartel men don’t look at me at all, not directly, but I feel their attention anyway like heat, hunger, and the silent weight of unspoken words pressing against my skin.
Gabriel’s men are quiet, and disciplined.
They’re the kind of men who have practiced waiting.
The kind who can stand still for hours and call it loyalty.
One of them shifts his weight once, barely, and the leather of his holster creaks softly.
Gabriel finally speaks, and his voice is even. “Let’s be clear,” he says, eyes still on Cassio. “This is not just a marriage.”
Cassio’s jaw tightens because he already knows what this is, but Gabriel keeps going anyway, “This is a message.”
Then he turns his eyes to me.
Just evaluating, like he’s counting how many pieces of me are still intact.
“And she stays alive,” he says.
The room goes still. The kind of still where you can hear your own blood pounding. The kind of still where someone could snap a neck and the sound would echo. Cassio’s fingers flex once. “Of course,” Cassio answers, but his tone says, don’t tell me what to do with my sister.
Gabriel doesn’t blink. “No,” he says. “Not of course. Guaranteed.”
Guaranteed.
The word lands in my chest like something heavy and unfamiliar. No one has ever guaranteed anything for me. Not once. Cassio opens the folder. Pages slide out, clauses, signatures, the Alliance crest stamped into the corner like a brand. My name is already typed there.
Savannah Amato.
Like I belong to the treaty more than I belong to myself.
Cassio points with one finger. “Sign.”
I stare at the line. The pen is black, glossy, heavy, like a weapon pretending to be polite.
I don’t reach for it right away, not because I’m brave, but because my body is still trying to pretend this isn’t happening.
Denial is the last soft blanket I have left, and I keep trying to pull it over my head even while the room burns around me.
Cassio leans closer, voice low so only I hear. “Don’t embarrass me.”
I look at him. My brother. My protector.
My prison. His cologne is familiar. Dark, expensive, safe when I was younger.
The scent makes my throat tighten because my body remembers safety and betrayal as the same smell.
He doesn’t look sorry. He looks tired, like my existence is a debt he’s been paying for years.
“You will be safe,” he says again, like repeating it makes it true.
I let out a laugh that isn’t a laugh. It cracks on the way out. “Safe.”
Cassio’s eyes flash. “Do you think I would send you if there was another choice?”
I swallow hard. The back of my tongue tastes metallic, like fear has a flavor and my mouth knows it. “You’re sacrificing me,” I whisper.
His jaw tightens. “I am saving our people.”
“And what about me?”
Cassio’s voice drops lower. Colder. “You are Alliance.”
I flinch, because those words have always meant I belong to something bigger than my body. Something bigger than my pain.
* * *
Gabriel watches us, not like a man watching siblings, but like a predator watching a transfer. His gaze slides to my hands. He sees the tightness, the control, the way my fingers refuse to shake where anyone can see.
He speaks quietly, like he’s offering information, not comfort. “If anyone touches you,” he says, “you tell me.”
My heart stutters. Tell him. I don’t tell men things. Telling is how you get punished. Telling is how you get hurt twice. Telling is how you become the problem instead of the victim.
Cassio snaps his head toward Gabriel. “She will follow Alliance protocol.”
Gabriel’s eyes don’t move. “She follows mine,” he says.
The air changes. Italian men stiffen. Cartel men go still. Two empires measuring each other over my head like I’m not sitting here with lungs that still work. Cassio’s voice goes sharp. “You will not”
Gabriel lifts one hand.
Cassio stops speaking.
That shouldn’t happen. Not in an Italian room. My stomach drops, because if Cassio can be silenced.
What am I.
Gabriel looks at me again. “Do you understand what happens now?” he asks.
I keep my face blank and answer with the only safe thing.
Fact.
“I go with you.”
Not I want to.
Not I choose to.
Just truth.
Gabriel nods once. “Good.”
Cassio pushes the pen closer. “Sign.”
My fingers move, slowly. The pen feels wrong in my hand, too smooth, too easy. It shouldn’t be this easy to give someone away. It shouldn’t be one stroke of ink and a woman becomes property with a pretty label.
I sign.
Savannah Amato.
My name looks like a bruise on the paper.
Cassio takes the page immediately, like he’s afraid I’ll change my mind, like he’s afraid I’ll remember I’m allowed to have one.
Gabriel stands. The chair legs scrape softly against the floor.
He doesn’t look at the other men, because he doesn’t need to.
They follow his movement like gravity follows the earth.
He looks at Cassio.
“Tomorrow,” he says.
One word. One sentence that becomes my new life.
Gabriel walks out first. His men follow. The door closes behind them, and the room feels colder, like the heat of the world left with him. Cassio looks at me, his expression unreadable, and then he speaks like he’s giving me instructions to survive.
“You will do what he says,” Cassio tells me.
My chest tightens. “So I’m his.”
Cassio’s eyes flicker, just once. A brief flash of something human that dies immediately. Then he turns away. “You are Alliance,” he says, but the words don’t land the way they used to.
Because my name is on paper now.
Because Gabriel Gonzalez looked at me like he already owns the air in my lungs.
And tomorrow.
I go with him.
* * *
Dear Diary,
My name is spread across the page.
A mistake I can’t undo.
A bruise that won’t fade.
I feel sick. I feel small.
Every time I open my mouth, something gets taken.
Bleach won’t leave my nose.
Metal won’t leave my tongue.
I don’t know what’s worse,
speaking and getting people killed,
or staying silent and letting myself disappear.
I only know this.
I feel sick. I feel small.
My body remembers.
Telling has a price.