CLAIMED BY THE MAFIA KING

At midnight three men came for Mira and filled the entrance to her apartment with a wall of black coats. She didn’t scream. Screaming was for girls who thought they would get help. Mira had moved on from believing in that. “Mr. Moretti would like you to pay him a visit,” the one in the middle of the three men said in a voice that sounded more like an offer than command. “I don’t know a Mr. Moretti.” “He knows you.” And as if by reference, he looked to the closed bedroom door. He heard her mother’s labored breathing through the door, wet and uneven. Mira had learned to remember the pattern of that uneven breathing, of that labored breathing, over the years. “Leave her out of this.” “That is entirely up to you.” She was not going to have time to change her sweater, the one she’d been wearing for three days straight, to put up a note for the home nurse who was going to arrive at dawn, for any of that. The only thing she could do was grab her coat and leave with three strangers who probably knew what they were doing. This was one of the many nights in twenty-two years that Mira had never walked alone on the streets that gave off an unusual combination of smells of rain and diesel. It was a night that she had always learned to avoid. The car that took her had red taillights in the rain, black trim, and veins of Democrat Gray metal, and it didn’t make a sound aside from the hum of the engine, and it occasionally played radio static because no one answered the calls. Mira’s forehead was pressed against the cold glass, and she was looking at her city leaving for the last time, shrinking, with new money replacing it. Maintenance free new money sits behind security, and the money didn’t care to answer. When the mansion emerged from the fog, it was clear this wasn’t a house, but a war veteran’s expectation of a battle. Old blood stone. Windows looking instead of welcoming. A silence that felt more like an anticipation of an attack. They walked her through a foyer that took up her entire apartment. They brought her to a room with stiff cold portraits all sharing the same cold, cruel eyes. A man in a room with a desk that felt like a throne. He arranged papers in front of him with a level of order and precision that expressed a lack of trust for the world and everything in it. Dante Moretti did not stand when she entered. He did not have to. Power on him was a calmness that commanded the room without effort. It was the sort of quiet that is reserved for men who have never needed to raise their voices in order to be obeyed. He was younger than expected, and, for this reason, Moretti was far more dangerous. He was dark-haired and had a sharply defined jaw. He had eyes of a winter gray that promised nothing but ill. “Sit,” Moretti said without a glance up from his papers. Looks like I'm standing. It’s brief, but there’s an amused assessment of me. “As you like.” “Why am I here?” “Your mother’s hospital bills,” he said and set his pen down, “are quite extortive. Experimental treatment. Imported medication. A medical specialist flown in from Geneva twice a month, at great expense, and great difficulty, due to the procedures involved to move him from the country. All of this has been going on for several months. Everything has been taken care of.” He did the assessment of a man who has figured out the worth of a life. “All this has cost quite a bit. On me.” The room seemed to spin. “That's impossible. We don’t have insurance for that. And we definitely don't have that much money.” “You don’t. I do.” His speech level angered her. “I have been taking care of it since the doctors told your mother she wouldn’t survive a year. You most likely weren’t even aware of the massive piles of unpaid bills that stopped showing up.” “Why do that? You don’t even know us.” “I have what I need to know.” He pushed a folder across the desk. “This should explain everything, Miss Alvarez. The last few months should have been of some benefit. Now we can discuss the rest.” Mira’s hands started to tremble as she opened the folder. Legal language, dense and cold, clause after clause – and beneath all of it, one unmistakable demand written in language a lawyer had clearly been paid very well to make airtight: she would belong to him. Live under his roof, under his name, under his authority, for a term of years specified in black and white, with penalties for breach that made her stomach turn. “You can’t buy a person,” she said, throat tight. “I didn’t buy you.” He remained direct with no variation. “I bought your mother the right to live an additional eleven months. Whether you believe this is a kindness or a cruelty is completely on you. This is where I collect.” “And what if I don’t?” she asked. “Then payments will cease tonight, and you can explain why to her in the time that is left.” He repeated this with no concern on his face. This man had not lost a negotiation, and cruelty was just another tool used as needed without regret. “Or you sign and she continues to live. Your choice, little bird, they say I am very patient, for a man who usually isn’t.” Mira did look at the contract he had prepared with the pen. He was sure she would have no choice. It gave her mother’s labored breathing, each breath a reminder of a countdown for a time she wasn’t ready to end. This feelings of hatred toward him were strong and quick. She directed this hatred toward the man who sat in front of her with calm cruelty. This hatred was a feelings of safe people. She signed because this hatred was a feelings of safe people. Dante said, "Good girl." It would never fit within kind; it was more of a king closing a very old and very patient trap. “Welcome to Moretti’s house. Try not to love the monster who owns you.” “I’d rather burn this house to the ground.” Something behind his eyes lit up—not anger, but interest, sharp and unwanted, the first genuine response she’d brought out of him all night. “We’ll see,” he said, and watched her sign her name to his, hating him, which she knew, at that moment, he’d have. He wouldn’t survive the months to come unchanged.