Corrupt Me

The first thing I ever truly owned was silence. Not peace. Never peace. But the thick, suffocating silence of the attic. It wrapped around me like a second skin, heavy and constant, broken only by the occasional creak of the house or my aunt’s footsteps below. Fourteen years. That’s how long they kept me locked up like a secret. I was a stain they didn’t want the world to see, a burden they buried beneath the roof of a crumbling house. Why? They told me I was cursed. That the world outside didn’t want me. That if anyone saw me, they'd send me away, or worse. So I stayed quiet. I believed them. What else was I supposed to do? I was five the first time I was locked up there. Nineteen when they finally opened the door and told me I was leaving. They didn’t say it with kindness. That morning, Aunt Bev yanked the attic door open with the same scowl she always wore—like smelling me offended her. Her eyes raked over my body like I was something she’d stepped in. “Get your things. Now,” she barked. “And don’t dawdle.” I blinked, confused. “Where am I going?” A slap. Hard and fast. Her cheek burned. “Don’t ask questions you don’t need answers to.” Millie's throat tightened. She was no one to them, Just a mistake, A burden. That’s how it always was. Obey or be punished. I’d learned that lesson before I even knew my alphabet. Still, something about her tone felt different this time. It wasn’t just irritation. It was anticipation. I packed in silence. Not that I owned much. One threadbare sweater. The only shoes I had—two sizes too small and falling apart at the seams. A broken hairbrush, missing half its teeth. And a picture book I’d saved from the trash years ago, hidden under a loose floorboard. It was missing most of its pages, but I liked to stare at the pictures, especially the one of a little girl standing in a field of sunflowers. She looked happy. Free. I tucked it in between the sweater and the brush, like it mattered. Like I mattered. When I stepped out of the attic for the first time in over a decade, the light hurt my eyes. Everything felt too big. Too loud. Too fast. The world had moved on without me. I didn’t say goodbye to the attic. It hadn’t been home. Just a tomb with a view of the sky through a tiny, cracked window. The car ride was quiet. Uncle Ron drove, hunched over the wheel like he was ashamed to be seen with me. Aunt Bev sat beside him, muttering under her breath about "getting rid of the girl" and “finally being free.” They didn’t speak to me. I sat in the backseat like cargo, staring out the window at a world I’d only seen in books and heard about in whispers. As we drove, the streets changed. Grass turned to concrete. Houses became buildings. Then the buildings became towers—glass and steel reaching up into the sky like they were trying to escape the filth below. I’d never seen anything like it. My chest tightened. Eventually, we turned off the main road and pulled up to a tall black gate surrounded by stone walls and trees too perfect to be real. Cameras perched like vultures on every post. A man in a suit stepped out from a small booth, looked at us, then at a clipboard. He gave a nod and the gates slowly opened. That’s when I knew. This wasn’t a visit. It was a transaction. We parked in front of a mansion so large it didn’t look real. Marble steps. Dark windows. A door bigger than my entire attic. A second car was already waiting, sleek and black with tinted windows. Four men stood beside it, dressed in black suits, armed and unreadable. One of them stood out—not because of what he wore, but because of how still he was. Everyone around him moved, fidgeted, adjusted. But him? He didn’t even blink. Marco De Luca. I didn’t know his name yet. But I felt it. He had the kind of presence that made the air thinner, like gravity pulled harder around him. Uncle Ron approached him first, clearing his throat as he pushed me forward by the arm.“She’s all yours.” The man’s eyes didn’t even flicker to me. “She untouched?” “As the day she was born,” Aunt Bev answered quickly, her voice too eager. “Never been outside. Barely speaks.” She lied. “She’ll learn,” Marco said, finally turning his gaze on me. When his eyes met mine, something inside me shifted. I didn’t know if it was fear or fascination. Maybe both. He was beautiful in a terrifying way. Dark hair. Sharp jaw. Eyes like black ice—still and cold and endless. “She’s smaller than I expected,” he said simply. “She’s nineteen,” Ron said, a bit defensive. “Just… kept out of sunlight, is all.” “She can speak for herself,” Marco said, finally stepping forward. He stopped in front of me. Close enough that I could smell the cologne on his suit—clean, expensive, but somehow dangerous. “What’s your name?” I swallowed hard. “Millie...” The words came out in stutters. He studied me. “You know what this is, Millie?” I hesitated, then shook my head. “It’s a beginning,” he said. “One you don’t walk away from.” Before I could respond, he turned and walked back to the car. One of his men—tall, tan skin, with a tattoo of a snake on his neck—opened the door for him. “She comes with me,” Marco called back. “Don’t follow.” Aunt Bev grabbed my arm, her nails biting into my skin. “You listen to him,” she hissed. “You do what you’re told.” Then she let go. And just like that, they walked away. No goodbye. No guilt. Nothing. I was theirs for nineteen years. But to him? I was property now. Possession. And yet, as I slid into the car beside Marco De Luca, feeling the heat of his presence next to me, I realized something terrifying. This didn’t feel like the end. It felt like the first breath after drowning.