Sold To Mr. Milano - Daniella Wright Page 0,7

market again, I couldn’t have him telling everyone my pregnancy was a farce. I’d be killed without the blink of an eye.

I glanced over at Alberto who was looking smug as ever as he drove with his arm draped out the window. If he hadn’t shown up, I would have found some way to ward off the guards. I could have gone through with my mission and potentially saved who knows how many women and their babies. Now everything was ruined, and I would have to start all over again.

I fiddled with the lock on the door, taking care to keep Alberto from noticing. But it wouldn’t budge. He obviously controlled all the locks from the panel on the driver’s side. Of course, someone like him would have their car altered that way. No one got out until he said they did.

“This is far enough,” I tried announcing. “You can let me out here.”

“No. I think I’ll hold on to you a while longer.”

“Let me go! You got me out of that place...for whatever reason. Now pull over here and let me out. I don’t need you to take care of me.”

“Oh no?” he smiled. “Sure looked like you needed someone to take care of you back there.”

“I would’ve been perfectly fine without you, I assure you.”

He didn’t budge, just kept driving. I didn’t want to find out where he was taking me. I started shouting louder, demanding for him to let me go. When he didn’t respond, I kicked and screamed until my lungs had about given out. He didn’t move a muscle. He stared blankly ahead without even so much as flinching.

“Are you done now?” he asked after I had been silent for a few moments.

“Done fighting? Never. Whatever you have in store for me won’t work out the way you’re hoping. I can promise you that much.”

“Look, I didn’t ‘rescue’ you back there. I bought you fair and square. So...now you’re mine, and I never let a penny go to waste,” he cut his eyes over to look me up and down, but averted his sights back to the road after taking in the bulge of my pregnant belly.

He wanted to scare me, to torment me, but even he had his limits to what he would do to a woman in my condition. It was just another reminder that I had to maintain the lie of this pregnancy no matter what. It was the only thing protecting me as long as I was in Alberto’s possession.

“I always knew you were a monster,” I seethed. “But what kind of sick bastard buys a pregnant woman?”

He stiffened, and I knew I had struck a nerve. His nostrils flared as he breathed in deep. “If the father of your baby had done his job, you wouldn’t have been sold off to me like a goat.” He shot a disdainful look in my direction. “Or perhaps you don’t even know who the father is?”

“What are you implying?”

His voice dripped with hatred. “That for all the expectations I had for Don Martino’s one and only daughter, to be a common whore was not one of them. Dying while fighting for bums who don’t deserve a second thought? Probably. Being murdered by some corrupt official or dangerous criminal for sticking your nose in places it doesn’t belong? Very likely. But a knocked up whore being sold off in a place like that?” He shook his head in disappointment. “No.”

“I’d rather be a whore than a heartless beast who destroys people’s lives to better their own,” I hissed, trembling with anger.

I wasn’t just arguing to uphold my facade of being with child. I truly felt for any woman who found themselves in that situation in real life and was judged so harshly. I imagined all the ways in which a woman could find herself pregnant and alone with no other options. And to think someone like Alberto Milano would consider them unworthy of any compassion...all for circumstances they had no control over.

But he wasn’t entirely without compassion, or else I wouldn’t be here. The thought intrigued me, and I could see he was completely unphased by my last dagger.

“And anyway...if you think I am so beneath you, why bother buying me at all? Why not leave me to whatever was going to happen? I apparently deserve it according to you anyway.” I sulked down a little in the seat, still bitter that my entire mission had been destroyed. It would have been better for