Chapter One: The Price of a daughter

I was sold the day I turned eighteen.

There was no cake. No candle. No celebration marking the day my life split into before and after.

My father sat at the small wooden table in our living room, elbows spread wide, papers arranged neatly in front of him as though he were preparing for a business meeting instead of a burial. The room smelled faintly of dust and old furniture, familiar in a way that suddenly felt like goodbye.

My mother stood near the doorway.

She had not moved in a long time.

I knew because her hands trembled, fingers twisting into each other as if she were holding herself together by force alone. My mother only shook when something inside her had already given up.

“Sit,” my father said.

He did not look at me when he spoke.

I hesitated, something tight coiling in my chest, then crossed the room and sat opposite him. The chair scraped loudly against the floor, the sound sharp in the quiet. My brothers sat on the couch behind me, one scrolling through his phone, the other staring blankly at nothing. Neither met my eyes.

They already knew.

“You are grown now,” my father said, finally lifting his gaze.

The word grown landed like a verdict.

My mother stepped forward. “Please.”

It was not a sentence. It was not even a plea. Just a sound torn from somewhere deep and raw.

My father’s jaw hardened. “Stay out of this.”

“She just turned eighteen,” my mother said, her voice cracking as she moved closer, unconsciously placing herself between me and him. “She can work. We can find another way. We always do.”

He pushed back his chair and stood.

The legs screeched against the floor. My sister flinched at the sound.

“What happens if I do not pay?” he asked sharply.

“I know what happens if you do,” my mother replied. “You lose her.”

He turned on her then, fully.

“She will live,” he said coldly. “Better than any of us ever have.”

The room went still.

Not quiet—still.

Something inside me hollowed out as understanding settled in, heavy and final. I looked at the papers on the table again. Thick. Official. Signed already.

Italy.

Sicily.

“Where?” I asked.

My voice surprised me. It was steady.

“Sicily,” my father said. “You will go to Sicily.”

My mother made a sound that was neither a cry nor a scream. She reached for me, but my father shoved her aside without hesitation. She hit the wall with a dull thud and slid slightly before catching herself.

I stood.

That was the moment I stopped being a daughter.

I crossed the room and helped my mother up. Her hands clutched my clothes desperately, fingers digging into fabric as if she could anchor me to the floor if she held tight enough.

“I will come back,” I whispered into her hair.

It was a lie.

But it was all I had.

They came that night.

Three men. Heavy boots. Dark jackets. The kind of men who did not look around when they entered a room because they already owned it.

My father opened the door without argument.

My mother screamed my name.

One of the men grabbed my arm. His grip was firm, practiced. I did not fight. Fighting was what children did when they believed rescue was possible.

My sister cried openly now, reaching for me as they pulled me away. I memorized her face in that moment—the curve of her cheek, the way her lips trembled, the terror she did not yet understand.

I promised myself then, silently, fiercely:

They would not take her too.

The door closed behind me with a finality that echoed.

The road was long. Silent. The men spoke only when necessary. I watched the world pass through the window—streets, lights, distance stretching wider between me and everything I had known.

By the time the plane landed, I had already learned my first lesson.

No one was coming.

Sicily smelled like salt and metal and something rotten beneath it all.

The house they brought me to was cold, its walls stripped of warmth and mercy. Inside, girls sat in rows, some whispering, some crying, some staring forward with eyes already emptied of hope.

I was nineteen by then. Almost twenty.

Time had been stolen in pieces.

A man walked slowly between us every morning, his gaze lingering too long, his smile thin and clinical. He sampled girls the way a butcher assessed meat—not for pleasure, but for price.

Virgin. Not virgin.

High value. Reduced value.

I watched him every day.

And every day, I planned.

My name is Rosalia Marina.

Which is funny, and ironic, because Marina means freedom.

And there was nothing free about the way they called my name when it was time for the auction.