Claimed by the Ruthless Don

Chapter 1

The diner’s perfume—stale coffee and bacon grease—had soaked into my uniform hours ago. My feet were two dull throbs at the end of my legs. Sal grunted from behind the grill, his stained apron a collage of the day’s specials. “Wipe down the counter before you clock out, Brynn.”

“Already did, Sal,” I said, my voice a dry rasp.

He gestured with his spatula toward the jar by the register. “Tips.”

I emptied the sad scattering of change and a few crumpled ones into my pocket. It wasn’t enough. It was never enough. My eyes slid to the corner booth, the one with the seat split open like a wound. They were still there. Two men in dark suits that were too tight in the shoulders, nursing coffee that must have gone cold an hour ago. They weren’t customers. They were anchors, weighing the whole room down with their stillness.

My father’s luck had a way of finding me.

Sal noticed me watching them. His gruffness softened for a second. “Everything alright?”

“Just tired.” It was a lie we both accepted. He turned back to the grill, the scrape of his metal sponge against the cast iron a clear signal that he was staying out of it.

I pulled on my thin coat and turned for the door. As if on cue, they moved to block my exit. One was broad, his nose a flattened mess. The other was lean, with pale, watchful eyes that stripped everything bare.

“Brynn,” the big one rumbled.

I clutched the strap of my bag. “I don’t know you.”

The smaller one smiled, a thin, bloodless line. “Your father, Marco, sends his apologies. He seems to have misplaced something of ours.”

“He’ll get it,” I said, the words a familiar, useless prayer. “He just needs more time.”

The man chuckled, a sound like dry leaves skittering across pavement. “Time ran out. Our boss is done being patient. He sent us to collect.” His gaze dropped, cataloging me in a way that made my skin feel thin and cold.

“I get paid tomorrow,” I pleaded. “I can give you what I have.”

The big one laughed, a harsh, ugly bark. He reached out and tucked a loose strand of my hair behind my ear. His fingers were rough, and the touch felt like a brand. I flinched back.

“Don’t touch me,” I whispered.

The smaller one’s smile widened. “He wanted us to be gentle. A reminder.” They stepped aside, clearing the path to the door.

I didn’t wait for a second invitation. I bolted, the diner’s bell chiming behind me. The cold night air didn't stop the sweat on my neck. I ran the blocks to our apartment building, the slap of my sneakers on the pavement the only sound I could hear over the blood pounding in my ears.

I took the stairs two at a time up to the fourth floor, my lungs burning. My hand shook as I dug for my keys, but when I went to push one into the lock, the door drifted inward on a low creak.

It was already open.

“Dad?” My voice was thin, swallowed by the sudden, heavy silence. He never left it unlocked.

I pushed the door wide. The small living room had been torn apart. Couch cushions were gutted, their yellow foam stuffing pulled out like insulation. The television screen was a spiderweb of shattered glass. Drawers had been ripped from their chests and emptied onto the floor. They didn’t just steal; they annihilated.

A framed photo lay face down. I picked it up. Me and Mom at the beach, the last picture before she got sick. The glass was cracked straight across her smile. A dry sob caught in my throat.

Numbly, I drifted toward the kitchen. And then I saw it.

In the center of the small table, placed with deliberate care amidst the wreckage, was a single playing card.

A Joker. Its painted smile was a grotesque leer. On the jester’s stark white face was a single thumbprint, smeared in blood still so dark and wet it hadn’t begun to dry.

Chapter 2

An overturned chair. The lingering stench of my father’s cheap cologne, sharp and cloying in the stale air of his apartment. That was all they’d left of him.

I slammed a fist against the door across the hall, the one with the peeling green paint. Mrs. Petrova’s door. The chain held, a sliver of darkness between the frame and the wood. A single, watery eye regarded me from the crack.

“It’s late,” she rasped, her voice thick with a lifetime of cheap cigarettes.

“My father, Marco,” I said, my own voice a tremor. “Two men took him. A big one, a small one.”

Her eye blinked, slow and reptilian. “I saw. They put him in a black car. No plates. Headed for the cannery.” She paused, the chain rattling as she shifted her weight. “That is not a place for you, little bird.”

She was right, but the police were not an option. Not for my father. Not with his history.

I ran. The cannery district was a graveyard of industry, the air thick with salt and the rot of old fish. The skeletons of warehouses loomed against a sky the color of a bruise. Only one leaked a jaundiced light from a side door, a beacon in the decay. Muffled voices drifted out, the quiet click of chips.

The den reeked of stale beer and desperation. Men hunched over warped tables, their faces illuminated in the sickly lamplight, oblivious to my entry. Their focus was singular, pinned to the turn of a card or the roll of dice. At the far end of the vast room, a door stood ajar. A muffled thud, then a groan that twisted my insides. Dad.

I shoved the door open. He was backed into a corner of the small office, held up by the collar by the larger of the two thugs. His lip was split, a dark line of blood tracking down his chin. The smaller man leaned against a filing cabinet, polishing his nails with a pocketknife.

“Stop!”

They turned. The big one grinned, showing stained teeth. The smaller one looked up from his knife, a flicker of amusement in his eyes. “Look what dragged itself in. Come to pay the bill?”

“Brynn, run,” my father choked out.

“Let him go,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt. “I’ll get it. I told you I’d get the money.”

The big one just laughed and shoved my father to his knees.

“She won’t.” The voice was calm, cutting through the tension from a shadowed corner of the room. A man stepped into the light. He wore a tailored suit, a stark contrast to the grime, and swirled amber liquid in a heavy glass. Silver threaded his dark hair. “Because he has nothing left to give.”

He had to be the boss. “I’ll work,” I said, my words tumbling out. “I’ll do anything. Please.”

The man took a slow sip, his eyes assessing me, not as a person, but as a sum on a ledger. “He is a bad investment. A waste of my resources.” He gestured with his glass toward my father, a whimpering heap on the floor. “But you…” He took a step closer, his cologne smelling of money and something cold, like winter. The two thugs straightened, their casual menace hardening into readiness. “You are an entirely different asset.”

“No,” my father sobbed from the floor. “Not her. Please.”

The boss ignored him, his focus absolute. “He pays with you.”

Instinct took over. I spun to flee, but the smaller man was a blur, blocking the door. A hand clamped over my mouth before I could scream, another pinning my arms. I thrashed, kicking back, but the big man’s grip was absolute.

“Quiet her,” the boss ordered, his tone bored.

A cloth was pressed over my face. The sweet, chemical scent flooded my senses. I held my breath until my lungs burned, until a single, desperate gasp was all my body would allow.

The world dissolved. The scrape of my own worn-out sneakers on the concrete floor sounded a mile away. My father’s cries warped into a long, mournful echo. Through a darkening tunnel, I heard the boss’s voice, distant and clear.

“She’ll fetch a high price. Clean her up.”

My body went limp. I was thrown over a shoulder, the world a dizzying, upside-down smear of the gambling den. No one looked up.

The cold night air was a brief, sharp slap of reality before the rough floor of a van met my cheek. The last thing I knew was the slam of a heavy metal door, plunging me into a final, suffocating black.

Chapter 3

My head is full of sand and static. A metallic tang coats my tongue, the chemical ghost of whatever they used to take me. I try to move, but my limbs are weighted, distant things that don’t quite belong to me.

My eyes crack open to a ceiling of weeping stone. The surface beneath me is a wafer-thin pad on a concrete floor, doing little to ward off the chill seeping into my bones. I’m in a cell. Iron bars make up the fourth wall, looking out on a corridor lit by bare, buzzing bulbs. The air stinks of bleach and damp rust.

I’m not wearing my own clothes. The worn denim and soft shirt are gone, replaced by a black silk slip. It’s a cold caress against my skin, offering no warmth, only a chilling sense of purpose.

I’m not alone.

In the far corner, another girl is curled into a ball, rocking slightly. Her pale pink slip is a wound against the gray concrete. Her gaze is fixed on nothing. In the next cell over, two more women sit like statues, their postures rigid with a fear so complete it has become paralysis.

The sharp taps of leather on stone echo down the corridor. A man in an impeccably tailored black suit stops before my cell, jingling a key ring. His face is a placid mask, his eyes holding the detached interest of a biologist studying an insect.

“Good,” he says, his voice a calm, even baritone. “You’re all awake.”

The sound of it, so reasonable and out of place, makes my skin crawl. “Where am I?” My own voice is a dry rasp.

His gaze slides past me as if I were a smudge on the wall. He moves to the girl in the corner. “You. On your feet.”

She doesn’t move, lost in her own terror. He sighs, a small, impatient puff of air. He crosses the cell in two strides and yanks her up by the arm. A thin squeak escapes her lips.

“Please,” she whispers, tears finally breaking free and tracking through the grime on her face. “I just want to go home.”

“This is your home now,” he says flatly. He glances toward the corridor and gives a slight nod. Two guards in drab uniforms appear at the cell door, which the man unlocks with a sharp clatter. “This one is non-compliant. See to it.”

They haul her out, her bare feet scraping on the stone. A single, choked-off scream is swallowed by the slam of a distant door.

The man in the suit turns back to me, his eyes cold and empty. “Any other questions?”

I shake my head, my throat clamped shut.

“Excellent,” he says, almost brightly. “Let’s get you ready. The buyers will be arriving soon.”

He raps his knuckles on the bars, and two older women with faces as blank as slate enter the cell. They don’t speak. One grabs my arm, her grip surprisingly strong, and pulls me to my feet. The other starts to roughly undo my braid.

“Take off the slip,” the first woman says, her voice a monotone.

I clutch the thin fabric to my chest, shaking my head. It’s the only thing covering me.

The woman’s hand snaps out and rips the delicate strap. The silk tears with a soft hiss, pooling around my ankles. The cold air is a physical shock, but the wave of shame that follows is worse, a heat that floods my face and chest. I wrap my arms around myself, a useless gesture.

They march me to a small, tiled room with a drain in the center of the floor. They hose me down with ice-sharp water, scrubbing my skin raw with a coarse brush as if scouring a dirty pot. A finger pries my mouth open, scrapes against a molar. My mind retreats, focusing on a single crack in the tile, a dark line spidering toward the drain. I am a thing being cleaned.

They shove a new slip into my hands—this one is gold, and it clings to my damp, shivering skin. Back in the cell, they sit me on a stool. Impersonal fingers work on my face, brushing my hair until it hangs like a dark sheet down my back. They paint my lips red, hiding the blue tinge of cold. They hold a small mirror up, and for a vertigo-inducing second, I don’t recognize the glossy, painted stranger with my wide, haunted eyes.

A gold tag, thin as a wire, is clasped around my wrist. It’s stamped with a number. Twenty-seven.

“Time,” the man in the suit calls from the corridor.

A guard opens my cell and grabs my arm in a vise-like grip. He pulls me into the hall where the other girls are being lined up, each a polished, silent version of who they were before.

From the end of the corridor, behind a set of heavy double doors, comes a low hum of voices, punctuated by a bark of laughter. The sound of a crowd.

The guard shoves me forward, my bare feet numb against the stone. He pushes me toward the doors. Another guard pulls one open, and the world explodes in a blast of warm air, noise, and light.

The light is a physical blow, a blinding white spotlight that pins me in place. I can’t see past its glare, but I can feel the eyes on me. The hum of voices falls silent. Then it rises again, a soft, collective intake of breath.

The sound of appraisal.

A hand presses into the small of my back, forcing me out of the shadows and onto a raised platform, alone in the burning light.