Stolen By The Boss

What the hell just happened? Did I really win that fight so easily?

Chapter 14

Sophia

* * *

Dean did not win that fight. I let him think he did, though. Because I will be there to kill Bishop Blackstone. I have to be the one to do it. I have to find out where Bishop is keeping the women I left behind when I escaped.

I still have nightmares about the women I left in that place.

I was only fifteen, working at a mercato delle pulci—a flea market—not far from home when one of Bishop’s agents, Marco Caputo, contacted me. He was years older than me with blond messy hair, thick glasses, and a smile filled with shiny white teeth. Marco was a god to our people. If you didn’t have money to pay for your mother’s hospital bill. You went to him, and magically the problem vanished. He had the whole city under his control. At first, Marco was kind, caring and would play ball with my younger brothers in the yard at night.

He paid attention to me, he listened while I talked non stop of my dreams.

I could have fallen in love, but I was just a kid, and he was a man. He promised me things I could never even imagine for myself. Fantasies of a better life in America where I could have a house, a family, things that I could never even fathom. I ate up every word he said. My mother believed him. My sister believed him.

He fed us with lies and we ate every single one.

In the end, he took only me, promising me I could have anything I could ever want. That once I was all settled, I could send for my family and they could come live with me. We never doubted it, after all, he was Marco Caputo.

And Marco was trustworthy, or so we thought.

I was ecstatic the day I left. Sure, it took me two hours to say goodbye to my mother and younger brothers and sister. I cried a lot in those first few hours.

I never knew those weren’t even the first of my tears. That a whole floodgate was about to open. That my life would change forever.

We flew in style to Romania, where Marco said he had to stop for a quick errand. There he transferred me from his private jet to a shipping container filled with other women. We were added to a cargo ship and for the next few days, or weeks, I don’t even know, we traveled to America.

It was hot. There was barely any food, so we had to ration between the fifty of us. That’s right. Fifty women living in a shipping container, gasping for air, living in our own waste. The tears couldn’t keep me warm at night, so I stopped crying. I stopped feeling sorry for myself.

Marco Caputo had lied to me following Bishop’s orders, I later found out, and I was not going to let him get away with it.

The other women in the container were lost, just like me. I made a few friends. I made a few enemies. But together we had one common goal... to survive.

And we had one common enemy… Marco Caputo.

We all knew the name. We all knew the man. He had conned all of us to make us all believe we were somebody. That we could be somebody.

He was wrong.

A few years later, I found out Marco had betrayed his former boss, Bishop Blackstone, and was murdered. Marco Caputo was dead, and there was only Bishop Blackstone left to pay the price.

I sit on the bed in the guest room of Dean’s condo. I’ve been living here a few weeks and already feel more at home than anywhere I’ve lived before.

When the girls and I made it to America, they shuffled us into a basement where we lived for weeks, sleeping on filthy bunk beds.

The basement was cold and dank. We fought for space. It’s where I met Rosa. She was the housemother, taking care of us all and preparing us for the life of being a sex slave. I had no idea what lay in store for us, but I knew it couldn’t be good.

I became one of Rosa’s favorites. She took pity on me because I was the youngest.

She took pity on me because she said I reminded her of her when she was younger. She was enslaved to a master who treated her poorly and yet, she was able to rise above it. She worked hard now, taking care of all us girls. Making sure we were fed and properly cared for.

When it came time for me to be sold she helped me escape. At first, when I escaped I was broke, scrambling for any spare scraps I could bum off anyone.

Finally, I met Mia DeWinter and she took pity on me. She offered me a job. Maid at the DeWinter home.