Omertà: Bound by Debt

Chapter four-Sloane

The silence was loud in this place, unsettling, almost haunting. It wasn’t the kind of silence that calmed the nerves; no, this one was thick, oppressive, like a dense fog wrapping itself around my throat.

I didn’t fought them when they led me here. There was no point. I’d already exhausted my fear somewhere between the freezing tarmac of Sicily’s private airport and the echoing stone halls of this house, no, mansion. Hope had withered long before the jet even touched down.

I followed the guards because that’s what you do when you’re no longer your own. I was someone else’s now. Property. Payment. Collateral. Whatever name made the transaction easier to swallow, it didn’t change the truth.

We stopped in front of a tall double door, one that looked carved by angels and kissed by devils. Ornate, gold-dusted, towering, it gleamed even in the dim hall lights. Like it didn’t belong in this story. Like it belonged in a castle, not in the prison I’d been sold into.

“This is your room,” one of them said in clipped English.

And that was it. No further words. No comfort. No lies about “settling in.” They left before I could even open my mouth, before I could ask why this room, why this treatment, or what was going to happen to me now.

The door shut with a click that sounded too much like a lock.

I was alone.

And it was beautiful.

I took two hesitant steps forward and turned slowly on the spot. The walls were cream-colored with thick molding, the furniture looked like it had been plucked from a palace velvet chaise lounge, a mirrored vanity, an empty walk-in closet that yawned open to reveal its bareness of any clothes as it lacked an owner.

“I can’t stay here,” I murmured aloud, the words tumbling out like broken glass.

I paced.

Each step echoed across the polished marble floors, a reminder that I was alone. No footsteps but mine. No voices. No explanations. I didn’t even try screaming. I knew better. No one here was going to listen. Not to me.

This wasn’t what I imagined. Not that I imagined anything like this. When the word “mafia” came up in whispered stories, in late-night news reports, it was all blood, chains, basements. Torture rooms, not suites, not fancy rooms and mansions.

I bolted to the door. Turn the handle.

It was locked.

Of course it was.

It didn’t budge. I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t expect it to open, but some pathetic part of me still thought..what if?

“What were you thinking, Sloane?” I muttered to myself. “That they’d just forget to lock it? That you’d sneak out past men with guns and Sicilian accents?”

My laugh sounded unhinged, like something scraped out of a cracked psyche. I backed away from the door and stared at the absurd room again.

“A fancy prisoner,” I whispered. “A bird in a f*****g gilded cage.”

I was too tired to cry but that was still building.Too tired to scream. All that energy had burned itself up in the tears I’d shed on the plane, in the fight I gave on the way here. in the shivering cold of the car trunk where I’d been shoved like cargo.

The bed, massive and luxurious called to me. I approached it slowly, as if it might vanish if I moved too fast. The mattress dipped beneath my weight. Pillows cradled my back. It smelled like nothing, sterile and unused, untouched.

I hadn’t slept. I couldn’t. My eyes burned, yet my body wouldn’t yield. Rest wouldn’t come easy, not after the whirlwind of trauma and loss. My father’s face etched in defeat, eyes void of fear kept flashing before me. The sound of the gunshot echoed in my ears like a curse on loop. Even now, hours later, my body shook from the memory of it.

I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to hold my fragmented pieces together. The coat they’d draped over me earlier was thick, almost like a blanket. It still carried the scent of outside air and distant sweat. The chill outside the estate had seeped into my bones during the exchange. That brief moment between being pulled out of the car trunk and rushed onto the estate had given me enough of a glimpse of the looming architecture to know I was far from home far from the slums of New York, far from any place where I had control.

I needed sleep, My craved it, wanted it. My mind refused.

I sat on the edge, my fingers clutching the thick duvet, and thought of New York. Of the hard mattress in our apartment. Of the radiator that never worked and the roaches that refused to die. It was hell, but it was mine.

This… this wasn’t mine.

“I guess even the devil enjoys good things,” I whispered. The words burned. The devil, I assumed, was the man that owned me now. Or maybe his father. Or maybe my own damn father, for what he did to me. Maybe all of them.

Distraught, angered, frustrated and tired, I cursed all of them. I hardly swear but I guess that is slowly becoming part of me now.

“f**k all of you” I screamed and I felt tears stirring up, an I was sure I was not going to hold this one.

“I can’t stay here,” I whispered, reminding myself again. My voice sounded small in the grandness of the room. I wasn’t even sure who I was talking to. Myself, maybe. God, if He was listening. But the silence answered louder than any words.

I kicked off my shoes, feeling the heavy air settle over my skin like a second set of chains, crossed the room and stood before the full-length mirror. My reflection startled me. My face was smudged, pale, worn. The girl staring back wasn’t the same one who had left the café at 8 PM last night.

She was hollow.

Ripped apart.

Haunted.

I collapsed onto the floor close to the foot of the bed, knees drawn to my chest. My hair fell over my face like a curtain, and I let it shield me as I cried. This wasn’t soft crying. These weren’t delicate tears. They were guttural, raw, rising from the pit of everything I had kept buried. For the first time, I let it sink in.

They didn’t stop.

Everything hit me at once.

The betrayal. The loss. The disbelief. The fact that I had nothing and no one. That no one was coming. That even if someone wanted to, they wouldn’t know where to begin looking.

There was no one coming. And maybe no one wanted to.

No friends. No family. Nothing left.

My mother was gone. My father—despite everything—was dead. And me? I was collateral damage. A payment. A product exchanged in a bloody deal.

I clutched the floor beneath me like it could anchor me to reality. I didn’t even feel the cold seeping into my skin anymore. My thoughts were louder.

“Why me?” I whispered to the empty room.

There was no answer. My breath stuttered in shallow bursts, and for a moment I wondered what it would be like if I just stopped breathing altogether.

Would they find me in the morning? Would he care?

Probably not. I was just a payment. A body for a ledger.

“I’m not a person anymore,” I whispered into the fabric of the bedspread.

And then I cried.

Again.

Not loud, not dramatically. But quietly. Deeply. The kind of crying that leaks out like a poison, slow and endless.

Time passed—I didn’t know how much. Hours maybe. Or minutes. I looked toward the bed. It was inviting. Too inviting. The kind of comfort I didn’t feel entitled to. But my body ached, every inch of it pleading for rest. My legs wobbled as I stood and walked toward it. I didn’t climb in.

Not yet.

Instead, I sat up straight drying my eyes, while staring at the perfectly arranged pillows.

“I’ll just lay here,” I muttered. “It’s not like I haven’t been through worse.”

At least the floor didn’t lie. It didn’t pretend to be anything more than what it was. It welcomed me with its chill, its simplicity.

“I didn’t die of the cold back then,” I whispered. “I won’t die of it now.”

Lying there, I let my thoughts drift—to Mama, to the nights she used to sing me to sleep, to the way she’d brush my hair and kiss my forehead even when things were bad.

To the day she died. The day everything died.

If I closed my eyes, I could almost pretend I was back there. In our old apartment. In our old life. Before the men. Before the gun. Before him.

But sleep didn’t come. Instead, I stared at the ceiling, and waited for the next piece of myself to shatter. The image of my reflection in the mirror still haunted me. I didn’t look brave. I didn’t look strong. I looked like life was done with me, but I wanted answers. I wanted my life back.

But I had survived worse.

And I would survive this too.

Even if it killed me first.