This place wasn’t a prison in the legal sense. There were no trials, no sentences, no chance of release for good behavior.
It was privately owned, funded and protected by the most powerful mafia families in Europe—men who lived above the law because they had bought it. To call it a prison was almost generous. It was a holding pen.
The men who ruled it clung to beliefs that belonged to another century, and they enforced them with modern efficiency.
I’d heard their ideology repeated often enough to memorize it, barked by guards or murmured with satisfaction by the masters themselves.
“Women exist to serve.”
“A woman’s body is her only value.”
“A wife is property—obedience is her duty.”
They spoke these words as fact, not opinion.
We saw proof whenever their wives appeared—silent, exquisitely dressed, eyes lowered as they walked a step behind their husbands.
I watched them closely whenever they came, those women who lived in gilded cages instead of stone ones.
I wondered if they knew how thin the line was between us.
These women—paraded as trophies—were draped in diamonds and silk that did nothing to conceal the truth etched into their bodies.
Bruises bloomed beneath emerald bracelets.
Finger-shaped marks darkened pale arms where sleeves slipped just enough to reveal them.
Their eyes were the worst part—empty, dulled by fear so deep it had settled into their bones. They moved like ghosts haunting their own lives, silent and careful, trained to exist without drawing attention.
They fetched drinks with bowed heads, knelt beside their husbands’ chairs as though the floor were their rightful place, and spoke only when spoken to.
Even then, their voices were soft and trembling, obedience sharpened by terror.
I learned quickly that silence was survival—but speech, when permitted, was its own kind of punishment.
Once, during a lavish feast held in the courtyard—a grotesque mockery of celebration—I watched a visiting don’s wife spill a single drop of red wine onto the stone floor. It was barely noticeable. A mistake any human could make.
Her husband didn’t raise his voice. He simply backhanded her.
The crack of skin against skin echoed louder than the music.
She fell to her knees instantly, not crying, not protesting—only apologizing. Over and over. She crawled forward, gathering the spill with her own skirt, scrubbing stone until her fingers bled.
The men laughed, amused, lifting their glasses as if watching entertainment. No one intervened. No one looked away.
That moment branded itself into me.
This was my twelfth month in hell.
Time here didn’t move forward—it collapsed inward.
Days blurred into each other, stitched together by labor, humiliation, and the quiet calculation required to stay alive.
Hunger became familiar.
Pain became background noise.
Hope was dangerous; it made you careless.