I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Hours, at least. Long enough for my throat to turn to sandpaper, my lips to crack, my stomach to stop growling and start aching instead. Long enough for the cold of the concrete to seep through my clothes and settle into my bones. Long enough to hear the sounds this compound contains.
The building isn’t quiet. I thought it was, at first, when they dragged me in. But in the hours since, I’ve learned its sounds. The industrial hum of machinery somewhere below. Footsteps in corridors. Doors opening and closing. And sometimes, from somewhere far away, sounds that might be screaming.
I tell myself it’s pipes. Old building, bad plumbing. The metal shrieking when pressure builds.
I don’t believe my own thoughts.
She’s alive. Healthy enough.Flavio’s words from before. Sitting in my chest like swallowed glass. Hours of them. Hours of Sofia’s name rattling around this room with me, bouncing off concrete walls that don’t care.
My hip throbs where it hit the gravel. A bruise spreading deep under the skin, flaring every time I shift against the chair. The scrape along my cheek has dried to a tight crust that pulls when I move my jaw.
The door opens. Flavio is back. Same chair. Same crossed legs. Same patient civility. He’s let me marinate long enough.
“Have you been thinking about our conversation?” He adjusts his cuffs. “About your sister?”
“She’s been with my nephew ever since. Stefano. He’s particular about his toys.” Casual. Conversational. Like he’s discussing the weather. “She doesn’t talk anymore. Hasn’t in over a year. But she’s alive. Which is more than most girls in her position can say.”
Stefano. His nephew.Particular about his toys.
The screams that aren’t pipes.
Sofia has been living with those sounds. Has maybe made those sounds herself. All this time. While I was hunting ghosts on message boards and tracing shipping manifests.
“She doesn’t talk anymore.” My own voice, repeating his words back. Hollow. “What did he do to her.”
Not a question. Flavio hears it anyway.
“She could be with you tonight.” He uncrosses his legs, leans forward. “I’m offering you a trade, Ms. Vitale. A simple business transaction.”
“What do you want?”
“Everything you have on the Santoros. Security codes. Financial records. Weaknesses. The compound layout. Guard rotations. Everything you’ve learned in your time as their guest.”
Bile rises. But I don’t look away. “And in exchange?”
“You and your sister walk out of here tonight. Free. No interference. You disappear, we never see you again. Sofia goes back to whatever life she can build. You go back to being invisible.” He gestures. “Everyone wins.”
The offer hangs in the air between us.
Everyone wins. Except the women who stay. The ones who don’t have information to trade. The ones who are “product” and “inventory” and nothing else.
Sofia. I could have her back. Tonight. Inhours.All of it ends with one file transfer. One small betrayal. One word.
Yes.
“She’s here?” The question falls from my mouth, shredded. “At this compound?”
“Close enough. One phone call to Stefano, and she’s in your arms within the hour.” Flavio checks his watch, a casual gesture that makes everything worse. “It’s not even midnight yet. You could be gone before sunrise. A ghost again, if you’ll forgive the pun.”
Within the hour. Sofia, with chocolate on her chin, laughing at burned brownies. Sofia, waving from the porch as I drove away to college. “You’ll come back, right, Izzy?” “Of course I will. I promise.”
I broke that promise. I left her in that house with Paolo and our mother and all the chaos I was so desperate to escape. And then she was gone. And I’ve been hunting ever since, trying to fix what I broke. And now she’s an hour away. In a place where women scream and no one comes to help them.
Say yes.
Lorenzo flashes through my mind. The way he looked at me in the hallway before he pushed me into that panic room. The forehead kiss I still feel on my skin. The words he didn’t say. But also the door closing. The lock engaging.
Flavio is watching me. Reading every flicker.
