1
SERA
The limping footsteps.
The key in the lock.
The scrape of metal against concrete.
It’s the same routine, the same warning signs in the exact same order, every time he comes. “Fuck me, you reek.”
Confined to the mattress, I turn toward his voice. Not that it helps. There must be some sort of light from the hallway, but I can’t see him. I can barely move. Sure as hell can’t run.
Rocco is humming off-key. Any other time I’d hate it, but right now it helps me track his location in the room. How close he is to touching me.
I haven’t been able to see for weeks. Maybe even months. I have no way of knowing how long I’ve been down here. Rocco took me from my family’s house three days after Thanksgiving, my mother, aunts, uncles, and cousins standing by as he hauled me out by my hair and tossed me in the back of his car.
His guards lined the halls of his gaudy house as he dragged me through the front door, down the concealed staircase, and through the labyrinthian lower level to this windowless cell.
His second-in-command, Dario, one of my millions ofdistant cousins, practically ate me with his eyes as Rocco stripped me naked, kicked my legs out from under me, and knocked me down to a filthy mattress where he manacled my wrists and ankles. The chains are long enough that I can sit up, change positions on the mattress, and get to the bucket that serves as my sorry excuse for a toilet. But that’s it.
The entire time, I screamed. Shouted, swore. Begged, pleaded. Promised anyone anything if they’d stop this. Stop him.
No one said a word. No one lifted a finger.
No one except Dario, who took ages to blindfold me, rubbing his groin against my body the entire time.
Ever since I hit puberty everyone in my family has relished telling me how unattractive I am. Too tall, too boyish. Too many muscles. No boobs, not enough curves. Nothing for a man to dig his fingers into when he takes pleasure in me. It’s a running joke among the Paganos, but it didn’t stop Dario from getting himself hard against my stomach as he tied the blindfold on.
When the door’s closed the cell is pitch black, which makes the blindfold an unnecessary mind fuck. A power move on my uncle’s part to keep me constantly on edge. In the beginning, I’d take it off as soon as they left. But every time Dario came back, he made sure I felt every inch of him as he tied it back on. I don’t bother touching it now.
The memory makes me gag, the reflex hollow on a bone-dry stomach. I can feel Rocco nearby, waiting to pounce. His acrid breath blasts across my nose. “Sasquatch, you really do fucking stink.”
My lips are too dry to move. My voice a drought of sound. All I can do is roll my head against the mattress, the movement floppy, my muscles getting weaker by the day.
Rocco laughs. It’s disturbing. Desperate.
Just before he kidnapped me, the Paganos were trying to overthrow Chicago’s rulingmafiosi. The Cerretis have ownedthe city since long before my uncle and parents were born but,sfigatothat he is, Rocco thought he could stage a coup and actually win. Even someone like me, a non-entity on the Family food chain, knew it was a losing battle before it began. No one fucks with the Cerretis and lives to tell about it.
I don’t know how long I’ve been in this cell, but every time my captor comes to visit, he smells more and more desperate. Gets more and more vicious.
I’m pretty sure he’s losing his war. And I’m paying the price.
Rocco stabs a finger against the paper-dry skin of my chest. “Starving you was a good idea. You look like you have tits now. Your price just went up. Lucky you.”
Lucky me.I squeeze my eyes tight behind the blindfold. I’m too dehydrated to cry, but the burn offers a little distraction from the dread condensing in my gut.
“We have to clean you, obviously. No one is going to want you stinking of piss.”
I smell of more than that. I’ve always known Rocco kept these rooms in the basement. Always known that the people who came down here were never seen again. But I’d never let myself think about what happened to them. About what being held like this means. How inhumane it is. How all your bodily functions are on display for anyone who enters. Piss, shit, blood, all of it.
Not that I’ve had any normal bodily functions for what feels like ages. Not eating will do that to a girl.
Rocco’s next jab hits me square in the stomach. I curl inward, trying to protect myself with my arms and legs, but the chains don’t have enough slack.
Without the benefit of sight or of any way of keeping track of when people come and go from my cell, I have no idea how long I’ve been tied down like this.
Or how long it’s been sincehewas here…