Matilde
Acaptive. Alone. Lost. A girl with no home and no family.
The men in the van had drugged me and held me in a dirty little room inside an echoing, cavernous space. My heart learned to race with terror every time I heard the sound of men’s footsteps. My wrists are still chaffed from the steel of handcuffs. Their English words and American accents floated past my brain, but their smug faces are branded into my memory. Especially the one they called the doctor.“Still a virgin. She’ll fetch a high price.”
I could hear other girls’ voices now and then, but I was floating in and out of reality with every tainted bottle of water they handed me. Die of thirst or drink. Lucidity or a foggy dream state. No strength to fight back.
Until now.
Hard pebbles poke my bare feet when I’m pulled out of the van several days later. I’m blindfolded and gagged, but I can tell it’s nighttime, and the air is drier than the last time I was outside. Father always said I was a strong girl. I have no weapon. Could I hit this man hard enough to get away? How far would I make it? Where would I go? My phone, passport and money have all been taken.
“Bellissima,”a man who isn’t my captor says when the van door slides shut behind me. I assume he means me.Bought and sold.
My captor tugs at the bindings around my wrists, and I stumble through a doorway, from rough pavement to a sticky floor. I can hearloud music playing but from a distance. Maybe a nightclub? The space feels enclosed. Like a hallway.
I’m dragged along until a key rattles in a lock. “Bring her in here and keep her quiet,” my buyer says. “I need to make sure De Luca is still distracted by his pretty little whore on the dancefloor before I pay you for this treat.”
Most of the English words slip past me like gibberish, but De Luca is a common Italiansurname. As soon as I have my eyes back, I’ll fight them.
But even without my vision, I notice a sudden change in the atmosphere when my captor’s hand tightens on my bindings… and then he lets go.
“My pretty littlewifeand I were enjoying your office until you interrupted, Beso. Who’s this?” a new voice rasps, a cold and terrifying voice.
My blindfold is snatched away, and the gag is untied. I stagger back from yet another stranger’s unwanted touch and nearly fall before he steadies me. Rage, like nothing I’ve ever witnessed, blazes in his blue eyes as they slide down to my bare feet and back up to my face. He’s aiming a gun at the other two men in the room.
Behind him, a beautiful girl near my age watches everything. “Alessio?” she whispers.
Alessio.He’s tall and imposing, and there’s a tattoo across his throat – a snarling, three-headed wolf. I know that symbol. I remember things I overheard Father and Don Cicero’s other soldiers say of the American Mafia. He must be a Made Man of the Trio to have that tattoo.
“Aiutatemi!”I beg. He’ll either understand or he won’t. He’ll either help me or hurt me.
“Caterina,” he says to the woman, her name spoken like a caress. “Get Armando.”
***
Rescued. Not alone or lost. But still a girl with no home or family of her own.
Alessio De Luca isn’t just a Made Man of the Trio. He’s the Las Vegas Capo’s son, and Don Cicero’s home in Palermo is modest compared to their palatial mansion. Once I shared my abduction with him, I received medicine to counteract the drugs the traffickers had used. I mostly slept for two days and couldn’t stop eating for the following three. I still ask his sweet wife to stand guard whenever I bathe. Caterina hugs me and promises I’m safe. My body demands I listen. My mind refuses to let my guard down ever again.
Nearly a month has passed since that horrible day outside The Gentleman’s Post when I was betrayed and abducted. My time living under this roof has been like an extended luxury holiday, lovely but something that was never meant for me. Finding my sister and making a home with her, that is my dearest wish.
Alessio’s adorable little brother Valdo passes me more of his endless collection of comic books. “You can keep this copy ofAbsolute Wonder Woman,but you must readImmortal Thorafter that.”
“Tore?”I ask, lifting my hand above my head.
“No,Thor,”he replies, shaking his blond head. “Not a tower.”
“Enough, little pest. Let Matilde decide what she wants to read,” his older sister Gia says from the doorway.
“It’s helping her learn English!”
Gia smirks, but I must admit being surrounded by people who can speak both English and Italian and reading more things written in English is helping my fluency tremendously. Looking back, I can’t believe how bold I was coming to America on my own, so unprepared for all the horrible potentials.
Their father wants to speak to me. Gia wraps an arm around my shoulders as we walk toward his office, offering sisterly comfort. I’ve barely interacted with Silvio De Luca, but even growing up around my father and men like him, the Capo of Las Vegas scares me.
“What happened to the men at the club?” I ask Gia.
“Alessio took them to the desert, I imagine. They won’t be coming back.” She shoots me a quizzical glance. “You probably don’t want to know more than that.”