Chapter 2 SOLD

Ariana POV

"And that, Nevio, is the only way your debt will be paid."

The husky voice of a foreigner drifted through the thin wall of my father's study, pounding in my chest like a barrel drum. I pressed myself against the cold plaster, my breath caught in my throat. I had been on my way to the kitchen for a glass of water, a fleeting moment of freedom in the stiff silence of our house, when I heard the muffled voices. My curiosity, a fatal flaw in my existence, had paralyzed me.

"But... my daughter?" My father, Nevio, was frail. His voice barely rose above a whisper. It was a tone I recognized too well the sound of surrender. A sound of a man giving in for his own sake, at the expense of everyone else. A cold dread began to twist in my stomach.

"She is a commodity, Nevio. A tool. Nothing more."

The most annoying voice of Greta made my stomach churned "Leone Maurizio does not ask

twice. He wants your daughter. And you owe him."

The world tilted beneath me. My name wasn't spoken, but I felt it. My father only had one daughter. To Leone Maurizio? The name struck me like a blow. Even in our small, god-abandoned corner of the world, whispers of the Maurizio family and the MM Mafia were enough to curdle the blood. Leone Maurizio was a ghost story, a threat whispered to scare misbehaving children. A legend of violence and cruelty. And I, Ariana Aldo, was to be handed over to him.

My hand flew to my mouth, stifling a gasp. My eyes burned, but the tears hadn't fallen yet.

My body felt frozen, nerves screaming in silence. I heard papers shuffle, the creak of my father's chair.

"She's... she's just twenty, " my father stammered almost weakly at least the last thread of being a father took him unaware

"And untouched, " the foreign voice snapped back, a cold amusement laced in his tone. It

sent shivers down my spine. "A blank canvas for the name of Maurizio. The deal is sealed, . She will be taken to the house of Maurizio by dawn. If you resist, there will be consequences you cannot afford."

A dry, humorless laugh followed, and then the door slammed shut.

The conversation was over.

My fate was sealed.

I stepped back from the wall, my legs too weak to hold me. The hallway, usually just a dim passage, now stretched on like a tunnel into darkness. My heart, once pounding wildly, now felt like a stone in my chest, dragging me down. Sold. Like furniture. Like trash.

The words echoed through my mind:

"A commodity."

"The price for your foolishness."

"Delivered by dawn."

My stepmother Greta emerged from the kitchen, her eyes narrowing when she saw me.

"What are you doing, girl? Back to your room! And don't even think about causing trouble tonight. Your father has had a long day."

Her voice was a hiss, sharp and bitter. She had never liked me a living reminder of the woman she replaced. Her cruelty had been constant since my mother died when I was ten, an endless gnawing on my spirit. But even her venom couldn't match what had just happened.

I didn't answer. I couldn't. I simply turned and staggered up the creaky wooden stairs to my cold, confining room the same room that once felt like a prison now felt like a holding cell for my execution.

They were not gentle gashes. They were raw, coarse heartbreaks that tore from my body, each one substantiation of times of suppressed pain, neglect, and now raw fear. I buried my face in my knees, my thin gown little protection against the bite of night. My mama 's face flashed before me – her warm smile, the sensation of her hand wrapped tightly around mine. She had been my gemstone, my one storage of untainted love. When she failed, a part of me failed with her. My father had changed, come distant, cold, and also, under the education of Greta, outright cruel. I had learned how to come unnoticeable, how to live by fading into the background, by absorbing every blow, every inhuman personality, every empty regard.

This was different. This was not just physical neglect or emotional abuse. This was the stripping from me of my life as I knew it, the forced relinquishing of my tone. I was to be handed over to the mercy of a monster, a man whose very name inseminated fear in hardened culprits. What was he going to do to me? Would he be as cruel as my father, as poisonous as Greta? Worse? The unknown was an open mouth, ready to swallow me whole.

I supplicated to a God that I had no idea was paying attention, to a mama that I supplicated would notice me and look after me. I supplicated for a phenomenon, for freedom, for someone, anyone, to deliver me from this hell. My voice broke, my throat raw, but the prayers went on, critical, hopeless gasps into the empty room.

The twinkles ticked by, each beat of the old grandfather timepiece in the corridor a sledgehammer to my fragile stopgap. The moonlight shifted, casting new murk on the walls. My heartbreaks at last beggared, leaving my eyes fluffy and my face smeared with dust. Fatigue, heavy and rough, began to descend upon me. Sleep was yet a distant dream, an insolvable luxury.

I looked out of the window, past the involved branches of the old oak tree that scratched at the panes, past the rent of the moon held like a wicked crescent in the black sky. Escape.

The breath caught in my mind, a transitory, unrealistic thought. Where would I go to escape?

I had no plutocrat, no connections, no bone who would be bothered to save me. The rest of the world outside our old, wrecked house was vast and intimidating, and I was a little, fractured-off girl.

A gentle valve on the window made me jump. My head turned round, my heart pounding into my mouth. Had my father or Greta come to visit me? But the knocking was too light, too symphonic. It was n't the furious barrel of knuckles.

An alternate knock, harder this time. I pulled myself upright, my body tense and sore, and crept vocally to the window. Foggy old glass, but through the smut and the grease, I could just see a figure. Altitudinous, familiar. My heart stuck in my throat.

It was Renzo.

My arcobaleno. My beam in the darkness of my actuality. He was the only one ever to have looked at me, truly looked, truly loved. We met by chance, months before, when I'd snuck out to the business. He was a traveling trafficker, he would tell me, with a kind smile and eyes that held more depth than I had ever witnessed ahead. He would always be so kind, so compassionate. He was my secret cherished thing, my stopgap I cleaved to. He was the reason I could still believe in virtuousness.

He rapped again, and also he gestured for me to open the window.

" Ariana, " he gasped, his own voice soft and raspy, with a heat I'd no way felt before. He hooked his leg over the stave, as smooth and silent as a cat, and stepped into my room. He was dressed in black, and the darkness masked his face, but I knew his eyes, indeed in the dusk. They were generally warm and comforting. Tonight, they blazed with hot determination.

" Renzo? Why are you then?" I rumored back, my throat raw from crying. " It's not safe. If my father"

He put a stop to me, his hand on my arm, establishment but not hurting. " No time for that,

mia cara. " His eyes were bottomless, burning, drinking in my sanguine- rimmed cheeks and

fluffy eyes. " I heard. I heard everything."

My heart sank further, if possible. So he knew. He knew about the fear that awaited me.

" They are dealing with me, Renzo, " I had the strength to say, the words bitter- tasting as ash.

" To the Maurizios. To Leone Maurizio. " Another drift of forlornness swept over me.

He pulled me against him, his arms around me, a comforting heat that for an instant dulled the slashing edges of fear. " I know, love. I know. And that is why I am here. " He rested back

on his heels, his hands framing my face, pulling me to look into his eyes. " You must go with

me. Now. We can escape. Tonight."

My mind reeled. Run down? With Renzo? It had been such a crazy notion just a couple of twinkles gone , and then now it was a shining, last- rustle stopgap. But it was intimidating, also. I had no way been out of this house, this small city. The veritably size of the vast, unknown world was dispiriting.

" Run? Where do we go?" I breathed. " They'll catch us. The Maurizio family. they are far and

wide. They'll no way release me."

He shook his head, a grim line to his mouth. " Not if we are clever. I have been planning for this for some time now, Ariana. I knew there was a possibility that this day would come. I've means, connections. We can vanish. Make a new life, nearly far removed from all of this."

His thumb stroked at my impertinence, swiping down a moping gash. " A life where you are

safe. Where you are loved. Where you are free."

His words were attar to my bruised soul, a guarantee of a life I had only ever imagined.

Freedom. Love. Security. These were luxuries I had known. Yet the fear was still a bite mass

in my belly. The name Maurizio was a weight.

But. my father. " I started, and also stumbled. Indeed uttering it, the words felt concave. My

father had vended me. He'd chosen between his child and plutocrat. Why should I watch out

for him?

Renzo's eyes turned cold, a spark of something undecipherable flashing across them. " Your

father made his choice, Ariana. He made it rather than you. You owe him nothing, and Greta. she will be thrilled to be relieved of you. " His tone was laced with bitterness I had not anticipated. It was rougher than I'd ever heard him talk, harder.

He was correct, naturally. They would not notice my absence. They would probably indeed celebrate it. The consummation, though agonizing, also filled me with an odd feeling of freedom. There was nothing to keep me then. No love, no duty, no provocation to remain.

" Why not? why not us?" I gasped, the flush rising up my cheeks in malignancy of the terror. We would always have a secret affair, stolen ganders and furtive pledges. He would make me pledges of a future, but always one of fantasy. Now, it was a hopeless reality.

A soft smile brushed his lips, but his eyes did n't soften. " We will be together, Ariana. Always.

That is what I want. That has always been what I want. " He put my hand into his own, his

fritters interlocking with mine. His hand was warm, comforting.m" I can keep you safe. I'll keep

you safe. But you have to trust me. You have to come now."

There was no mistaking the urgency in his voice. " Before dawn, " the man had said. Dawn

was n't far from here.However, I would be turned over to Leone Maurizio, something I could

hardly indeed begin to understand, If I did n't go with Renzo.

My mind spun, a vortex of fear, of stopgap, and the ghost of an old love. Renzo was my retreat, my secret solace. He was the only bone who had ever shown me glimmerings of another actuality. He was my first love, my only friend. And now, he was offering me a chance to flee the teeth of a monster.

But within me, a small, uncertain voice was nudging me with a query. Renzo had always been mysterious, popping up and also fading just as snappily without an explanation. His life, he would explain to me, was complex. He never spoke of his family, or where in the world he actually abided He was just. Renzo. The traveling trafficker. And yet he was well apprehensive of the Maurizio family, my father's debt. He sounded to have a network, coffers, that did not relatively fit the simple story he would tell me.

Was I frenetic? Stupid? My mama had advised me always against being too trusting, against the wickedness in the world beyond our walls. Yet what could I do? Stay then and live in terror with Leone Maurizio, or plunge into the unknown with the one human being to have ever treated me kindly?

My aspect fell on the small, folded charm I wore around my neck, a gift from my mama at her death. Inside it, the creased print of her happy face. Hold on, my little rose, her voice appeared to tale within my head. Survive.

And survival, by this time, meant choice.

" Anybody got something I am supposed to bring?" I claimed, my own voice jiggling but with establishment. My decision was firm. Terror still ticked along in the recesses of my mind, but the idea of freedom, of being with Renzo, was a hint in the suffocating darkness.

A shriek of relief escaped his lips. " Nothing but you, Ariana. We've to move presto. Everything additional can be replaced. Your freedom, your life, He squeezed my hand harder. " Ready?"

I looked around my small, dingy room, at the many meager effects that comprised my entire world. A minced demitasse doll, a rasped mask, one book of wilted flowers. None of it counted. None of it was worth staying for.

" Yes, " I said, the word half- stopgap, half- fear. "I am ready."

He jounced, his eyes ablaze with fierce determination. " Good. Stay close behind me. And

not a word."

He moved back to the window, smooth and silent. He Extended a hand, and I Grasped it, my heart knocking against my ribCage. The cold night air wrapped around me as I swung my Legs over the stave, the rough dinghy of the oak tree scraping against me. Renzo's sTeady hand held on to me, leading Me to detect footing on the establishment branches.

Down then, the world was an oil of dark shadow and pale moonlight. The night was so still, there was only the chittering of justices and my own racing heart pounding in time. Any rustling of leaves, any barking in the distance, made me jump with fear. What if someone came upon us? What if my father or Greta awakened?

But Renzo was a solid presence by my side, his grip establishment, his footing certain. He was my anchor, my compass in this shocking flight. We crawled down sluggishly, precisely, until my bases touched the soggy lawn. The earth beneath my rasped slippers felt abnormally spongy, a strange, jarring discrepancy to my captivity's hard, enduring bottoms.

He led me quietly through the abandoned theater , past the withered rose backwoods that had been neglected by Greta, to the rotten gravestone wall that marked the edge of our property. My casket heaved for breath as we reached it. Beyond it was the unknown.

He climbed the wall with ease, also turned to me, presenting me with his hand. I broke for one moment, also accepted it, hauling myself up, my muscles protesting vociferously. When I was standing on the cold gravestone, I glanced back one final time at the house. It was dark and still, a monument of lost expedients and ceaseless agony. I did n't feel anguish, nor guilt. Only an immense feeling of release.

also, with Renzo, I fell to the other side. The other side of the wall was darker, wilider. Trees stood altitudinous like silent guardians, their branches tangled into a cover against the moon. A thin, twisting path, hardly visible in the darkness, went on before us.

" This way, " Renzo breathed, his voice not much louder than the whispers of the leaves. He

seized my hand again, his fritters straining through mine, and pulled me forward.

We Ran, quietly, deeper into the timber that ringed our land. The air was cool, rich with the scent of pine needles and wet earth. My bare bases, habituated to the rough bottoms of my bedroom, protested the rougher ground, but I did n't notice. Every step was one step further from the horror, one step toward a fragile, conditional freedom.

I had No idea in which direction we Were Going, or what to anticipate. My mind was in a whirl of fear and a hopeless, growing stopgap. Was this actually passing? Was I really Escaping? Or was this one further of the vagrancies of fate?

But as Renzo's hold on mine grew tighter, a shock of something akin to courage ran through me. I had survived my father's abandonment, Greta's brutality, and the smothering quality of my mama 's absence. And now, I would fight for my own.

"God, what is happening next" I said in my heart as I waited for the next thing to do from my

saviour; Renzo though mysterious but caring and I know I might regret this later but do I have a better idea? No .