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“She’s new. Teach her the ropes,” the man barked and untied my hands.
The woman nodded, the bags under her eyes so dark it almost looked like makeup. At her acknowledgment, the man took one last look at me, his gaze not moving off my face, then spun around and exited through a door that when closed looked like it was just part of the wall.
“Here.” She handed me a trash bag. “You put all the trash in there and I’ll wipe the tables down.” She didn’t quite look at me in the eye, but she did scan my body. “You’re probably sore.” It wasn’t a question, more like a statement as if she knew what I’d been through. Had something like this happened to her? “I’m Seven.”
Her sudden switch in acknowledging what she could see and introducing herself threw me for a second. This was where I was meant to say my name too, right?
“Bailey,” I croaked out. We were greeting each other like we’d just met for coffee for the first time. “What…” I closed my mouth, pinching my lips together to stop myself from asking what, if anything, had happened to her. Instead, I asked, “Where am I?”
She shook her head, a small smile playing at her mouth. “You don’t need to know that.” Did she even know where we were? “Just do as you’re told and you’ll be okay…well…as okay as we can be.” She pointed at the trash bag I was holding, signaling for me to move.
I jerked forward, instantly regretting it as a sharp pain struck through my body like lighting hitting a tree and taking it down.
I picked up some trash off the floor, noting the sticky carpet. We were in a bar type of room but it didn’t look like your normal kind of bar with wide booths and leather couches. Instead there were dark corners and partitions up. And for a second, I wondered why the hell I was picking up this trash and taking stock of the room. Calm was washing through me, and if I was honest, it was kind of scaring me.
“What is this place?” I asked, figuring that she could at least tell me that. If I kept myself occupied and distracted, maybe that would work and give my brain time to process everything.
“You know who he is, right?” she asked, wiping down one of the tables. She was avoiding my question, but her own question had me pausing. Her robe was dirty, but at least it was covering her body, whereas I was still undressed, my body parts on display for her to see.
“I…” I remembered back to when I was lying on the bed. Wincing at the memory, every part of my mind tried to push me out of it, not wanting me to revisit it again. And any other time, I would have been grateful, but right then I needed to recall what he had said to me.
I’m Gio Pozzi, the head of the Pozzi Mafia.
I stumbled back as I remembered his words. It hadn’t sunk in when he’d first said them, but now…now I realized exactly where I was and what I was doing.
I, more than anyone, knew the dangers of the state that I lived in. Uncle Caden was always warning me about the bad things that happened right on our doorstep. The things that were unseen and happened underground. The things that the general public weren’t aware of. They were living their lives in blissful peace, but I had a snippet of what happened.
And now…now I understood the exact danger I was in.
Holy fuck.
I had to get out.
I had to get away before they killed me, or worse, destroyed me.
“I’m guessing you know, then,” she said, nodding along with her words. “Just do what you’re told and you’ll be fine.”
“But why?” I blurted out, not having a filter. I was too damn tired and hurt to stop myself from asking. “Why am I here?”
She shrugged. “He chose you.”
I frowned, standing dead still as I stared at her like she had two heads. She spoke in broken words, at least, that was what it felt like to me. “What do you mean?”
She tilted her head to the side and huffed like I was an impatient child asking for more candy. “He chose you. He saw you and had you taken. But now he’s chosen you a second time to be part of this.” She waved her arm around. “Some of us are sold immediately, others are kept for a while and used for work before being moved somewhere else.” My heart raced in my chest the more she spoke. “But we’re the lucky ones.”
“The”—I nearly choked on my words—“lucky ones?”
She sauntered over to the next table and sprayed something on the wooden surface, then started to wipe it down. “Yeah. We get to be trained by the boss and readied to be auctioned off.”
“Auctioned off?” I practically squealed.
What the hell was happening here?
Was I dreaming? Nope. I was in a living nightmare.
She smiled over at me like we were talking about a cute baby we’d just seen. “Yeah.”
No. No. I couldn’t do this. I had to get out. I scraped at my face, feeling some of the skin break, but I didn’t care because I needed to feel something else other than absolute horror at what she was saying.
