Chapter 5

I woke up in a hospital bed with fluorescent lights stabbing my eyes and a nurse fussing with an IV line in my arm. Everything hurt. My jaw, my ribs, my pride. But the pain was nothing compared to the memories that came flooding back the second I opened my eyes.

Nico on the phone calling me a dog. Toretti leaning over me with whiskey breath. The silk dress that another man picked out for my body. The drugged water. The camera Nico wanted to set up.

I sat up so fast the room spun.

"Ma'am, please, you need to rest." The nurse reached for my shoulder. "Your injuries are—"

"Where are my clothes?"

"Ma'am—"

"I said where are my clothes." My voice came out flat and dead, and the nurse took a step back. She pointed to a bag on the chair beside my bed without saying another word.

I pulled the IV out myself, ignoring the sting, and changed in the bathroom with the door locked. The silk dress was in the bag. I left it on the floor like the trash it was and put on the hospital gown over my underwear because I had nothing else. I found my phone in the bag too, somehow still alive at twelve percent.

The disgust was so thick inside me I could taste it, metallic and bitter, like blood that would not wash out. But underneath the disgust was something sharper. Something that felt like a blade being slowly drawn from its sheath.

I was going to make Nico confess. I was going to record every filthy word out of his mouth and walk it straight to the police. And then I was going to watch him rot.

That was my plan. Simple, stupid, and mine.

Across town, in a penthouse office that overlooked the entire city, Dante Valentino sat behind a glass desk reading a file with a cup of black coffee going cold beside him.

The file was thin. One photograph clipped to the front, a girl with no hair and dead eyes staring into the camera like she had already given up on whatever was behind the lens. The name on the file read Serafina Ferraro. Illegitimate daughter. Abandoned by her biological mother at three. Raised in the Ferraro household as the unwanted reminder of Joseph Ferraro's affair.

Dante read every page twice.

Stepmother who treated her like a servant. A sister named Gianna who was paraded around like royalty while Serafina was hidden in the back rooms. No schooling past sixteen. No bank account. No medical records after age fifteen when she was reported to have lost all her hair due to an unknown condition.

He closed the file and leaned back in his chair, pressing two fingers against his temple.

An affair. Just like his father. A child born from a mistake, punished for something she never chose.

He knew that story. He had lived it from the other side.

The door opened and Salvatore walked in carrying a tablet. "Sir, I have something you need to see."

"It can wait."

"It cannot." Sal set the tablet on the desk, and a hospital surveillance photo filled the screen. It showed a girl in a hospital gown walking out the front entrance, barefoot, with a phone pressed to her ear. "The girl from the hotel last night. She checked herself out against medical advice about twenty minutes ago."

Dante looked at the photo. Then he looked at the file. Then he looked at Salvatore.

"That is the same girl." Sal tapped the file. "The girl from the hotel and the girl in the file. They are the same person, sir. Serafina Ferraro."

Dante was quiet for a long time.

He thought about the alley. The fake siren. The girl who crouched beside him in the dark and said that people hurt you for no reason. The wig he still had in his desk drawer.

"Where is she going?" His voice was calm but something underneath it was not.

"Back to Caruso's apartment. The address is in her file. She went straight there from the hospital."

Dante stood up and buttoned his jacket. "Get the car."

"Sir, you just said this morning that your debt to her was repaid after the hospital—"

"I said get the car, Sal."

Salvatore did not argue twice.

I stood outside the apartment door for three full minutes before I could make myself turn the knob. My hands were shaking so bad I had to hold one with the other just to get a grip. I had stopped at a convenience store on the way and bought a small voice recorder with the last few dollars I had. It sat in my bra now, already recording.

The door was unlocked. Of course it was. Nico did not even bother locking it because who would I run to? Who would believe me?

He was on the couch eating cereal, watching television, like he had not tried to drug me and sell my body twelve hours ago. He looked up when I walked in, and his face broke into that warm, easy smile.

"Baby. Where have you been? I was worried sick."

The lie was so smooth it almost made me gag.

"I woke up in a hospital, Nico." I kept my voice steady, just barely. "What happened last night?"

He set the cereal bowl down and tilted his head like a confused puppy. "What do you mean, what happened? We had dinner. You got drunk. I brought you to a hotel to sleep it off. Then you started acting crazy, and I left to get you some air."

"I was not drunk. You drugged me."

"Sera, come on." He stood up and walked toward me slowly. "You are being dramatic again. Nothing happened."

"Toretti was in that room."

Something dark flashed behind his eyes, just for a second, before the mask came back. "Who?"

"Your boss. The man you offered me to like I was a piece of meat."

"Baby, you are confused. The drug made you see things that were not there. Come here, sit down, let me make you some tea—"

"You said I was stupid." My voice cracked. "On the phone. You told someone I was stupid and that I would do whatever you told me."

The mask slipped. His smile thinned, and his eyes went hard.

"So what if I did?"

The air between us changed. The fake warmth burned off like morning fog, and what was left underneath was cold and ugly and real.

"You used me, Nico. You made me steal for you. You made me lie for you. You sent me into people's homes to take things so you could sell them. And when that was not enough, you tried to sell me too."

He moved fast. His hand cracked across my face before I could flinch, and I stumbled sideways into the kitchen counter. The same counter he had thrown me into a hundred times before.

"You belong to me." His voice was low and calm and absolutely terrifying. "You have belonged to me since the day I pulled you out of that family of yours. Everything you are, everything you have, I gave you. I fed you. I clothed you. I kept a roof over your bald little head. And in return, you did what I told you. That is how this works."

"I am not your property."

"You are whatever I say you are." He grabbed my chin and forced my face up. "I used you for stealing because you were useful. I hit you because you needed to be trained. You are like a stray dog, Sera. You bite, so you get smacked until you learn to sit still."

The recorder was getting every word. I felt a tiny spark of victory even as his fingers dug into my jaw hard enough to leave marks.

"Say it again," I whispered. "Tell me exactly what you did to me."

He laughed. Actually laughed. "Fine. You want to hear it? I used you like a tool. I hit you like an animal. I drugged you and handed you to Toretti on a silver plate because your body is the only thing about you worth anything. And you know what the funniest part is?" He leaned so close his lips brushed my ear. "You would not count as rape because all you had to do was go along with it. But you are too stupid to even do that right."

He shoved me backward, and I hit the floor. The recorder slipped from my bra and skidded across the tiles, landing face up right next to my hand.

Nico looked down.

His eyes found the small black device, and the red recording light blinking steadily in the silence between us.

And the smile finally died on his face.