Stripped Of The Soul

Chapter 3

Isabella's POV

The transport van was not a vehicle; it was a metal coffin on wheels, designed to bury the living.

There were no windows to watch the world I was leaving behind. There was only the suffocating, humid heat of four other women crammed into a space meant for two, and the overwhelming stench of unwashed bodies, stale cigarettes, and the sharp, acidic scent of pure, unadulterated fear.

I sat in the far corner, my knees pulled to my chest, my wrists raw where the steel shackles bit into my skin with every pothole we hit. Every jolt of the van was a reminder of my new reality. The emerald silk of my gala dress, now torn and stained with the grime of a holding cell rubbed against my skin like sandpaper.

I wasn't crying. I couldn't. My tear ducts felt as though they had been cauterized, burned shut by the image of Mia’s small, distorted face as she pointed her finger at me in that courtroom. “I hate you! I want Clara to be my mommy!”

The words played on a loop in my mind, a rhythmic torture more painful than the shackles. Every time I closed my eyes, I didn’t see darkness; I saw Antonio’s joyful smirk as the gavel fell.

"First time, Princess?"

The woman sitting opposite me had a spiderweb tattooed across her neck and eyes that had seen too much of the dark. She was watching me with a mixture of pity and predatory hunger.

I didn't answer. I couldn't find my voice. Isabella Rossi, the woman who could stare down a board of directors without blinking, was gone.

The van lurched to a final, violent stop. The sound of heavy hydraulic locks disengaging echoed through the metal hull. Then, the doors swung open, blinding us with the harsh, artificial glare of floodlights.

"Out! Move it, you high-society trash! You aren't on a cruise ship anymore!"

A hand, rough and calloused, reached in and yanked me out by the hair. I cried out as I was dragged across the metal floor, my knees hitting the gravel outside with a sickening crunch. The sharp stones tore through my expensive stockings, embedding themselves in my flesh.

I looked up, squinting against the light. This was Blackwood Maximum Security.

The walls were forty feet of monolithic grey concrete, topped with coils of razor wire that glinted like the teeth of a Great White shark. The air here didn't smell like New York; it smelled like wet stone and hopelessness.

"Stand up, 7042!" a female guard barked. She had a face like cracked leather and a badge that gleamed with cruel authority.

"My... my name is Isabella," I whispered, my voice sounding like dry leaves skittering across pavement.

The guard’s laugh was a dry, hollow sound that rattled in her chest. "Isabella Rossi died at the gate, sweetie. You’re just a number on a ledger now. An asset of the state. And by the looks of your charges, you’re the most hated number in this entire building."

She shoved me toward a heavy steel door. "Move. Intake is waiting."

The Intake process was a meticulously designed gauntlet of humiliation. It was the systematic deconstruction of a human being. They didn't just want to process me; they wanted to erase me.

I was pushed into a cold, sterile room that reeked of industrial-grade bleach and the lingering scent of a thousand other broken women.

"Strip," the guard commanded, her eyes bored as she leaned against the wall.

I froze. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. "What?"

"You heard me, 7042. Everything off. Clothes, jewelry, dignity. Now."

With trembling fingers, I began to peel off the ruins of my life. The emerald gown fell to the floor in a heap of useless luxury. My lace lingerie followed. I stood there, shivering in the drafty room, my arms instinctively wrapping around my torso. I felt the eyes of the guards, four of them now scanning my body. They didn't look at me as a woman; they looked at me like a piece of livestock being inspected for disease.

They took my diamond earrings, the ones Antonio gave me when Mia was born. They took the gold locket containing a strand of my daughter's hair. Every item was bagged and tagged as if I were already dead and they were collecting my effects.

"Into the stalls," the guard ordered.

Suddenly, a blast of ice-cold water hit me. It wasn't a shower; it was a high-pressure hose. The water felt like needles of ice, stealing the breath from my lungs.

I slipped on the wet tile, sobbing silently as the water pressured me against the wall. Before I could recover, they sprayed me with a stinging, foul-smelling chemical for lice. The fumes burned my throat and turned my eyes into orbs of fire.

Then came the Internal Search.

I vanished then. I felt my soul retreat to the deepest, darkest corner of my mind, hiding behind a wall of numbness to survive the violation. It was clinical. It was cold. It was the moment I realized that Antonio hadn't just sent me to prison; he had sent me to be desecrated.

A bundle of coarse, orange fabric was tossed at my feet, splashing in the chemical-laden water.

"Put it on. It’s a bit big, but don't worry, you’ll shrink once the cafeteria slop hits your pampered stomach," the guard sneered.

The jumpsuit was scratchy and stiff, smelling of cheap detergent and the stale sweat of the women who had worn it before me. I looked at my hands, the hands that had signed billion-dollar mergers, the hands that had delicately braided Mia’s hair every morning and they were shaking so violently I could barely pull up the zipper.

"Walk. Left side of the yellow line. Head down. No talking," the guard commanded.

I was led down an endless, echoing corridor. The sound of metal doors slamming, clack-boom, clack-boom felt like the heartbeat of a monster. As we passed the general population wing, the silence was replaced by a wall of noise.

"Fresh meat!"

"Look at the Princess! She still smells like money!"

"I'll have those shoes, Rossi! I'll trade you a tooth for 'em!"

The screams were predatory, filled with a hunger that made my skin crawl. I kept my eyes glued to the yellow line, my heart a drum of terror.

"This is your home, 7042," the guard said, stopping at Cell 104.

The bars slid open with a screech that set my teeth on edge. The cell was a concrete tomb. A bunk bed with a mattress no thicker than a slice of bread, a rusted stainless-steel toilet with no seat, and a sink that dripped with a rhythmic, mocking sound. Drip. Drip. Drip.

On the top bunk, a woman with a jagged, white scar running from her ear to her throat stared down at me. Her eyes were like shards of broken glass.

"So, the Queen finally arrived," she rasped, her voice sounding like it was being dragged over gravel.

"I... I didn't do anything," I started, the lie tasting like ash in my mouth.

She jumped down, landing silently on her bare feet. She moved into my space, her breath smelling of cheap tobacco and rotted hope. She was taller than me, broader, her knuckles scarred from years of fighting for survival.

"I don't care about your crimes, Princess," she whispered, her face inches from mine.

"But I care about my brother. He was a floor manager at Rossi Group. Twenty years of service. Antonio restructured the company six months ago. Cut the pensions to optimize growth. My brother couldn't pay for his daughter’s insulin. He hung himself in his garage, Isabella."

My breath hitched. I remembered that meeting. I had told Antonio we couldn't cut the pensions. I had told him it was cruel. He had looked me in the eye and said, “If you don't do it, Isabella, we lose the merger. Do you want us to fail?”

"He left three kids behind," the woman continued, her voice trembling with a quiet, lethal rage. "And now, the woman who did the math for the man who killed him is in my house. My name is Miller. And I’m going to make sure you feel every bit of the pain my brother felt."

She didn't hit me. Not yet. She just leaned in and whispered, "Sleep with one eye open, 7042. Because here, there are no CEOs. There are only predators and prey. And you look delicious."

I backed into the cold stone wall as the bars slammed shut, locking me in the dark with a woman who wanted my blood.

I sank to the floor, my knees giving out. I curled into a ball on the concrete, the cold seeping into my bones. I thought of Mia’s bedroom, the pink curtains, the smell of lavender laundry detergent, the way she used to tuck her cold feet under my legs while we read bedtime stories.

I'm sorry, Mia, I thought, a single, lonely tear finally escaping and hitting the grime-covered floor. I'm so sorry I was too blind to see that the man I loved was building a throne out of the bodies of the innocent and that I was the one holding the hammer.

As the lights flickered and died for lockdown, leaving me in a darkness so thick it felt like water, I realized the truth. The nightmare hadn't ended at the gala. It hadn't ended in the courtroom.

It was only just beginning. And in this darkness, the only thing sharper than Miller’s shiv was my growing, icy desire for the man who put me here to rot.

Antonio Rossi had given me a prison. I was going to turn it into a fortress.

But before I even tried to do that at least, I had to know if he truly did it on his own or he was coaxed by his mother.