“Go,” she says. “Bring her home.”
I slip it back into my pocket. Still warm from my grip.
I won’t run. Not this time.
I move. Toward the house. Toward my brothers.
Forty minutes. I’m coming for her.
27
ISABELLA
They moved me after I refused Flavio’s offer. The new room is smaller. Darker. No fluorescent lights here, just blackness so complete my own hands disappear when I hold them in front of my face. The floor is rougher concrete, cold seeping through my clothes until the chill and my body are the same. The walls press closer.
Punishment. For saying no.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Minutes? Hours? Time loses meaning when there’s nothing to measure it against. No light cycle. No sounds of routine. Just darkness and silence and the inside of my own head.
In the other room, I could hear the compound. Doors and footsteps and things I didn’t want to name. But at least I could track what was happening. At least reality had a shape. Here, there’s nothing. Just quiet that isn’t peace.
“Okay,” I breathe. “Okay, okay, okay.”
I’ve spent years researching the Benedettis. The files. The survivor testimonies. The reports from raids that came too late. I know what happens in places like this. What these people do to the women they take.
Sofia has endured this since she was fifteen. The thought cuts through everything else. Years under their control. Years of whatever happens in the rooms I can no longer hear. Learning to disappear inside herself until there was nothing left to hurt.
My baby sister. The one who talked through every movie, unable to sit still in her own skin. Who left rambling voicemails that went on for three minutes because she couldn’t figure out how to end them. “Okay, Izzy, I think this is the part where I hang up, but wait, one more thing.” Always one more thing. Sofia was never quiet. Not once in fifteen years.
I’ve been here, what? Six hours? Eight? I’ve already lost track.
I wrap my arms around myself. My thumbnail goes to my teeth. I bite down until I taste copper.
“I’m coming, Sof.” The words escape me before I catch them. Cracked. Useless. Swallowed by the dark. “I’m right here. I’m so close.”
No answer. Just concrete and silence.
I left her. I saved myself and left her in that house, and now she’s been living this nightmare while I was free.
“Stop.” My own voice, sharp in the silence. “You can’t fix this from here.”
I force myself to breathe. In. Out. The cold air tastes like concrete and dust.
“Focus.” The word, cracked and thin. “Come on, Vitale. Focus. Not on the horror. Not on Sofia.” I press my back against the wall. Let the cold center me. “What do you know. Start there.”
I know I’m in a Benedetti building. I know Flavio wants what I have. I know they moved me here as punishment for refusing his offer.
“What do you have.”
Nothing. No tools. No screens. No code to run. Just my brain, my body, and a room I can’t see the edges of.
“Then use the brain. That’s always been enough before.”
Lorenzo. His name surfaces like it’s been waiting for an opening. I’ve been pushing it down, pushing it away, focusing on Flavio and the offer and the choice I had to make. But now there’s nothing left to focus on. Just quiet and the man who locked me in a room.
I’ve replayed it a hundred times since they took me. The hallway. His grip on my shoulders. Shaking. The forehead kiss. And then the door swinging shut between us. The last thing I saw was his eyes. Wild. Desperate. Like he was watching me slip through his fingers.
“I can’t lose you.” He said it through the door. His voice cracked on every word.
