Chapter 9 Savannah
Savannah
The compound is a fortress pretending it’s a home, with high walls, steel gates, and men with guns who don’t look away when they stare at me. The car door opens and cold air hits my face, but the real chill is the silence that follows. A heavy silence, the kind that means everyone is watching.
I step out slowly. Gravel crunches under my shoes, loud in a way it shouldn’t be. The air smells like cold metal and exhaust.
Two Alliance men move with me, but they stop where cartel security begins, a border that matters more than any paper Cassio signed. For one second I stand between them. Between two worlds. Between two cages. My breath catches like my body doesn’t know which side to obey.
Then Gabriel steps closer.
He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t have to. His presence is a hand on the back of my neck, a claim, a warning. “Stay beside me,” he says.
I swallow hard and move toward him. His men watch me, not just watch, measure. Faces blank. Curious and resentful. And some look hungry in a way that makes my skin crawl, like I’m a new thing in a room full of men who think new things are meant to be touched.
I force my shoulders back. I force my chin up. I refuse to shrink. Shrinking makes you a target. Shrinking makes you prey. Shrinking teaches men you’ll fold. My stomach turns anyway, because my body remembers what happens when men decide you’re prey.
Gabriel walks forward and I walk with him. The front doors open before we reach them. Men move like machines, efficient, silent, deadly. Boots on stone. Radios murmuring low. The faint click of weapons shifting under jackets. Everything controlled. Everything ready.
Inside, the air is warmer. It smells like stone and gun oil.
It smells like power. It smells like a place where screaming wouldn’t echo the way it should.
A hallway stretches ahead with no family photos, no softness, no warmth, just security and control.
The lights are too bright, white and clinical, like they want shadows erased, like shadows are where mistakes happen.
Gabriel lifts his hand slightly, still not touching me, but guiding my movement like he’s directing traffic. “This way,” he says.
We pass men standing at corners like statues. Their eyes track us. Their hands stay near their belts. They don’t speak, but I feel what they’re saying anyway. Italian. Enemy. Bride. Problem. My skin prickles. My palms sweat. My heartbeat pounds in my throat loud enough to betray me.
Gabriel opens a door at the end of the hall. A room. Not a bedroom. A sitting room, fresh, modern, cold. A couch that looks unused. A table that looks staged. A single lamp. Curtains pulled tight like the room is holding its breath. No windows I can open. No doors I can lock.
Gabriel steps in first. I follow. The door shuts behind us and the click hits my chest. My lungs tighten.
My body reacts before my mind can. A locked door.
A closed space. No exit. My vision sharpens too much, like my eyes are trying to find danger in every shadow. I feel my heartbeat in my fingertips.
Gabriel turns and looks at me. He notices. His gaze moves over my face like he’s reading something written under my skin. “You’re safe,” he says.
Safe. The word lands wrong. It always lands wrong. Safe is not a word I trust. Safe is a word men use when they want you to stop fighting. Safe is a word that comes right before the truth changes.
I don’t answer. Gabriel watches my silence, then he does something that confuses me.
He takes his coat off and sets it over the back of a chair, slowly.
He walks to the small bar in the corner and pours water into a glass.
The water sounds loud, a thin stream, a soft clink, normal sounds that feel unnatural in a place built for control.
He sets it in front of me on the table. He doesn’t push it toward me.
He doesn’t tell me to drink. He just offers it.
My throat is dry. My mouth tastes like fear, bitter and metallic, like pennies under my tongue. I stare at the glass. I don’t touch it.
Gabriel’s voice drops. “Drink.”
A command. There it is . The normal disappears.
My fingers twitch. I reach for the glass because I don’t want to give him a reason to tighten the leash, because obedience is the price and I already know what happens when you can’t pay.
I lift it and the water trembles from my shaking hand. I hate that. I take a sip anyway.
Cold.
It slides down my throat and my stomach twists like it doesn’t know what to do with something gentle. Gentle things don’t last.
Gabriel sits in the chair across from me. He doesn’t crowd me. He doesn’t sit too close. But his eyes never leave my face. “You understand what this is,” he says.
I swallow. “A treaty.”
Gabriel’s mouth tightens slightly. “A cage,” he corrects.
My chest tightens. I don’t deny it. Denial is a lie that won’t protect me. I stare at my hands instead, clasped tight, nails digging into my skin. Pain keeps you here. Pain makes you real when your mind tries to float away.
Gabriel’s voice drops lower. “Look at me.”
My stomach drops. My body wants to refuse, but refusal is dangerous. Refusal makes men angry. I lift my eyes. I meet his.
His gaze is dark.
“What happened to you,” he asks.
The question hits like a punch. My throat closes.
My mind flashes, disinfectant, metal, a room that isn’t this room, boots on concrete, the sound of a lock, the sound of my own breath.
I grip the glass tighter and the water sloshes.
Gabriel notices. His eyes narrow slightly, not at me, at the truth.
“What,” I whisper. “What do you mean.”
He leans forward just a little, not enough to trap me, enough to make me feel hunted. “You flinch like a woman who has already been hurt,” he says.
My breath stutters. I force it back down. “I’m fine,” I lie.
Gabriel’s gaze hardens. He doesn’t look away. He doesn’t soften. He just says, “No.”
My chest tightens with anger, or fear, or both. “You don’t know me,” I say.
“I know fear.”
I almost laugh, because fear is the only thing I know too. I set the glass down carefully so my hands don’t shake as much. “What do you want,” I ask.
Gabriel’s eyes hold mine. “I want control,” he says. Honest. Ugly. True. “And the treaty requires you,” he continues. “So you will be controlled.”
My stomach twists again. I nod once, because I can’t deny it.
Gabriel’s voice lowers. “But you will not be humiliated in my house.”
My eyes lift. My heart jumps. He watches my reaction like he expected it.
“There are men here who will test you,” he says. “They will test me through you.”
My mouth goes dry again. He leans back slightly, like he’s giving me space to breathe. “If anyone touches you,” he repeats, “you tell me.”
My throat tightens. I stare at him and I want to ask if he understands what telling costs, what it does to women, how you get punished twice, once by the hands, then again by the disbelief, but I don’t . Asking feels like weakness, and weakness gets punished.
Gabriel watches me for a long moment, then he stands. My body tenses instantly. He notices and turns his head slightly. “Relax.”
The word doesn’t help. Men always say relax right before they do something that makes you need to scream.
Gabriel walks to the door and opens it. A guard appears immediately.
Gabriel speaks in Spanish, low and controlled.
“Bring food. Now.” The guard nods and disappears.
Gabriel closes the door again and the click hits my chest a second time.
My breath catches. He sees it. His eyes sharpen.
He doesn’t say anything. He just walks back and sits again like he’s telling me without words, I can lock doors.
I can open doors. Your fear will not change that.
My nails dig into my palm harder. I force myself to breathe.
A minute passes. Five. Then a knock. Gabriel opens the door and takes a tray from the guard. He sets it down on the table. Bread. Meat. Fruit. Soup. Water.
Gabriel sits back and watches me. “Eat,” he says.
My stomach rolls at the command, but my body is weak from fear and travel and adrenaline. I reach for the bread. My fingers tremble. I hate them. I take a bite anyway.
Warm. Real.
For one second, it reminds me of being safe at home, and the memory punches me in the chest because home is gone now and my body still reaches for it like a habit.
Gabriel’s voice breaks the moment. “You speak English,” he says.
I nod.
“Do you speak Spanish,” he asks.
“A little,” I answer carefully.
He studies my face. “Italian.”
“Yes,” I whisper.
Gabriel’s mouth tightens, then he says the line that makes my whole body go rigid. “You’re not a virgin.”
My stomach drops like the floor fell out. My throat closes. My ears ring. Heat floods my face, shame, anger, panic, all at once. I grip the edge of the tray hard.
Gabriel’s eyes stay locked on mine. Not mocking. Not joking. Just stating the fact. “I don’t care,” he says.
The words confuse me. I blink.
He continues, firm and deadly. “But I will not be embarrassed.”
My breath stutters. I force my voice out. “I would never”
Gabriel cuts me off with a small lift of his hand. “Men will talk,” he says. “They will say things. They will test you with it.”
My stomach churns. “Let them,” I whisper.
Gabriel’s eyes narrow slightly, that tiny flicker again, interest. He leans forward, voice low. “No. They will not.”
The certainty in his voice makes my chest ache in a way I don’t understand. A strange warmth. A strange fear. Because if he is this certain, then he is also this dangerous.
Gabriel stands again. My body tenses again. He notices, and this time his voice softens by a fraction. “Nothing happens tonight,” he says.
Tonight. The word is a threat in my head anyway.
His gaze holds mine. “Sleep,” he says. “The wedding is coming.”
My chest tightens. The wedding. The word makes my skin crawl.
Gabriel walks to a second door and opens it. A bedroom beyond. Large bed. New sheets. Dim light. He steps aside. “Go,” he says.
I stand slow. My legs feel strange, like my body is floating, like my soul is trying to leave before anything can happen. I walk toward the bedroom. I keep my face blank. I keep my spine straight. I keep my breathing even. I step into the room.
Gabriel doesn’t follow. He stays in the doorway, watching, guarding, controlling. “Lock it if you want,” he says.
My eyes snap to his.
He adds, quiet, “I have the key anyway.”
My throat closes.
He closes the door, not all the way, just enough to remind me he decides what privacy means.
I stand beside the bed and stare at the fresh sheets. I feel dirty. I feel small. I feel like a child again. My hands shake as I reach for the lamp. I turn it off.
Darkness fills the room. My heart pounds.
And somewhere in the hallway outside, I hear men laughing softly. Not loud. Not friendly. The kind of laughter that says the Italian girl is here, and she doesn’t belong.
My stomach twists, because the truth is, they’re right.
And tomorrow will prove it.
* * *
Dear Diary,
My skin trembles and my lungs freeze.
I forget how to breathe.
I’m trapped inside my own body
I feel sick. I feel dirty. I feel small.
Not a virgin. Oh, the shame.
I hear them through the walls.
When I close my eyes, I smell bleach again.
If I speak, people will die.
If I stay silent, I will disappear.
And tomorrow is too close, closer than it should ever be.