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W hen the summons from Don Rossi comes, I start quaking in my shoes. It’s been three weeks since he last called me up, on the night when he asked me to look after Stefano. It’s been way longer since I’ve done anything sexual with the Don, even if our last time was just me putting on a show for him.

What does he want tonight? If he gives me the small nod toward the rug, I won’t be able to say no. I won’t be allowed to. The Don isn’t the sort of man who will rape a woman, but my consent was never part of the equation with him; it was a given, as one of his girls.

This is so unlike what I’ve known with Stefano, the freedom he’s granted me, the liberation of knowing whatever happens between us will be on my terms.

As such, I am dreading going to the mezzanine office. Having tasted sex and having a full say in it, I don’t ever want to be in a position where I’ll need to let any man take what he wants from me with his hands, his mouth, his cock. The only man I want to allow to do this is Stefano…and ultimately, this simply means I’m choosing to let him fuck me. I’m not getting attached, or worse, falling for him. I like him enough, I love his dick and the way he pulls the most carnal urges from me and then fulfils them above and beyond what I’d expect from a lover.

That’s all it is.

It’s not feelings.

It can’t be feelings.

Even so, I’ve crossed the line which allowed me to fuck any man because it’s my job. I don’t want that for myself anymore.

So I steel myself with a deep breath and take the stairs to the first floor. One knock, then I am called in.

Don Giacomo is sitting on the leather couch, and when he pats the seat next to him, I softly breathe out a sigh of relief. I’m not here as his fuck toy tonight, it would appear.

“Good evening, Don Giacomo,” I greet as I sit down daintily on the edge of the sofa.

“Kaya, cara .” His heavy gaze is on me for long seconds. “Should I be starting to call you my goddaughter?”

I blink. “Pardon me?”

He laughs, a deep rumble rolling from his barrel chest. “My godson is smitten with you.”

“Oh.” I’m the current object of his fancy, yes. But that doesn’t mean anything.

Does it?

“I can see you blushing,” he continues, and it just makes me turn redder, which makes him laugh again. “He is treating you right, I see.”

“He is, Don Giacomo,” I mutter around my embarrassment.

“And you? Are you looking after him right?”

He’s expecting me to be honest. Being around Stefano and his desire for honesty, I can only expect the Don is the same. Also, one never lies to a Don.

“I believe I am.”

He sighs and takes a sip of whiskey. “Don’t let him break your heart.”

I sure won’t, because my heart is nowhere near this playing field or any other, for that matter.

“Don’t break his, either,” he adds. “But don’t be afraid to push back, too.”

I’m not sure what he’s getting at. “ Scusa ?”

He peers at me through narrowed eyes. “You haven’t met Giuseppe, have you? My son?”

I haven’t. Few people have, the teenage future Don always having tight security around him as his father’s sole heir.

“I want him to find a good woman when he grows up, someone who will treat him well but who will also be a source of strength, of personal power.”

I nod. That’s laudable, especially coming from a man as formidable as him, who holds the life of so many in his hands, his child included.

“Stefano is no less a son to me than my Giuseppe.”

What is he getting at? Is he saying I’m a good match for his godson? Me, a woman he’s been fucking for months before turning her over to said surrogate son? What sort of world is this? Stefano, we’re having fun together. There’s nothing more to it.

Is there?

“Will you think about it?” he asks.

I nod, again at a loss for words.

Don Giacomo smiles and pulls something from the inside pocket of his jacket. “This is yours.”

A little gasp escapes me when my hand closes on the small booklet. It’s my passport—he’s handing it back to me. This means…I’m free?

“Your debt has been repaid in full, Kaya Norton.”

I can’t help but blink up at him. “Don Giacomo?”

“You are free to leave, though I hope you might wish to stay in my employ, as Demos’ hostess?”

He proceeds to give me a salary amount that makes my eyes widen. At this rate, for just five to six hours of work six times a week at this club, I’d be making in one month what would take me at least six with great tips as a diner waitress in the US. Put like that, it’s hard to say no. Yet, I don’t want to stay in Italy any longer than I have to, which is really any minute I spend here from this moment forward, but someone in my position can’t afford to turn her back on such good money either.

“I won’t stay forever,” I tell him quietly.

He smiles. “Stay for now. Get a taste for life here, on your terms. That’s all I’m asking.”

What would it hurt to try this for a few months? I can stay until the end of the year, which will have earned me a sizeable buffer I can use to secure a good apartment back home in Portland and keep me afloat until I find a nice job. No idea what I’d want to do when that time comes, but now’s not the time to be thinking of all this.

“Thank you, Don Giacomo.”

Does such a thing as a fairy godfather exist? I can’t help the smile making it onto my face at the thought.

“What’s so funny?” the Don asks me.

I shake my head. “Just thinking how good you’ve been to me.”

His face grows sad all of a sudden. “Stefano can be good to you, too.”

I wonder what brought on the dark thoughts clouding over his features.

“I…” With no answer forthcoming, I shrug. “I should go stow this away safely.”

He nods. “Yes. Go.”

I acknowledge the permission and get up, making my way to the door. Once out, I go back down to the lounge floor then toward the door at the side near the bar which opens onto the service corridors and the stairs leading to the rooms upstairs.

Inside my studio, it’s all I can do but slam my back to the door panel once it’s closed and silently squeal my joy while jumping in place so happy I am to be free. Such sweet release. This is something I didn’t think I’d ever taste when I found myself being passed across large, rough men’s hands when my employer took me to a shady part of Turin and thrust me at the goons who would take me into servitude to the Albanian. Daku is the only name I have for him, and a shiver courses through me when I remember coming up face to face with him. Short, swarthy, with a glint of pure evil in his eyes which had gleamed when he’d palmed my sex over my clothes and told his men something in Albanian which made them laugh and turned my blood to ice.

I came to find out girls aren’t put out to work for him before they’ve been marked as his property. DAKU is branded with a hot iron across their nether lips, a D carved for good measure with a blade on their mons. I was on my period, which proved my saving grace—the branding wouldn’t take with all that blood flowing out. The other girls in the brothel I was dumped into didn’t have such luck.

Then that same night, bangs resounded, bullets whizzed, doors were battened down. We thought it was the police, which wasn’t such a joyful prospect since most of the girls would face the idea of deportation, and many feared their families who would kill them in the name of honor. Plus with their mutilation, life outside of prostitution now looked dire for them.

And then we found the men were Don Rossi’s, and the Don wasn’t a sadistic bastard intent on enslaving women to earn him a quick buck. Thank God for that. He really has been a fairy godfather of sorts for me. I even met Stefano thanks to him.

Stefano. Would our paths have crossed had I not been sent to him that fateful night? Everyone knew and respected the fact I was Don Rossi’s girl, even Stefano. I’d seen him gazing at me in the club a few times. By now, I’m used to men watching me everywhere I go; it’s something a tall, slender blonde with a half-decent face has to contend with everywhere on this planet. But would he have made the first move, stepping deliberately on his Don and godfather’s turf? No, he would never.

My hand closes around the passport. To think this is the key to my future. I’m going back to the States in a few months. I’m free.

Stefano will stay here, because this is where his future lies. He’s the Don’s next enforcer, the one sworn in as his left hand who does all his dirty work. There’s no scope for him outside of this country, or even outside of Torino, for that matter, for this is Don Giacomo’s territory.

Either way, our paths would’ve diverged at some point. We’re having fun, but how long would this have lasted? A man like Stefano can have any woman he wants. I’m not one to put myself down, yet I do have to reckon I am sloppy seconds for him, coming from under the body of a man he sees as a father figure. If that isn’t fucked up, I wonder what would be. Sleeping with an actual biological father then his son, I suppose. Eww.

And these men are Mafia. I do see what happens at Demos, even though sex work in a club setting is illegal, as are brothels, but it doesn’t stop such Mafia-run business from happening under the very nose of the police. The one raid I witnessed on Albanian Daku’s place showed me bodies dropping down like flies when hit by bullets. It’s like watching it on TV, except the smell of blood doesn’t permeate your nose when you’re seeing it all across the screen. I burned my nostrils on purpose with menthol vapor sticks so the reek of coppery blood and burnt and already decomposing flesh wouldn’t assail me every time I inhaled for a week straight afterwards.

So no, that’s not a life I see anyone choosing willingly. You have to be thrust into such a world to feel like you belong, and oftentimes, the people in such rings have no way out. I do, and by God, I’m going to take it. My life awaits me in Portland. I just have to hold on here for a few more months and then I can start afresh once back home.

I can almost taste it as I clutch the passport to my chest. A new life. I’ll look for an apartment Downtown. It shouldn’t be hard to find a place that’s not too expensive near Chinatown. There are also tons of clubs in that area. I may find a job as a hostess at one of them. Maybe Don Giacomo could even have contacts in the entertainment network there and knows someone who can give me a job, with no sexual strings attached, of course. I’m never doing that again. After knowing what it's like to be with a man who wants me and cherishes me as much as he desires me—

My mind halts upon this thought. Stefano…what is he feeling in this whole thing? What is this for him? I hope it’s just a fling. He has this bubbly, almost naively innocent energy about him when he’s with me, it’s almost like seeing a teenager rather than a grown man.

I know what I was like as a teen. A crush could develop at the drop of a hat.

Is this what’s happening here? Does Stefano have a crush on me? Can he, even?

The question stays with me like a soft veil of uncertainty as I safely stow the passport away in a drawer under a pile of underwear. I don’t have any money yet beyond a small stipend that gets used up every week, but I’m thinking this is also where I’ll stash my income now when I next get paid.

It’s a bit of a dizzy feeling going back down to the club and entering the lounge as Demos’ full-fledged hostess now and not just someone paying off her debt in indenture here anymore. There’s a feeling of spaciousness, of liberation, of having been trusted to do a job because I’m worth it, not just because there’s a slot to fill.

And it’s a good thing I’m feeling so on top of the world. My job description looks like it’ll be put to the test right away.

A group of girls is sitting in the lounge, and just one glance at them tells me they look like trouble. Dripping in designer labels in their barely-there clothing, expensive handbags, and glittery jewelry, their faces painted with makeup that’ll need a trowel to remove so thick it’s caked on, I don’t need to see the wine glasses on their table to know they’ll soon graduate to mayhem. Call it instinct or honed skills as the ‘slut’ of the school to zoom in on the mean girls in every circumstance.

Getting closer, it’s clear these young women, if they can even be called this, are barely out of high school. The makeup is to make them look like grownups, the heels and jewels like they’re playing dress up with their moms’ accessories.

I clock the second things will get rough. One of them, egged on by the group, gets up and starts to flirt with the bartender, Nico, who’s at least a decade older than them. Ever the professional, he doesn’t take the bait, which angers the girl. When she reaches for the placket of his shirt, I notice the bouncer, Sandro—who seems to have read the situation the same way I have—start toward her. But he doesn’t get to her until she’s pulled Nico to her and has slammed her mouth onto his, trying to force her tongue in as if she’s on a mission to check out his tonsils.

Don Giacomo is very clear on the rules: no one manhandles his employees, women and men alike. So the little vixen gets hauled by Sandro, and she’s refusing to go down. Her friends are rallying up, coming to her aid, though they’re no match for the beefy bouncer now being aided by Dino, the Don’s bodyguard.

“Go home,” Dino is saying. “Sober up before your parents find out what you’ve been up to.”

One of the girls, who looks like the ringleader of the gang the way she sicced the assailant onto poor Nico, steps up haughtily and looks down her nose at the men.

“Do you know who I am? You have no idea who is soon to be my husband, do you?” she shrieks.

This little girl is getting married? She’s barely out of diapers.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Dino is saying. “Not when you girls will be behaving like this in Don Rossi’s club.”

“You’ll regret this,” she hisses. “Once Stefano hears about this… Yes, Stefano Beccario is my fiancé,” she adds, gloating.

“We’ll settle this when he gets here,” Dino is saying. “In the meantime…”

I don’t hear the rest of his words, my ears having started to ring the second she uttered the name of her future husband.

There’s no doubt about it—she enunciated very clearly, and there aren’t two Stefano Beccario in Torino. This can only mean…Stefano has been lying to me all along? He’s engaged to be married, and in the meantime, he’s just having some no-strings-attached fun with me?

I thought we were having fun, too, but not like this. All of it, it was a lie, then?

And in this moment, I know it. I was kidding myself all this time, because the way this news is hitting me, like the blunt knife of betrayal is piercing through my chest, it means just one thing:

I’ve developed feelings for Stefano Beccario.

It means I’m totally screwed.