Page 8 of Sinner's Vows

Franco will have his fun with me first. He’ll push to see how much I can take before he kills me. I steel myself, praying my mind will hold its ground. Mind over matter. Mind over body.Whatever happens next, don’t lose your mind.

When the trunk opens, a henchman pulls a bag over my face. He grunts as he cradles me in his arms and huffs as he carries me through a garage, the smell of motor oil and lubricant heavy in the air beyond the man’s stale stink of old cigarettes. Metal bangs on metal, and then we’re descending some stairs. Endless stairs. The air becomes moldy, like wet cement and stone.

I’m dropped onto something that bounces with creaky springs. It reeks of piss.

Someone rips the bag off my head, and a torchlight blinds me.

“You know, Ariana, at some point, you were my only hope.” Franco stands in front of me where I’m sitting on a dirty mattress, raised off the floor by an old steel bed frame. The torchlight haloes his body, making him look like the Angel of Death. “Now, Randazzo is dead, and I’ve stepped into his position asCapo Criminias if it were held for me by the gods.”

The gods. As if.

But if Randazzo is really dead, and Franco just took over his operations, then we’re fucked. He’s not even the man’s legitimate successor. Not that it matters to him. Franco is unhinged. Always has been.

I glance around frantically. Nobody is going to find me here.

“You’ve gone from being my only hope to being as useful as shit in a bucket.” He sighs. “So, while I sort everything out and establish myself as Don, you’re going to stay here where you can’t come and fuck things up for me. We’re going to count the days,cara, and maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll find a use for you in the bigger scheme of things.”

In the bigger scheme of things means only one thing—sex trafficking. Where he’d wanted me in the first place and what he told me he was preparing me for.

He snaps his fingers, and his henchmen come forward, grip me by the arms and legs, and force me on my back.

“She’s a frigid little thing, but she won’t lie still. Tie her to the bed frame. Both sides.”

Raped, by this man. Again. I can’t. He might have had me once, but I vowed no man will ever have me like that again.

But this is worse. This is going to be a gang rape, and then what? Franco’s meticulous precision and his love for ritualistic barbarism make me want to beg already.

Quiet tears slide down my temples and into my hair as I’m spread-eagled on the bed. It hits me that none of the prep work or training they do could prepare you for this.

Franco puts a medical carrying case on the mattress. He starts to dig. I close my eyes as fingers fiddle with my jeans, unbuttoning them and pulling at the zip. Soon, someone tugs them down, but not far enough to violate me.

I open my eyes only to spot the glint of metal in the light.

Franco runs his fingertip along my panties, and I know the exact moment he sees Randazzo’s tattooed seal, because he laughs.

“You lot are fucking idiots. Even from here—” he stands tall as he shakes his hand holding the scalpel, “—I can see this isn’t Mara’s work. Dumb fucks, all of you.”

He puts the scalpel on my stomach, and I shudder at the metal’s cold tip and warm handle burning my skin. Now he’s lighting a cigarette, staring at me, deep in thought.

“Cut or burn?” he asks after a few deep drags.

His meaning sinks in, and I cower.

“Meh, I’m working on my brand. The scalpel it is.” He tosses the half-smoked cigarette to the floor and grinds it with his heel then picks up the scalpel again. “Now hold still,cara. A line a day until I figure out what to do with you.”

4

ARIANA

I’ve disappeared off the face of the Earth. My team will never find me in this dungeon where Franco has left me to die. They will have given up by now.

I don’t know whether it’s night or day anymore. The only way to guess is by the noises infiltrating the layers between me and the outside world. They’re not much to go on.

A chair scraping in anger. Something crashing to the floor with such force, even I hear it. And then, there’s the men who come to clean up my prison cell and leave me some food, but there’s no set time for that. Sometimes, I’m so hungry by the time they come, for all I know, a whole day could’ve passed.

One is always holding a machine gun trained on me. The other does his thing while I’m too stunned to do more than blink, as my eyes need to adjust. There’s no way out. I’ve felt my way around the space, looking for cracks in the cold stone walls, searching for a weakness in the bolted wooden door. There’s nothing.

I’m rotting away like some medieval peasant who stole bread. Only one difference here: I know exactly how long I’ve been inhere. Franco Fiore makes sure to keep count so I can be grateful for spending my last days like this, at his mercy.

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