6. THE BREAKING

LUNA

Two heads snapped at me. Two pairs of Amber eyes zeroed in on me. Oh shit! They are brothers.

Which means Sandro is the Alessandro. Matias is the younger brother. He is just a kid whom my father tried to abduct and failed miserably two or three months ago.

How did I know?

I eavesdrop. All the time.

My mom taught me that it was bad manners when I was a kid. But when you are living in a jungle, it’s important to improve your listening skills.

Listen for the weather.

Listen for the threats.

Listen for the warnings.

Listen for the signs.

Just listen.

Don’t talk.

It was Alessandro who turned towards me first, and I finally got to see my kidnapper.

If I were walking on a street and passed by him, I would immediately recognise him as some mafia don.

He is tall, has broad shoulders, furious eyes, and a bulky body.

And he is ancient. As in, he is a millennial with a capital M.

I thought they were going extinct soon.

He looked... twenty-eight? Twenty-nine? Somewhere around there.

Old enough to have back pain.

Old enough to complain about my generation.

Old enough to call TikTok "that app."

His black hair was tied into a low bun, making the sharp angles of his face impossible to ignore. Thick brows. A straight nose. A jawline so sharp it could probably cut glass. A neatly trimmed beard framed his face, making him look less like a businessman and more like the final boss in a video game.

Then there were his eyes.

Amber.

Not warm amber.

The kind that belonged to wolves lurking in the dark.

They weren't angry.

That would've been easier.

They were calm.

The terrifying kind of calm that made me think this man had never once raised his voice because he never needed to.

A black suit hugged his broad shoulders as if it had been stitched onto him. Not a wrinkle. Not a loose thread. Even his watch probably cost more than my entire existence.

He didn't wear power.

He breathed it.

I suddenly understood why no one at The Raven dared look him in the eye.

For a moment, I thought of stepping back, shutting myself in the room.

But it was impossible to ignore the other guy—the guy with the name Vincenzo.

Same amber eyes.

Same annoying genetics.

Minus the beard and the man bun.

He looked younger. Twenty-five... maybe.

Unlike Alessandro, who looked like he could snap a man's neck without changing his heartbeat, this one wasn't physically intimidating.

He wasn't bulky.

He was simply...

Still.

His face gave me absolutely nothing.

No anger. No amusement. No irritation. Not even curiosity.

If someone told me he'd smiled once in his lifetime, I'd ask for photographic evidence.

He stood with his arms folded, watching everything unfold as though he were observing a documentary instead of participating in it.

I slapped my hand against my mouth.

I just realised that I had laughed at the name, Vincenzo.

Alessandro raised a brow. His brother is still staring.

I didn’t wait for any of them to respond.

My inner voice said: Run and I obeyed it.

I have watched a lot of horror movies in my life. Especially after high school, after being the Valedictorian, after getting admissions from the top universities and still wasn’t permitted to go to college, becoming a ghost and haunting the fuck out of every man in my world feels so satisfying.

Every time I see the clumsy human beings struggling to lock the door, I wonder if I would have been faster if I were a character in that film, if I could have locked the church door before the devil entered.

It’s not that humans can’t lock the door. The devil was faster.

And in this horror movie, which is my life, the devil has the speed of light. Before I could lock it, Alessandro held the knob from the other side and pushed it open with so much force that I fell back, landed on my ass.

Way to embarrass yourself, Luna.

“What the fuck are you doing?” He asked me.

I am the one who got kidnapped. I am the one who got humiliated. I am the one who is being used as a bargaining chip. I am the one whose life is in danger, and somehow, he is the one who is asking me what the fuck I am doing.

I wanted to laugh again at  the absurdity of this situation, at my life, and at myself.

Not because it’s funny. It’s laughable. My life is laughable.

Instead of getting up, I folded my legs under my lap and looked at the floor.

As if I wasn’t humiliated enough, my stomach growled loudly.

I wanted to laugh again.

Like a crazy person.

I wanted to laugh so loudly that I wanted to break the floor-to-ceiling glass door in this room.

Most of all, I wanted to scream.

I think I heard a sigh, an exasperated sigh as if he weren’t more tired than I am to be here.

A pair of clothes were thrown at me.

“Go, fresh up. I will bring your food. Don’t you dare step out of this room.”

I didn’t raise my head or get up from the freezing floor until he stepped out.

My stomach growled again.

"Traitor," I muttered to it.

The clothes still lay where they had landed.

White.

Everything was white.

A crisp white shirt.

A pair of white linen trousers.

For some reason, they felt insulting.

As though they were mocking me.

Yesterday I had been dressed like a whore.

Today I was being handed white.

Purity after humiliation.

What kind of twisted joke was this?

I picked up the shirt anyway.

The fabric was soft. Expensive.

Like the clothes inside my wardrobe back home.

Home.

The word made me freeze.

If I had never been kidnapped, if everything had gone according to my father's plan, by this time, the house would've been overflowing with guests.

Someone would've been curling my hair.

Someone would've been painting my face.

The seamstresses would've been fussing over every wrinkle.

And I would've been standing in front of another mirror.

Wearing a white dress.

A wedding dress.

Ready to become Mrs Remington.

My fingers tightened around the shirt.

Funny.

Yesterday, I would've given anything to wear that wedding dress.

Today, I wasn't so sure.

I walked into the bathroom.

The mirror greeted me before I was ready.

For a moment, I didn't recognise the girl staring back.

She looked younger than nineteen. Round eyes. Small face.

Soft features that made people assume she was harmless.

My black hair had escaped the messy bun in tangled strands around my face, making me look more like I'd survived a hurricane than a kidnapping.

My cheeks were pale. My lips were cracked.

There were faint shadows beneath my eyes from too many sleepless nights.

I leaned closer to the mirror.

"Who even are you?" I whispered.

For the first time in nineteen years, no one was waiting outside this door to tell me how my hair should look. No one was deciding which earrings I should wear. No one was choosing my perfume. No one was telling me to smile.

I was still a prisoner.

Just, not in the same cage.

When I stepped out, there was a plate of sandwiches and a glass of juice placed on the bedside table.

My first instinct was to jump and eat everything up.

And then the girl, the mafia princess who was raised to behave propery in every occasion, took charge.

I walked slowly towards the table. There was no one around. So I take my time examining the food.

Surely, they won’t poison it. Not yet anyway.

I took a small bite. My stomach growled. My mouth exploded with so many tastes.

Suddenly, I am small again, locked in the dark room and starved for hours because I couldn’t wait to wash my hands before I eat.

Suddenly, I am small again, locked in the dark room and starved for a day because I refused to shake the hand of a guest.

Suddenly, I am small again, and I remembered the vow I made to myself—when I grew up, I would escape. I won’t need anyone to give me my food. I won’t belong to anyone. I will get my own food. My own place.

I am nineteen now. Five months away from becoming twenty.

I am a grown-up, and somehow, I don’t have my own fucking sandwich.

7 continents, 195 countries.

Still, I don’t have a place to stay.

Just like that, I am crying over a sandwich. All the exhaustion, fear, and anger came out in the form of tears.

I tried.

God, I tried.

But the tears came anyway. Quietly.

The way they always had.

And the walls were the only ones to know I was breaking.