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MARIA

He tied me up. That bastard actually tied me up and beat me like a punching bag.

I woke up after passing out in his secret room back to my cage, surrounded by a few familiar faces in the cell. I sat up and let out a breath of frustration, annoyed at myself for even losing consciousness.

I didn't cry or wince once when he hit me. I wouldn't let him have the satisfaction of seeing my pain; however, the moment I got up, my whole body ached. I let out a small yelp, my hand going straight to my ribs. I was sure I had broken at least one; the pain was unbearable around my torso. Rosa looked at me in sympathy as she was wrapping what looked like a ripped piece of sheet around my arm.

"Stop moving so quickly after getting up," she lightly scolded me, a downcast look on her face. I huffed, looking down and examining the state of my injuries. I refused to let him dampen my spirit; I had to stay strong for myself and the girls. It hurt; my whole body felt like it was on fire with differing intensities all over me.

My eyes met Rosa's as I observed, "I'm guessing this happens often?" She nodded, and Charlotte, who seemed to have composed herself, came from the outside, entering the cell and sitting on the edge of my bed. "He went easy on you," she mumbled as I looked at her in disbelief. Maybe she needed to exchange bodies with mine to understand the level of pain in me. She sighed, her eyes scanning my body. "So what'd he do?"

There was a strange sense of normalisation around me. Giovanni had hurt all the girls, and it happened so frequently that it didn't even faze them anymore. "The first always hurts," Rosa murmured, pressing her water bottle against the bruise forming on my thigh. I flinched a little, sharply inhaling as the pain shot right up through me. "He said..." I hesitated, the words becoming trapped in my throat as I thought about what happened a few hours ago.

Giovanni really had his time punishing me. He didn't treat me as a woman or even as a person. The man was hitting me over and over again. I couldn't completely lie to myself and say that I was even the slightest bit afraid of him. He was strong and extremely intimidating. I couldn't be the same the next time I saw him.

"That next time it won't be his fists," I revealed to them, my hands clasping together on my lap as I looked down. "That I would really be his next time." She sighed, pulling the blanket over my legs again and looking at me. "He won't get the chance," Rosa responded firmly, giving me a reassuring smile.

I nodded as Charlotte squeezed my hand comfortingly. I glanced up and noticed the dress on the bedside table. "Where's Daisy?"

"In her cell alone," Charlotte answered, looking afar. "Daisy's always alone. She doesn't like being around other people." I frowned, looking at Charlotte deeply as she continued, "She doesn't talk, she barely eats, and she's always...she's not allowed to have any clothes on. She's always shivering."

I couldn't stop myself from saying, "Do none of you guys help her?" Charlotte looked slightly taken aback and replied, "We did. But then he was getting mad at everyone for 'brainwashing' his favourite doll. We get punished if we speak to her. We're not allowed to step in when she's sent upstairs." Charlotte had a sympathetic look on her face. "Daisy is pitiful. She comes back hardly able to walk and cries herself to sleep. She misses her mother a lot."

I felt for the girl. Daisy had been there the longest, and she had clearly lost herself being there. I knew I had to do something to help her—to help them all. I plastered an optimistic smile on my face. "Well, I'm not going to let him hurt her anymore." What I had seen was enough; he was killing Daisy slowly every time she was brought into that room. I took the dress and asked, "Where's her cell?"

Rosa looked at me in surprise. "You're giving Daisy the dress?" I nodded, glancing down at it.

"It's an ugly outfit, but it's better than her being naked all the time." Charlotte's eyes were filled with alarm again. "B-But Giovanni, he—"

"I have permission. He's not going to touch Daisy anymore," I reassured her, my whole body becoming tense again as I thought about what I had practically begged Giovanni for.

Rosa frowned as she gazed at me. She quietly asked, "What was the price?" I simply shook my head, my own body feeling the chill of anxiety as I thought about it. I gave Rosa a comforting smile. "I'll tell you when the time is right." Rosa's concern didn't fade away. She sighed, already looking emotional again.

I would start sleeping in Giovanni's bed from the next night, and I was already thinking of ways to free us from his capture. I needed to move fast; the longer I stayed, I knew the more I would lose my sanity. The girls were already affected by their abduction. I went to Daisy's cell, and she was curled up in a ball underneath her blanket. My sympathy for her was building in my heart. Daisy needed help; there was no way I was going to let her continue going upstairs to be Giovanni's doll.

So that was the deal: Daisy was to be left alone in exchange for me sleeping in Giovanni's bed. That was his request. I made it clear that that would be all there was to it, but I knew I had to be on guard more than ever after making such a deal. I silently inhaled as I pulled the blanket off Daisy slightly to see her head.

She gripped onto it, turning, and her bloodshot eyes looked up at me in fear, shaking at the sight of me. I parted my lips in surprise, "Sorry—I thought you were sleeping." Daisy pulled the blanket from my hand; her fingers were so pale and slightly blue. I gave her a warm smile as she sat up slowly, covering her nudity as much as she could with the blanket. I could've cried at the sight of her chapped lips, tear-stained cheeks, and eyes filled with sadness with bags underneath them. A gorgeous young girl had been abused to an empty vessel. She almost didn't look alive.

"Here," I said softly, handing the dress to her. "You don't have to worry about him anymore. He won't call you up again." Her glossy eyes looked down at the dress, her fingers hesitatingly reaching out to touch the material. Daisy let the blanket drop and pulled the dress over her head, dressing herself. My breath hitched as I noticed the red stains on her mattress, the scars across her body. I was starting to get teary again.

I looked down and exhaled, feeling my heart break for her. Some of them were definitely scars for life. My head shot up the minute I heard her crying. Her shaking hands covered her face as the tears dropped. I hesitated but placed my hand on top of hers, holding it gently. "I'll get you out of here, Daisy," I quietly said as her hands moved away from her face. A soft whimper left her as she looked at me in such agony and desperation that it made my heart clench in my chest. "I promise," I sincerely whispered, unable to maintain a strong voice at the sight of her.


That evening, I didn't have an appetite. The girls were provided with soup for dinner by the guards, but I couldn't eat. Sat outside my cell, I watched as they were all sitting in a circle; a low and depressed atmosphere filled the entire place. There was not a single ounce of hope between them. It was quiet, but they spoke in low voices, most of them talking about their homes, dreaming about their families.

"I wish I got to say how much I love them," one girl did say. It stuck with me. They had no optimism of ever leaving that place. They had accepted their situation and imagined the worst. I couldn't blame them.

"We tried to escape once." I looked up to see Blair approaching me. She was also in Dream. She disappeared around the same time Dorothy did. She sat beside me and sighed. I almost didn't recognise her at first. Blair had lost a significant amount of weight. She was always on Madame Rodriguez's hit list for scolding and didn't care about restrictions on diet. As she sat, her thighs no longer touched. I looked at her in astonishment. She had been through a lot there.

"You did?" I looked at her with my full attention. I wanted to know why escaping was completely out of the question for the girls, why they had accepted their state. She sighed, taking another bite of her stale-looking bread. "It was Dorothy's plan," Blair said with a small smile. "It was a fucking masterpiece too." She always had a naturally spirited tone to her words. My eyebrows drew closer as I focused on her story.

"I got a sense of touching grass after so long," Blair thoughtfully told me, "it's so strange how you start appreciating things more when it's stripped away from you." I noticed the deepness and genuineness in how she spoke.

"We got outside, but they surrounded us, and it all went wrong." Blair turned to look into my eyes, and in a broken voice, she said, "We were punished for weeks. It was hell. Dorothy was the only one out of us who had the guts to stand up to Giovanni. She was killed as an example for us to be silent." My stomach tightened at the truth, a prickling chill running down my spine. I looked down and suddenly felt cold remembering Dorothy's body in my apartment, bleeding out.

"So that's why we don't even try. We've been through enough to have another person killed," Blair explained to me, wiping the single tear that ran down her cheek. "Everyone here has families, a life, a job." She sighed, nodding slowly to herself. "But we're never going to be free. It's easy to have the hope at the start, like you." She gave me a grin and shook her head at me as her shoulder nudged mine. "We all did. But the longer you're here, you realise the hope is in vain and will only hurt you in the end."

A rise in determination grew in me. I looked at Blair seriously as I firmly said, "No. The hope will not be in vain. I told myself that I would save every single girl in here, and I swear to you that I will carry out that promise. No one is being sold anywhere." Blair simply smiled, looking down and picking the crumbs off her bread piece.

"I sincerely hope that's true," Blair murmured, a soft chuckle leaving her. "I really do."

My eyes flicked onto Rosa as I noticed she had slipped through the double doors and left. I was alarmed right away. I knew it had something to do with that guard. Upon standing, Blair asked, "Where are you going?"

"Rosa," I said, turning back to look at Blair. I could feel the pain deeply on my right side; my whole torso was aching. Blair bit her bottom lip, standing next to me and brushing down her legs. She already knew where Rosa was going. "Don't be another Dorothy, Maria," Blair shakily warned me, her eyes unable to hide its apprehension. "You have to follow the ways here. She'll be back."

I shook my head. "I would rather die trying than sit waiting for death. There's no Prince Charming, and we can't accept this to be our end." I looked back at the door with boldness and soon found myself climbing the flights and flights of stairs to the top.

A hand reached out and grabbed my arm the moment I had made it to the top. I turned to see a guard holding onto me. The large man held an intimidatingly furious look across his unfriendly face. I yanked my arm out of his grasp as he questioned, "And where do you think you're going?" My eyebrows narrowed at him, and I was about to shoot something back until his friend decided to say something smart, "She's the ballerina," I heard him whisper.

I didn't hesitate to continue moving after they had soon let me go. I didn't know where the heck I was going, but I smoothly followed a group of guards that were talking as if their shift was over. The whole house was dark, but I was creating a map of the whole place the more I discovered and memorising my route. We weren't going to continue to stay under Giovanni. I wouldn't let that happen.

It wasn't too long before I realised the guards had their own rooms to stay in at Giovanni's mansion. The corridor for them was tight, and the rooms were small like closets. I forced myself to stop questioning how the hell that worked and almost passed the compact room where Rosa was. Her voice had stopped me in my tracks.

"I'm sorry, sir..." Her low voice made me shudder in fury. I hated how they had changed her. The door was left ajar slightly, and I peered in.

My temper didn't allow me to hold back. I stormed in the moment I saw Rosa go on her knees in front of him, his hands on his belt. My hand curled into a fist and punched the glass ornament on the table, picking up the largest and sharpest shard I found. I ignored the stinging burning in my knuckles and charged towards.

He didn't even get a chance to speak.
"You—" His eyes were wide as I stabbed him right in his neck. His whole body tumbled backwards, tripping and falling onto the floor. I followed him down, pressing the glass deeper into his body, twisting it as the blood splattered out.
staining my dress, all over my hands and face. The glass was imbedded into him; he couldn't defend himself, choking and dying out beneath me. I pushed his helpless arms off me and moved back the moment his last breath had escaped him.

"Ria..." Rosa was in complete shock, her eyes wide on the man as she gasped, her whole body shaking in fear. I looked down, and my bloodied hand was mixed with his and my own blood. I had pressed so tightly on the sharp glass that it had torn my palm. He was bleeding out on the ground, the carpet soaking up the crimson blood that I had released from him.

"Was this a regular thing?" I sharply asked her as the tears streamed down her cheeks. Her back was against the wall, and far from him, she was trembling in shock. I had no remorse for killing that man; my whole body was still boiling with anger that he had even dared to do such a thing with Rosa.

"He always tormented me whenever he saw me," her voice was quavering with fright. "They're not allowed to sleep with us, but he had other ways of using me..." Rosa wrapped her arms around herself, her shoulders hunched and her wide, teary eyes meeting mine. I swallowed, looking down at the bastard in disgust. He had abused Rosa enough.

"Never again," I told her firmly. She had never seen anything like it, a dead body. Rosa didn't know that I was capable of taking another life. I wasn't sure how she'd deal with it.

"I'm not surprised by your bravery." I turned swiftly and met Giovanni's eyes. He stood there in a suit as if he had been somewhere important with a crowd of guards behind him. The man was smirking with a glint of amusement in his dark eyes. I glowered at him, ready to take on whatever he would throw at me.

"Something about it," Giovanni slowly admired, his deep-set eyes gazing at me. "Something about you makes me want to trample on your courage," he began walking closer to me, my hand balled into a fist by my side as my heart began to race, my angry eyes never leaving his. "And break you until you fall apart completely," he cynically whispered, a contemplative look in his eager eyes as his little smirk grew across his face. He chuckled softly as I glared back at him, mentally cursing his very existence.

"You won't get a chance," I firmly retorted, never letting my anxiety show.

He grinned, "Oh really?" His eyes lit up in excitement. He sharply inhaled through his teeth before mischievously saying, "Why don't we push our little deal to tonight?" My eyebrows creased at his words, analysing his playful face.

He licked his lips slowly, his eyes running all over me. "Wouldn't it be great to have a little sleepover?"

My approach needed to change if I wanted to save the girls.

The first step would be to suck up to Giovanni and play around with his delusions.

I was the one he wanted; the rest needed to be free before me.

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~ Author's Note ~

Maria's bravery and unwillingness to back down is something Giovanni clearly wants to control.

Will he be able to take away all of her willpower?

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