I woke up on a concrete floor with my hands tied and no idea how I got there.

So I did the only thing I know how to do. I took the room first — the furnace smell, the barred window, the drip of water I started counting because counting is a thing to do that isn't despair. Then I took the men. Antonio Bianchi wants me afraid and wants to watch. His son wants something worse. And the tired one who hits me because he's been told to glances at the stairs before he swears, which means he's frightened of being seen not enjoying it.

Three men. Three seams. They took my hands and my freedom and left me the one tool that matters.

They think I'm a photograph to send my husband. They're going to find out I'm the woman who reads the place where a story stops being true.

But there's a mother in this house with a daughter kept next door to keep her obedient, and I gave that woman my word.

What neither of us knows yet is that the man who sold me sits at my husband's own table and has been feeding Antonio Bianchi out of our kitchen for fourteen months.