Sold to the Mafia King

Chapter 2: The Contract

The car smelled like leather and gun oil. My wrists were still bound, the zip ties digging so deep I'd stopped feeling my thumbs two blocks ago. I sat in the back seat, pressed against the door, as far from him as the cabin allowed. The partition between us and the front seat was solid black glass. I couldn't see Marco. I could only feel the car turning, stopping, accelerating again—random patterns designed to make me lose my bearings.

Dante Romano sat on the opposite side. He hadn't looked at me since the auction house. His face was turned toward the window, but the glass was tinted so dark there was nothing to see. Just his own reflection, and mine, ghosted over it like a warning.

I tried to work my wrists. The plastic was too tight. Blood had dried in sticky lines down to my palms, and fresh blood was welling up where I'd twisted against the edges. I needed to clean it. I needed a hospital. I needed—

"You'll lose your hands."

His voice came out of nowhere. No movement. He was still looking at the window.

I stopped moving. My pulse jumped into my throat.

"Gangrene sets in after six hours with compromised circulation," he continued. Same flat tone. Like he was reading a manual. "You're at four. Keep struggling, and I'll have Marco cut them off. Not as a punishment. As a medical necessity."

I went still. Completely still. The blood in my veins felt like it had been replaced with something colder.

He turned his head. Just slightly. Enough for the passing streetlight to catch his face. His eyes found mine in the dark. Then dropped to my wrists. Then to my shoulder—where the scrubs had torn, where the scar was bare under the fluorescent glow of a passing billboard.

He looked at it for two seconds. Then looked back at the window.

"Where are we going?" I asked. My voice sounded small. I hated it.

"Home."

"Your home?"

He didn't answer. The car slowed. I felt the descent of a ramp, the change in air pressure, and then we were underground. The tires made a different sound here—echoing off concrete walls. A parking garage. Private. The kind with no signs, no cameras, no exits for people who weren't invited.

The car stopped. Marco got out. My door opened a second later, and Marco's hand reached in, fingers wrapping around my upper arm.

"Don't touch her."

Dante's voice again. Not louder. Not faster. Just a statement that carried the weight of a bullet.

Marco's hand stopped an inch from my skin. He withdrew it. Stepped back. "Yes, Don."

Dante got out first. He moved like he had all the time in the world, unfolding from the car, adjusting his coat. Then he turned and looked at me. Waiting.

I didn't move. My legs were cramped, my ankles still tied, and the concrete floor looked too far down. If I tried to stand, I would fall. I would crawl. I would look weak.

He knew it. I could see it in the set of his mouth—that slight, almost invisible tightening that wasn't quite a smile.

He reached into the car. His hand—large, scarred across the knuckles, the burn on his thumb web catching the garage light—closed around my bound wrists. Not gentle. Not cruel. Just efficient. He pulled, and I had no choice but to slide out, my bare feet hitting the cold floor, my knees buckling.

He didn't let me fall. He held me up by the wrists, my own blood smearing against his palm, and walked me toward an elevator.

The elevator had no buttons. Just a scanner. Dante pressed his thumb to it. The doors opened. We stepped inside—Dante, me, and Marco, who stood in the corner with his eyes fixed on a point above my head.

The elevator rose. I counted the seconds. Fifteen. Twenty. Thirty. We were going high.

When the doors opened, the air changed. It smelled like nothing. Not home. Not a hotel. Like a space that had been cleaned too many times with chemicals that killed scent.

Dante walked me through a foyer that was all marble and shadow. No paintings. No furniture. Just space designed to make sound die. We passed a kitchen—stainless steel, empty. A living room with one couch, facing a wall of glass that showed the city spread out below like a circuit board.

He stopped at a door. Pushed it open. A study. One desk. One chair. A lamp.

He sat me in the chair. My ankles were still tied, and the rope bit into the skin, but I could feel the circulation returning in painful pins and needles. I looked around. No phone. No computer. Just the lamp, the desk, and a pen.

Dante walked to the desk. Opened a drawer. Took out a pair of wire cutters and a first-aid kit.

He cut the zip ties first. The plastic snapped, and my hands fell into my lap like dead things. Blood rushed back in a wave of fire and needles. I bit my lip to keep from crying out.

He didn't look at my face. He took my right wrist, turned it palm-up, and wiped the blood away with a gauze pad from the kit. His fingers were cold. Methodical. Like he was cleaning a weapon, not a person.

"Listen carefully," he said, dropping the bloody gauze on the desk. "I'm going to speak once. You're going to remember. If you ask me to repeat myself, I'll have Marco remove one of your fingers. Not because I'm angry. Because I don't waste time."

He reached into the drawer again and pulled out a document. Thick. Legal-sized. He dropped it on the desk in front of me. The top page had my name on it. Elena Voss. Printed. Not handwritten. They'd known who I was before the auction.

"Your father owes three million dollars to people who don't accept payment plans," Dante said. "Those people sold his debt to me. I bought it, and I bought you, because your father made it clear that the only thing he had left of value was his daughter."

He leaned back against the desk, crossing his arms. The burn scar on his hand caught the lamplight. I couldn't stop looking at it.

"Here's the arrangement," he said. "For ninety days, you will live here. You will attend functions as my fiancée. You will smile, you will wear what I tell you to wear, and you will convince my family and my business associates that I am a man with stable personal interests. In exchange, your father stays alive. Not free. Alive. In a warehouse I control. Fed. Breathing."

I stared at him. "You're insane."

"Probably." He didn't blink. "But I'm also your only option. The men who want your father dead aren't patient. They're outside right now, asking questions at the docks, checking morgue records. They don't believe you survived the auction. And if they find out you did, they won't negotiate. They'll burn this building down with you in it."

My mouth went dry. "Who are they?"

"Not your concern." He uncrossed his arms and pointed at the contract. "Page three. Clause seven. Read it."

I looked down. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely turn the page. The words blurred.

Clause 7: In the event that the Party of the First Part (Elena Voss) attempts to leave the premises without authorization, or makes contact with any individual not pre-approved by the Party of the Second Part (Dante Romano), the financial and physical security of one Arthur Voss shall be immediately and permanently terminated.

I read it three times. Permanently terminated.

"Sign it," Dante said.

I looked up at him. "And if I don't?"

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Tapped the screen. Turned it toward me.

A video. Dark. Grainy. A man in a chair, under a single light. My father. His face was bruised, his glasses broken, but he was breathing. Alive.

Dante tapped the screen again. The video disappeared.

"That was taken twenty minutes ago," he said. "The next video will be shorter. Sign the contract, Elena. Or I'll send you a link you don't want to open."

My hands were shaking. I picked up the pen. It was heavy. Expensive. The ink flowed too smoothly, like it was designed to make signing feel effortless.

I wrote my name. Elena Voss. The letters looked wrong. Like someone else's handwriting.

Dante took the contract. He didn't read it. He just folded it in half, put it in his pocket, and walked toward the door.

"Wait," I said. "What about—"

He opened the door. Marco was standing in the hallway, close enough that he'd been listening. Marco's eyes flicked to me, then to Dante.

"Don," Marco said, his voice low. "Marchetti's crew is at the docks. They're showing her picture around. They know she's not dead."

Dante stopped. He didn't turn around. But I saw his shoulders go rigid. Just for a second. Then he nodded, once, and stepped into the hallway.

The door closed behind him. I heard the lock turn.

I sat in the chair, the pen still in my hand, my wrist throbbing, my father's face frozen in my mind. I looked at the door. Solid wood. No handle on my side.

Then I looked at the window. The city lights below. Freedom, if I could fly.

But Marco's words echoed in my head. They know she's not dead.

I thought about the car that had waited outside the auction house. The gun. The bullet that had missed me by inches because Dante had knocked me down.

I looked at the locked door. At the empty room. At the blood on my wrist that Dante had wiped away with his own hand.

And for the first time since I'd woken up in that chair, I felt something worse than fear.

I felt doubt.

Because the cage he'd locked me in was made of steel and silence.

But the wolves outside were real. And they were already hunting.