In Bucuresti all three Romanian women had joined a marathon road trip to northern Italy. As soon as their van cleared Italian customs, passports and cash were seized, and each woman was told she owed ten thousand dollars for her travel expenses. Unable to pay, the women were taken to Milan’s movable human auction and “sold” to bidders willing to cover the costs. Pimps and brothel owners, the bidders “persuaded” the women to work off their debts through prostitution at locations throughout Italy.
Dawna and Stela would follow the traffickers’ route only to Bucuresti. And not even to Bucuresti if anything set off Dawna’s internal alarm. Not that she was sure she’d know what was alarming in this creepy country with its ugly bullet-scarred concrete buildings and garish ads for the Bank of Tran
