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“Yes, sir,” Stefano remarked with a smirk. “That dinner on Sunday is one I don’t want to miss. Even if I’m just standing guard while you all eat.”
We both shared a laugh because nothing was going to be civil about these Sunday dinners until all of the merger details had been completed. Not with Angelo and Marco in the room anyway.
CHAPTER13
Bria
After being escortedto Elana’s room, I went inside and checked with both of my girls.
“Take a quick break and come back with some food. The cook has something waiting downstairs for all of you,” I instructed Gina and Frankie, and they went down to the kitchen.
“So how was your morning? Are you liking the girls well enough?” I asked Elana.
“They’ve been really nice and I do feel a lot safer having women here versus men.” Her fingers played with the fringe on the pillow she kept in her lap. “There were some horrible women over the years too. You’re nice though.” She gave me a small smile.
I smile back. “Well, that’s good. I spent most of the morning learning about my future family and planning a wedding. Now that my own family has been taken away from me. This huge home is turning out to be a prison of sorts,” I grumbled knowing I didn’t have it nearly as bad as Elana did, but wasn’t it said that people sometimes wanted to hear about others and their problems, because it made them not dwell on their own.
“It’s not as bad as I thought.” Elana smiled shyly at me. “This room feels like a prison, but there’s food and I’m clean. I do feel much safer than where I was before.” She lets the pillow distract her further. “Why do you have to leave your family? He’s not forcing you to marry him is he? He’s scary like those other guys, but when he looks at me, his eyes get gentle unlike theirs. They just saw me as a piece of property to be used and sold to fit their plans.” Elana shrugged as if that was normal.
I think about my words carefully. “Forced is a strong word. It’s an arranged marriage and if I didn’t step up to marry him then my sister who is super shy and quiet would have had to do it. I didn’t want that for her, so I’m here to get married to Luciano.” I knew honesty was the best for her. She could tell if I lied and that bond we were creating would’ve been lost forever. “Surprisingly things have been much different than expected. I’m not nearly as opposed to marrying him as I was even twenty-four hours ago.” I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea at all. “Don’t tell him that though, he’ll get a stupid grin and puff out his chest. He doesn’t need an ego boost any more than he already has.” I joked.
She smiled along with me.
“Elana, Luciano is a good guy. He won’t stand for what’s been done to you. I do need to ask you some more details so we can try to hunt down the people who did this.” I hated having to ask her about the horrible things that had been done to her. The sweet smile I knew was a victory, vanished as soon as she was reminded of why she was here to begin with.
“I really don’t know much,” Elana mumbled to herself as if trying to hide from the memories. “I have no idea why they took me out of the container of girls and kept me.”
I stayed still and quiet, knowing she was in a different place when she discussed her memories.
“The doors were opened and everyone else was cowering and trying to hide from them. Not that it did any good, but they just walked in and grabbed me from the middle of the group. There were so many girls, I’m not sure why they wanted me and not the rest of them. We’ve all been together for a while. They put me in a different container all by myself with those guns for about a day and gave me a jug of water and a bag of Pop Tarts. Then those other men came in with guns blazing and I was taken with the man you talked about,” Elana spoke as tears ran down her face. She didn’t sniffle or sob, it was a natural release of tears—she’d been was beaten into making no sound.
“I’ve been sold three different times, but it was always the same men that auctioned me off. Then when whoever I was sold to was done with me, he’d take me back to those men, and then do it all over again.” She shuddered as tears raced down her cheeks and dripped onto the pillow she now clutched tightly to her chest, twirling the fringe around her fingers.
“I’m one of the lucky ones. I didn’t die and that’s super unusual for those of us in that situation. The men I was sold to didn’t torture me. They just wanted a slave. Once the new wore off, then they were done with me and sent me to a new place. Another year or two and I wouldn’t have been savable.”
I swallowed down my anger and pain for her. “I know this is hard, honey.” I reached out and patted her knee. “But is there any way you can give me some type of description of the men who took you?”
Elana shook her head without any hesitation. “Most of them all look the same after a while, there wasn’t anything that really stood out. They were average guys, assholes that we weren’t trying to look at because then that singled us out for more punishments or for them to have their way with us. We tried to stay as far away from the men as possible. We were surviving.”
“You’re a survivor, Elana. I need you to start believing that.”
She peeked her eyes up from the patterns she made with her fingers, but then dropped her sight back down.
I made a mental note that I needed to ask Luciano if he had any destination paperwork for that shipment. With a little more information, I might be able to pin down where they had been trying to send Elana.
From my seat on the bed, I began to talk about wedding things to try and get her out of the victims headspace, but it would be hard after all she’d gone through for so long in that type of life. She had only been freed from her captivity for a day, and to add onto that, she was locked in a room with other strangers. She wasn’t completely free. Add on that every day felt like a year, but at the same time, it was one single day. Those memories were going to be tough to erase.
“Our wedding is going to be a huge event and we had to hire both coordinators because there is so much to do in such a short time.” I sighed. “It’s overwhelming, but I think that we’ll manage to get it all done in time. Thank goodness, they’ll be doing most of the hard work and just asking for directions from us on other stuff.”
“I can’t even imagine having a wedding someday. No one is going to want an overworked whore that was used as others’ trash can on a regular basis.” Elana sounded resigned. “Who would want to marry or even date a person like me? Even if I can somehow recover from this, it’s not like I can ever be normal.”
“You have a future, but it’s up to you as to how that future plays out. Some may not like that, but there will be someone out there that doesn’t scare you. They’ll understand that this was forced on you. That you endured, fought, and survived. That’s a strength. Someone will love you for it and will love you.” I knew it wasn’t super helpful, but I wanted to be as reassuring as possible.
Her head perked up. “Do you really think so?” She sounded hopeful for the first time.
“Yes, I believe that you can have a healthy, normal future, but you have to give yourself time to recover and heal. Anything worth having is a process and takes work. You have it in you. I know you do.” I was going to give her that opportunity.
She nodded her head, and I knew a lot wasn’t sinking in yet, but it would. I’d make sure of it.
