SOLD TO THE MAFIA LORD

CHAPTER THREE - CAGED FATE

TERESA’S POV

I was dragged into a jeep still shaking with fear as what had just happened replayed in my head.

Louisa, they had shot Louisa and left her bleeding while they pulled me away.

I didn’t even get to say goodbye. The image of her falling slowly to the ground while her blood spilled kept replaying in my head.

It is all your fault. My head kept screaming at me.

I was seated in between two masked men as the car started. One of them put a blindfold over my eyes, while the other tied my hands like he seriously thought that I had the gall to escape after what just happened.

Louisa was dead.

She had been my best friend for all my years at the covent. We had been roommates since day one and now the fact that I would never get to share a room with her anymore was dawning on me.

I stayed numb, allowing time to pass, replaying everything that happened and how I could have done anything differently.

“Hey,” one of the men by my side tapped me as the car came to a stop suddenly. “We are here.”

They pulled me out of the car still blindfolded, leading me to god knows where. As I followed them, I tried to imagine how my life could have ended up like this. Barely two days ago, I was on Louisa’s bed talking and laughing and now, now my life felt like a nightmare.

I was led to what felt like a room and then sat down on what felt like a chair.

“Take off her blindfold,” An unfamiliar voice ordered, and the blindfold was ripped off my face, only for me to find an old man sitting in front of me.

“Teresa Ellis,” he said my name with a smile on his face and I glared at him, this man must be the boss, he must be the reason why Louisa is dead right now and my life has been turned upside down.

“Who are you and what the f**k do you want?” I asked him angrily.

The man scoffed for a second and then raised his hand and struck my cheeks, leaving me stunned.

“I will be the one asking questions around here, young lady,” he said, with a cold look in his eyes.

I could feel angry tears, threatening to spill from my eyes, but I did not want to cry in front of this bastard.

“Do you know why you are here?” he asked me and I shook my head.

“So your mother superior never told you where you came from?”

What kind of question was that?

I was dropped into a convent as a kid and raised there, so why was this asshole trying to confuse me?

“Your father was a snitch,” the old man said, his eyes locked on mine as he spoke.

I just stared at him, not knowing what to say. All I knew about myself was that I had been abandoned as a child, now I was finding out that my father was a snitch.

Today just kept getting better and better.

“Twenty years ago, your father, Richard Ellis, made the foolish mistake of betraying the mafia,” the old man started, his gray eyes glaring intently at me.

The mafia?

My father? That did not seem likely.

“Richard’s betrayal caused so much death that he got away unscathed. He ran away with all the members of his family and decided to start a new life, forgetting his past. But you know what they say about karma,” the old man smiled, “he is a bitch.”

“The mafia contacted me, to track down your father and make an example out of him. I found Richard and let’s just say I made a very good example out of him,” he said, and the realization of what he had done set in.

“You—You killed my family,” I said in a hoarse voice, unable to believe it myself.

Was there anything this monster in front of me wasn’t capable of?

“Finally, you are catching up,” his white mustache tilted upwards as he smirked at me.

“I had thought that I had managed to exterminate every member of your unfortunate family, until recently. I found out that your housemaid managed to hide and sneak you out of the house, she dropped you at the convent and that is why you were raised there.”

I couldn’t react, I was just still processing the fact that the monster in front of me killed my family.

“So is that why you brought me here, to finish me off?” I asked him spitefully, and he slapped me again to silence me.

“It is not that simple,” he smiled at me, his soulless gray eyes boring into mine. His hand stroked the cheek he had just hit, and I shook my head, trying to get his disgusting hands off my skin.

“After all, you managed to escape before I killed you and so you lived most of your life happy and not paying for the s**t your father did,” he said, his hands on my face again.

I stared at him, unable to stop tears from rolling out of my eyes.

So many people were dead. My family that I had barely known, Louisa and soon me, all for some stupid reason that I had no idea of.

“The mafia don’t want you dead yet,” he said, licking my tears as they fell down my cheeks.

“You have a pretty face,” he said, suddenly grabbing my face and forcing me to look at him. “You even have your mother’s eyes, a lot of men would pay good money to sleep with you, especially since you are a virgin.”

Whatever horror I had been feeling before then seemed to double in that instant.

Was that his plan? To pimp me out?

“Vander, Silco, come here!!!” he ordered, standing up from where he was sitting.

They rushed towards him and I recognized Silco as the man who had shot Louisa.

“Take the girl to Estelle, make sure she makes her look good for tonight,” the man ordered them, and they grabbed me up from the chair.

“WAIT!!!” I screamed in panic as the old man began to walk away. “What do you mean?!” I yelled after him, refusing to accept what he had just said.

“Why can’t you just kill me?!!” I continued to scream after him with furious tears falling down my face.

“Shut the hell up!!!” Silco shouted and slapped me so hard, it cut through my lip.

They dragged me with them in the opposite direction, leading me down a series of rooms and finally stopping at the door down the hall.

“Esti!!!” Vander knocked on the door. Seconds later the door opened and an older blonde woman with bright red lipstick and very prominent fake boobs was standing in front of me.

“Is this her?” she asked, barely glancing at me.

“Yeah Lucian wants her to look very presentable tonight,” Vander replied.

“That will be a bit hard, seeing as you guys have been hitting her face,” she observed, using a hand hold my face as she checked it out.

“Well, Lucian believes you can work your magic,” Vander said to her with a smile. She sighed and then looked down at me.

“I suppose I can,” she replied in a bored tone. Next thing I know, I was pushed into the room like an object.

Two girls came to my side and helped me up.

“Shower her and bring her over to me,” Estelle ordered them, then walked into another room inside the one we stood in.

The girls led me into a bathroom, stripped me and used the shower stick to bathe me until I was spotless, all the traces of yesterday washed away with it. When they were done, they toweled me dry and put me in a robe, then led me back outside.

They took me back to another room that looked like a bedroom with nothing but clothes on the bed and sat me in front of a dressing table.

“Hey,” I said to one of them, “please can you help me out of here?” I begged desperately. They ignored me like I hadn’t said a word.

“Please I beg of you, I—”

“They are not going to help you Teresa,” Estelle said, walking out of the room.

“What do you people want from me?” I asked her and her red lips curled in a thin smile.

“You should be grateful that Lucian is kind, he is going to sell you to the highest bidder tonight. If you continue to be foolish, you are going to end up in a far worse fate than you think you are in right now. So, if you value your miserable life, I suggest you shut the hell up and practice your smiles and hope to whatever God you serve that you end up with someone that is kind,” she whispered to me and I bit my lips shut, as tears rolled down my cheeks again.

Estelle began to do my makeup while I willed myself not to cry anymore.

It was funny how I could not think of a fate worse than the one that I was facing right now.

Lucian or whatever his f*****g name was, was going to sell my virginity to the highest bidder tonight, like I was a piece of cattle or something. I wondered what could be worse than that.

When she was done, she put me in a short black dress that barely covered my ass and smiled at my face.

It was funny how I had planned to wear a short black dress just like this to the club yesterday.

“Done,” she said, stepping back to observe her work.

I looked at my reflection to find a girl that I didn’t recognize. My brown hair had been curled neatly, and my face felt two shades lighter, with bright red lipstick on my mouth.

My eyes were still red from all the crying when I heard a loud knock on the door.

“Lucian is ready,” I heard Vander’s voice call out.

“Okay, give me a second,” Estelle shouted back.

“Look, if you want to get a good bidder tonight, I advise that you bite back those tears, there are a lot of sick f***s out there and the more you cry, the more you will attract them,” she advised me, her blue eyes boring into mine.

I nodded at her silently.

“Good luck Teresa,” she said, leading me to the door. “You are going to need it.”

***

I stayed quiet with Lucian seated beside me as I was driven to an unknown place. When the car stopped, Vander came to my side, gripping my arm tightly and leading me into a building that looked like a hotel.

“You are going to be on demand tonight,” he teased me cruelly, his breath hot against my ear.

I was led into what looked like a backstage of some sorts, with a large cage in the middle of the room.

“Get in the cage you dog,” Vander yelled, shoving me to the floor.

Tears brimmed my eyes again as I crawled into the cage, and it was locked from outside. The cage was covered with a dark cloth, leaving me alone inside in complete darkness.

What in the hell had I done to deserve this?

I felt the cage move, like it was being pushed, and then it stayed put.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” I suddenly heard Lucian’s voice announce.

“The moment you have all been waiting for is here, the main prize for tonight has arrived,” he said, and I could hear loud shouts of excitement.

“Here in this cage is the virgin daughter of the man who betrayed us twenty years ago. I present to you all Teresa Ellis,” he yelled, and suddenly, the cloth was pulled off and bright lights shot into my eyes.

I could hear more screams of amusement as my eyes finally adjusted to the lighting.

I was set on a stage, literally a bird in a cage, with Lucian next to me, holding a microphone as he advertised me.

In front of me were over a hundred men, all dressed in suits, most of them yelling angrily, their eyes glinting in appreciation as they looked at me.

I shut my eyes again, willing myself not to cry.

When I opened my eyes, I found a very familiar set of eyes looking at me.

It was the guy from the club, Stefano Dante.