**Part 2** The silence that followed was deafening. The storm outside seemed to pause.
The silence that followed was deafening. The storm outside seemed to pause.
Roman slowly turned his head. His dark, calculating gaze locked onto me.
I stopped breathing. I stood there in my baggy cardigan, my heavy thighs pressed together, my face flushing with a mixture of profound humiliation and absolute terror.
“What did you just say?” Roman asked, his voice dropping an octave.
“Sadie,” my father rushed out, words tumbling over each other. “My daughter. Take her as collateral. Put her to work. She’s smart. She knows accounting. She can clean. She can be collateral until I get the money. Just take her instead of me.”
Tears pricked my eyes. My own father. He was throwing his overweight, useless daughter to a mafia syndicate to save his own skin. He didn’t care if they beat me, sold me, or left me in a ditch. To him I was finally serving a purpose. I was a human shield.
I expected Roman to laugh. I expected him to look at my thick waist, my soft jawline, my terrified eyes, and tell my father that his collateral was worthless—that nobody would want a fat, trembling girl.
Instead, Roman took a slow, deliberate step toward me. His towering frame blocked out the light from the hallway chandelier.
I squeezed my eyes shut, bracing for the harsh judgment, for the cruel rejection that would inevitably lead to my father’s demise and my own ruin.
The insult never came.
“Pack a bag,” Roman ordered, his eyes never leaving mine. “You have minutes.”
The ride into the darkness was a suffocating nightmare. I sat in the back of the blacked-out SUV, knees pressed tightly together, hands clutching the handles of a small duffel bag that held my entire life. Roman sat beside me, completely still, shrouded in shadows. He hadn’t spoken a single word since we left my father weeping in his study.
My mind raced through horrifying scenarios. I had read the news. I knew what men like Roman Costa did to people who owed them. I assumed I was being taken to a warehouse, a shipping container, somewhere cold and damp, where I would be punished for the sins of a father who never even loved me.
Every time the car hit a bump, a fresh wave of panic washed over me. I tried to make myself as small as possible, pressing against the cold glass of the window, terrified that if my arm accidentally brushed his expensive wool suit, he would strike me.
Instead, the SUV turned off the desolate highway and began winding up a steep, heavily wooded road. The rain was letting up, revealing the imposing iron gates of an enormous estate hidden in the Catskill Mountains.
The gates swung open silently. We drove up a long, sweeping driveway lined with towering pines and stopped in front of a massive modern stone mansion.
One of Roman’s men—a stoic, broad-shouldered man I would later learn was named Samuel—opened the door. I scrambled out clumsily, legs stiff and trembling, almost tripping over my own feet. I waited in the damp, freezing air for Roman to drag me by the hair toward a basement door.
Roman simply adjusted his cuffs, walked past me, and said, “Follow me, Sadie.”
I swallowed hard, clutching my bag to my chest like a shield, and followed him through the massive oak front doors.
The interior of the house was breathtaking: dark wood, expansive glass windows overlooking the valley, muted expensive tones. It didn’t look like a torture chamber. It looked like an architectural masterpiece.
An older woman with sharp eyes and perfectly pinned gray hair was waiting in the foyer.
“Mrs. Gable,” Roman said, stopping to remove his coat. “This is Sadie. Show her to the east wing guest suite. Make sure she has everything she needs.”
I froze.
Guest suite.
