Page 21 of Bound in Possession

The silence stretching between us is taut enough to snap. I hold her gaze for one more long, agonizing second, letting the threat hang heavily in the room. Then, reaching into my jacket, I pull out the sleek, black smartphone and throw it onto the bed. It lands with a soft thud right on the sheets.

Her eyes widen as her gaze darts from the mattress back up to my face.

“That’s a new smartphone," I say, my voice cutting through the tension like a blade. "It’s yours. Your sisters' contacts are already saved on it.”

Before she can process the gesture, before the shock on her face can turn into anything else, I turn on my heel and march out of the room, slamming the heavy door shut behind me before my annoyance gets the best of me.

CHAPTER TEN

CAMILLA

“Camilla!!! Oh!” Daniela cries into the phone, her voice cracking with a mix of relief and raw emotion. “I miss you so much.”

The second Maksim slammed the door and left the room, I scrambled for the phone on the bed, my fingers trembling as I dialed. Now, I’m on a group call with my sisters, and hearing their voices brings a wave of happiness that crashes through me, washing away the numbness I've carried for days.

“Dani, wait, are you crying?” I ask, a watery smile tugging at my lips as I clutch the device tightly against my ear.

“So dramatic,” Rosalia chimes in, her voice full of deep affection.

On the other end, the others laugh softly, the familiar, comforting sound instantly making the cold walls of Maksim's mansion feel a little less intimidating.

“I am not being dramatic!” Daniela insists, sniffing loudly as she tries to defend herself. “Dad left for Sicily with Camilla, and when he returned home without her, he wouldn't tell me a single thing. I thought the worst had happened. I thought you were gone forever.”

I take a shaky breath, sitting back down on the edge of the mattress. "As evil as our father is, I’m not sure he has it in him to literally kill any of us."

Sienna scoffs loudly from her end of the line. "It’s only a matter of time."

"Sienna!" Rosalia snaps, her tone sharp with warning. She lets out a heavy, tired sigh before directing her focus back to me. "Camilla, what happened? We’ve been begging father for answers, but he completely refuses to tell us anything. And why do you have a new number?"

I close my eyes, my hand tightening around the smartphone. "Are you all sitting down?"

"Yes," they answer in a scattered, anxious chorus.

"Is it really that serious?" Eleonora asks, her voice uncharacteristically quiet.

"Yes," I whisper, swallowing the lump in my throat. "It is."

"Go ahead," she says softly. "We're listening."

I take one more deep breath to steady myself, and then I tell them everything.

I start from the moment I arrived in Sicily with father, believing it was just another family obligation, to being dragged into that horrific underground auction house. I describe the sheer humiliation of being paraded on that stage like a piece of meat, the terrifying shootout that followed, and the moment I met Maksim Sokolov—the man who bought my life for twenty million dollars.

I don't hold back a single detail. I tell them about our explosive arguments, the suffocating tension, the dangerous car chase we barely escaped this afternoon, and finally, the brutal reality of the lunch I had with our father, where he traded away my remaining freedom for fifteen percent of a shipping port.

It is a long, agonizing story. And through it all, my sisters stay completely, utterly silent, absorbing the nightmare my life has become.

When I finish, the line doesn't just buzz—it completely explodes.

Sienna is the loudest, her voice dropping into a pure, unadulterated fury. I understand her rage completely, especially seeing as she was the one who married Alessandro just to keep me safe from our father’s wicked, twisted plots. Even though it ultimately turned out well for her, the trauma of being leveraged like a pawn still runs deep.

"Father is such an evil, soulless bastard!" She growls into the phone.

"He literally threw you to the wolves! An auction, Camilla?! He dragged you to a black-market auction like a piece of livestock! I swear to God, if he were in front of me right now, no one would be able to stop me from taking his head off myself!"

Surprisingly, Rosalia doesn’t even attempt to caution her. There is no lecture about language or respect. Instead, a heavy, dark silence comes from her end before she lets out a shaky, furious breath.

"You know what, Sienna, you’re right. Father crossed a line that can never, ever be uncrossed. To trade your own flesh and blood for a percentage of a shipping port? To sit across from you at lunch and treat you like that? It makes me sick."