The tension radiated off her in waves, a living thing pressing against my own ribs.
I gripped her hand lightly under my arms, a silent promise of solidarity, though I knew it could do nothing against what was coming.
The eyes of the Kompania brothers reflected nothing—no light, no mercy, no humanity. Only emptiness, a void that seemed to suck the warmth from the world.
Faint scars lined their forearms, wrists, and necks, and the edges of old tattoos peeked from beneath collars and cuffs, like whispers of deeds too monstrous to name.
Everything about them radiated predator. And we were nothing more than prey.
“The finest selection awaits your judgment.” Our master’s voice, usually a hammer of cruelty, now dripped with rare, almost worshipful deference.
The brothers didn’t respond immediately. Instead, their eyes swept over us methodically, lingering too long, appraising us like objects to be cataloged.
Possessed. Claimed before a single word was spoken.
One tilted his head slightly, murmuring something low in Albanian to the other. The second brother’s lips curved into a faint, cruel smile that did not reach his eyes.
The air grew heavier, thick with anticipation, suffocating like smoke from a fire that hadn’t yet burned.
“You,” the first brother said finally, voice gravelly and deep, carrying the weight of command and violence both.
He pointed a thick finger at Ana.
Her body stiffened. The color drained from her face, leaving her pale as bone.
Slowly, carefully, she stepped forward, shoulders trembling but refusing to slump, refusing to collapse under the sheer force of terror.
The elder brother closed the distance in two long, effortless strides.
His presence loomed over her, a living shadow that pressed the warmth from the sun itself. Without a word, without hesitation, he grabbed the thin scrap of fabric Ana had draped around herself for modesty.
The cloth tore with a sharp, hateful sound that echoed across the yard like a gunshot.
Ana did not scream.
She did not beg. She stood rigid, her gaze fixed on some distant point far beyond the yard, far beyond this day, as if sheer will alone could carry her somewhere safe.
The brother’s massive hand seized her jaw, forcing her face up.
“Pretty,” he grunted, eyes narrowing as he turned her head from side to side, inspecting her with the detached scrutiny of a craftsman evaluating raw material.
His grip was iron and the subtle tilt of his head suggested pleasure in control rather than desire.
I felt bile rise in my throat. My knuckles whitened around Bianca’s hand.
Every instinct screamed to rush forward, to strike, to scream—but I was frozen, tethered by ropes not yet in place and by the weight of inevitability.
Ana’s lips pressed together, holding her breath, holding herself like she was made of steel.
But I could see it: the trembling in her fingers, the faint quiver in her calves, the silent scream her body wanted to give but could not.
Ana had told me her story in hushed fragments, stitched together over weeks of late-night digging when the yard finally slept and the guards’ footsteps faded into memory.
It was in those moments—when survival narrowed to breath and dirt—that truths surfaced.
She’d grown up in Rome, in a narrow apartment overlooking a street that smelled of espresso and old stone.
Her father had ruled a minor slice of the city’s underworld—not powerful enough to be feared, not weak enough to be ignored. A man respected in certain circles, dismissed in others. Ambitious once. Calculated. But ambition curdled when gambling took hold.