The Don's Dark Obsession

SOFIA'S POV "Your father owes me two hundred thousand dollars." The man standing beside the black car spoke like he was commenting on the weather. Matter-of-fact. Like he told people their fathers owed him impossible amounts of money every single day. I stopped walking, my worn sneakers scraping against the cracked sidewalk. The streetlight above us flickered, casting shadows across his face. He was tall, dressed in expensive suit, dark hair swept back from a face that would've been handsome if it wasn't so cold. Two men stood behind him, hands clasped in front of them like security guards. "I think you have the wrong person," I said quietly, already knowing he didn't. "Sofia Marino. Twenty-three years old. Works at Joe's Diner on Fifth." His eyes—dark, unreadable, swept over me. "Father is Antonio Marino, unemployed, lives above the laundromat on this street. That's you, isn't it?" My grocery bag felt heavy in my arms. Inside was a frozen dinner for one and my father's cigarettes. I'd just worked a double shift and my feet ached. All I wanted was to go upstairs, eat something, and sleep before my morning shift started in eight hours. "Who are you?" I asked, though part of me already knew. You don't live in this neighborhood without hearing stories. You don't have a father like mine without learning what happens when gambling debts go unpaid. "Dante Russo." He said his name like I should recognize it. I did. Everyone did. "Your father has been gambling at one of my establishments. He's run up quite a debt." Two hundred thousand dollars. The number was so absurd I almost laughed. We didn't have two hundred dollars. We barely had enough for rent. "I don't know anything about his gambling," I said. It wasn't a lie. My father did a lot of things I didn't know about until they became my problem. "I'm sure you don't." Dante stepped closer, and I instinctively stepped back. "But your father offered me something in exchange for his debt. He offered me you." The words didn't make sense at first. They bounced around in my head like they were in a language I didn't speak. Then they settled, heavy and horrible, and I understood exactly what he was saying. "That's not funny," I whispered. "I'm not joking." I looked at his face, searching for any sign that this was some sick prank. There was nothing. Just cold certainty. The grocery bag slipped from my hands and hit the sidewalk. I didn't pick it up. "My father wouldn't….." I started, then stopped. Because yes, he would. Of course he would. This was the same man who stole money from my purse to buy lottery tickets. The same man who pawned my mother's jewelry without asking. The same man who looked me in the eye and blamed me for every bad thing in his life. But selling me? Actually offering me to criminals like I was furniture? "I need to talk to him," I said, my voice shaking now. Dante gestured toward the building behind me. "After you." I wanted to run. Every instinct screamed at me to drop everything and sprint down the street. But where would I go? I had seventeen dollars in my wallet and no one in this city who would help me. And these men, they would catch me before I made it to the corner. So I walked up the stairs to our apartment with Dante Russo following behind me. The apartment smelled like stale beer and cigarette smoke. It always did. My father was on the couch in the same clothes he'd been wearing for three days, a half-empty bottle on the floor beside him. The television was on, volume was too loud, playing some sports game. He looked up when I walked in, then saw the men behind me. His face went white. "Sofia, I can explain….." "Did you tell these people they could take me?" My voice came out stronger than I felt. "Did you offer me to pay your debt?" Antonio struggled to sit up straight. "Baby, I didn't have a choice. They were going to kill me. I needed more time and they said……" "They said they'd take your daughter instead and you agreed?" I was shaking now, my hands balled into fists at my sides. "You sold me?" "It's not like that. It's temporary. Just until I can get the money together….." "You don't have any money!" I shouted. I never shouted. I never raised my voice. But something inside me cracked open. "You've never had money! You drink it and gamble it away and now you've sold me like I'm nothing!" "Sofia, please….." "Did you even hesitate?" I asked. The question came out broken. "When they asked if they could have me, did you even think about saying no?" He didn't answer. He just sat there, looking away from me, and that told me everything I needed to know. I'd spent fifteen years taking care of this man. Fifteen years covering his rent, making his meals, cleaning up his messes, listening to him tell me I was worthless just like my mother. And when it came down to it, when he had to choose between facing consequences for his own actions or throwing me away, he picked himself. Of course he did. I turned to Dante, who had been watching this whole exchange with an unreadable expression. "What does he owe you for? What did he do?" "Poker games. Kept losing, kept playing, kept promising he'd pay it back." Dante's voice was flat. "The debt started at eighty thousand. He tried to win it back and lost more. Now it's two hundred thousand." "And you want me to do what? Work it off?" Something flickered across Dante's face, too quick to read. "You'll come with me. Live at my estate. We'll figure out the terms." "That's kidnapping." "It's collection on a debt." "I didn't agree to this debt!" "No," Dante agreed. "But your father did. And in my world, debts get paid one way or another." I looked back at my father, slumped on the couch, refusing to meet my eyes. This man who was supposed to protect me. This man who I'd sacrificed everything for. "You're really going to let this happen?" I asked him. "You're going to let them take me?" "Sofia, if I don't pay them, they'll kill me. What am I supposed to do?" "Be my father!" The words ripped out of me. "For once in your miserable life, be my father instead of a coward!" He flinched but said nothing. Just reached for his bottle. I stood there in that horrible apartment, looking at the only family I had left, and felt absolutely nothing. The love I'd tried so hard to hold onto, the hope that he might change, the desperate need for him to care about me, it all just evaporated. He'd killed it. He'd finally, completely killed whatever piece of me that had still believed he was worth saving. "Can I pack a bag?" I asked Dante, my voice empty now. "You have ten minutes." I walked to my tiny bedroom and pulled out the duffle bag I'd used in high school. I packed clothes slowly, jeans, shirts, underwear, my work uniform out of habit. From the drawer beside my bed, I took the only photo I had of my mother. She was smiling in it, standing in front of our old house before my father gambled it away. Before the drinking got bad. Before cancer took her and left me alone with him. I looked around the room one last time. Peeling wallpaper. Water stain on the ceiling. The window that never quite closed. I'd lived here for fifteen years and I wouldn't miss a single inch of it. When I came out, my father was crying. Big, dramatic sobs that would've moved me yesterday. Today they meant nothing. "Sofia, please. Don't hate me. I'm your father." I looked at him and felt that nothing expand inside my chest. "No, you're not. Not anymore." I walked toward the door where Dante waited. His expression hadn't changed. He was watching me like I was a puzzle he was trying to solve. "I'm ready," I told him. Dante nodded and gestured for me to follow him out. I did. I walked down the stairs and got into his car without looking back. As we pulled away from the curb, I waited to feel something. Fear, sadness, regret. Anything. But there was just emptiness where my life used to be. Dante was quiet for several blocks before he finally spoke. "You're not what I expected." I stared out the window at the city passing by. "What did you expect?" "Tears. Begging. Hysteria." "Would that change anything?" "No." "Then what's the point?" I turned to look at him. "You're taking me whether I cry or not. My father sold me whether I scream or not. Nothing I do matters, so why waste the energy?" Dante's jaw tightened. He looked like he wanted to say something, but instead he just turned back to the road. We drove in silence toward whatever came next. I watched the familiar streets disappear and new ones take their place. Bigger buildings. Nicer cars. A different world. "What happens now?" I finally asked. Dante's hands tightened on the steering wheel. "Now you learn what it means to belong to me.”