Sold To Mr. Milano - Daniella Wright Page 0,20
him and tell him everything I learned. He’d be angry, afraid for something that had already passed, but he’d be proud. I had pictured him opening a bottle of wine and saying we had to celebrate. I’d tell him all the stories of my time on the Milano estate.
But the ending had changed for certain now. Now I was imagining much darker things. Like him hearing the news that I had been tortured or killed...or worse, years going by and him never knowing what had happened to me at all.
There was no way to know what time it was aside from the caregiver coming and going for meals. She’d bring in a new tray and carry out the old, each one containing new piles of inedible trash. By dinner the next night, I was starving. Surely this is not what Alberto Milano had planned for me. If he wanted me to starve, he wouldn’t bother sending in any food at all.
“I can’t eat this stuff you’re bringing me,” I protested firmly as she came in with a new tray.
She laughed again like she always did. She was surprisingly cheerful for someone with a job like hers, and she seemed so old that her body ached when she moved.
“No, really. I can’t. It will make me sick! Some of it’s rotten! Please, I’m so hungry. Couldn’t you slip in anything else? An apple? A piece of bread...that isn’t covered in mold?”
“I’m not a chef and this isn’t a fancy restaurant with a menu,” she huffed. “You’re lucky to be getting anything at all.”
“Then you have to let me go,” I argued more desperately. “I don’t know what I’m doing here, but you can’t keep me. This is illegal...To hold people prisoner like this.”
“I have it on good authority that you’re not being held prisoner. Mr. Milano bought you fair and square, and if you don’t like it...well, then you should have never gotten mixed up with that marketplace.”
“Let me go!” I cried louder. “I demand it! Right now!”
“Not until you’re recovered.”
“Recovered!? How do you expect me to recover with no sunlight or decent food!?”
But the door was already slamming shut in my face. I wanted to take some comfort in the idea that this was just temporary. Maybe I would be let go once I was better, but I didn’t know how much better I could possibly get in conditions like this. It brought on a sinking feeling in my gut. It wouldn’t be so simple.
Each time the caregiver returned with my meals, I pleaded with her again to let me go. She’d either ignore me entirely or laugh like a madwoman. I was beginning to feel like a madwoman myself. Counting the coming and going of the meal trays, I gathered I had been awake in there for five days.
Of course, I eventually caved and started nibbling on what little bit of the food I could stand, which became more as the days went on. Sometimes it made me sick, and the only place for me to go was the same basin I urinated in. The caregiver would empty that twice a day, sometimes only once. I guessed that was easier than the risk of giving me my own bathroom.
I was laying flat out across the concrete floor, wanting to feel the coolness against my skin. I also just needed something else to do besides pacing or being in the bed. But a startling noise began rattling the walls. It wasn’t the strange old caregiver’s feeble steps. It sounded like a whole army marching straight towards me. Their pounding boots could be heard from far away, getting closer and closer by the second. I leaped up and sunk down into the corner, knowing I had nowhere to hide, but for some reason that felt safer than being exposed in the middle of the room.
The door unlocked and flew open wide as a group of five or six, maybe more, big strong men came storming in to surround me. Two of them gathered on each side of me and lifted me into the air. The others stood in front and behind them as they headed for the door, ensuring if I did manage to kick and punch my way free, they’d be there to catch me. Of course, my fighting was even more useless than it would normally be up against a group of such burly men, thanks to the five days of near starvation I had gone through.
Before we reached