* * *

"Oh my God, Brooklyn, this is so amazing! When did you find out?"

"About ten minutes ago, just before I tweeted it. I just got the email that the internship was finalized. I still can't believe it, Sophie," I said in a hushed voice.

"Why are you talking so low? Where are you?"

"I'm at the library."

"Oh, they don't give a shit about that stuff anymore, do they? There's always people talking on their phones in the library especially at Fogelman. Every time I'm in there I forget I'm not in the cafeteria. Even the librarians talk loud there."

"I'm not at Fogelman," I said in almost a whisper.

"I can barely hear you now. Where are you? At Kellen or something?"

"No, I'm not at Kellen, I'm at the NYU library and I have to be quiet, Sophie. I don't want to get kicked out of here again."

"Oh, yeah I forgot about that," she laughed. "But you have an excuse now, we have to celebrate! We have to go out tonight, Brooklyn!"

"Okay, Okay, calm down. We're totally going out. I just gotta get a few more things done here and I'll be back in my room. Then we can make all kinds of plans."

"So what are you going to do? What's the plan? You still have eight weeks of class left right?"

"Yeah, but I'll be starting the internship before I graduate. They need someone to start right away so it's probably going to be in the next couple weeks. I'm so excited, Sophie. I mean, you know how much I've wanted this. It's exactly what I'd been hoping for. I'll be able to work on my fashion reporting skills and maybe even publish something soon.

Harper Randyll has columns in all the major fashion publications and on just about every site worth mentioning so I'm sure it won't be long before they let me write for them. But I'll also be able to learn from the best fashion designers in Manhattan. Some of the most innovative designs have come out of Randyll Fashions.

Plus they have offices all over the world. Maybe after a couple years, I'll even be able to study under some of their designers and Milan. I'm so excited, Sophie, I can hardly stand it."

"I'm so happy for you, Brooklyn. You deserve this. You've worked so hard, harder than anyone I know. And over the last few years, even with your mom dying and your dad turning into a total schmuck, you really kept it together. I'm so proud of you. You just have to promise to remember me when you become a famous designer. And let me wear some of your designs."

"Oh, Sophie, you're so sweet. You'll be right there with me. Whatever I wind up doing I'll make sure you're part of it. I'll need an art designer, won't I? I'm just lucky to have such a good friend. Someone who cares so much. I wish I could say the same about my dad. I feel like no matter what I do I'm just an inconvenience or an embarrassment to him. I stopped telling him about wanting to be a designer years ago. He thinks it's all a joke."

"Hey, don't let him bring you down. This is your night. There's no point in letting him ruin it."

"Yeah, you're right, Sophie. I won't let him ... woah ... what the hell? My dad is on the other line."

"You're kidding. Right now? That's so weird that we were just talking about him. What do you think he wants?"

"I have no idea. He never calls me. Hold on, I'll see what he wants and I'll be right back."

"Okay, I'll wait."

"Dad? What's up?"

"Brooklyn, where are you?"

"What? I'm at the library, why?"

"Which library? The one on 14th?"

"No, I'm down across from Washington Square Park at the NYU library. What do you want?"

"When are you leaving?"

"I don't know, about twenty minutes. Why? What's going on?"

"Brooklyn, just be outside the library in twenty minutes, like you said, okay? Can you just do that for me?"

"Yeah, sure. Are we getting lunch or something?"

"No ... not lunch ... just be outside, Brooklyn. I'll talk to you later."

I ended the call with my dad and switched back over to Sophie.

"Well, that was weird."

"What? What did he want?"

"I don't know. He just wanted to know when I was leaving the library. Then he said to wait outside for him. I asked him if we were having lunch or something and he said no. I don't know what is up with him."

"Wow, that's weird. Maybe he wants to tell you about your new mommy," she said in a little girl voice.

"Oh God, don't even joke about that. Most of the girls he's been dating lately are my age. It makes my skin crawl every time I walk into the den at home and see him sitting on the couch in front of the fire with one of them. It makes me wonder what he was thinking about all my friends that I brought home when I was still living there. Was he just drooling all over them?"

"Probably, and then jerking off in the bathroom."

"Ew, Sophie, no! Don't even say that!"

"So, do you think he does one of those online things were he finds a girl and makes an arrangement, then pays them to go on dates? Like a sugar daddy situation?"

"I have no idea and I don't even want to know. The thought of him doing anything with anyone just grosses me out. I don't want to see him at all. I don't understand why he's showing up today of all days."

"Well, don't let it get you down. Just see him and let everything slide off your back. And keep thinking about how much fun we're going to have tonight."

"Okay, thanks, Soph. I'll see you later."

"Okay, later!"

I made a few more posts online about my internship and responded to some of my followers who were excited for me, then packed everything up and headed out the front entrance.

As I walked past the giant columns just outside the entryway, I noticed a black limousine parked on the street right in front of the library which I found odd because no cars were ever parked out there. Two men got out of the limo and walked toward me as I started to cross the street to the park and one of them grabbed my arm.

"Brooklyn Pierce, please get into the car."

I tried to jerk my arm away but as I did a hulking man with a thick neck and pants that were way too tight gripped my arm like a vice and pulled me toward the limo.

"Ouch! What the fuck? What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Haven't you talked to your father? You're supposed to come with us," the giant man said with an impatient tone. Just then my phone rang and I looked up at the thug in the tight pants.

"Do you mind if I get my phone out of my bag?" I asked as I motioned to his hand that was about to pop the skin on my upper arm. He let go of my arm and I pulled my phone out of my purse. It was my dad again.

"Dad? What's going on? Some guys are trying to get me to go with them in a limo. Where are you?"

"I'm not coming Brooklyn. I'm ... you have to go with them. You have to go with them and do whatever they say."

I stood there listening for a few seconds, expecting him to say something that made sense, something that would explain why I had to get into a car with two strange men that looked like they wanted to kill me.

"You're joking, right? Is this a joke? I'm not going anywhere with these guys."

"Brooklyn ... you have to. I don't ... you don't have a choice. Listen to me Brooklyn. If you don't go with them I will be killed. Everyone in our family will be killed. Everyone."

"What are you talking about?" I asked as I turned away from the two giant men and tried to understand what my father was telling me. "Who would ... why would people want to kill us?"

"Brooklyn, if you go with them no one has to die. But if you don't ... oh God, Lena ... your aunt Lena and your uncle Bill and your cousins in Montauk and, oh God their little girl. You don't want little Marnie to die, do you?"

"What kind of monsters would kill a four-year-old little girl, dad?" I asked as I turned back around toward the men, who were now talking to some cops that were parked behind the limo. I was relieved for a second. I thought those horrible men would be taken away by the cops, or at the very least the limo would be towed, but the cops were talking to the two men like they were all friends.

"Dad, who are these men? I don't like the way they're treating me. Please don't make me go with them."

"Brooklyn, please don't be stubborn ..."

"I'm not being stubborn! How can you say that? I'm terrified! These men look like they want to kill me! Or worse!"

"They aren't going to kill you, Brooklyn, I promise. They're just going to take you somewhere for a while and then you can come back home."

"Take me where? For how long? And why would you let them do this? Are you in some kind of trouble, Dad?"

I looked back at the men and the cops they had been talking to were now getting back into their car and driving away. The men walked back toward me and looked like they were going to grab my arms so I backed up a few steps.

"I'm still talking to my dad, do you mind?" I said as I held my phone up to the thick-necked thug.

"Please don't talk to them like that, Brooklyn. You're only going to make it worse."

"Make what worse? What have you done?"

"Everything I've done has been for you, Brooklyn. I ... I borrowed money so you could go to school and live in The Village with your friends and have the kind of life you wanted. I did this for you."

"Don't make me laugh, Dad. You make it sound like I'm the bad guy here. Like I'm the only one that spent any money. I don't think your lifestyle is so cheap, what with all the young girls you pay to ... keep you company."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line and finally my father cleared his throat and started talking again.

"Brooklyn, these people mean business. They are very clear about their terms and they always get what they want. Please believe me when I tell you that you simply don't have a choice and that it will be much easier on you if you just do what they say."

"How could you do this to all of us? How could you make an arrangement with these people when you knew what the consequences would be? Don't you care about anyone but yourself?" I asked as tears started to roll down my face.

The man in the tight pants was now leaning up against the limo, staring at me. I turned back around and tried one more time to try to get my father to explain why this was happening to me.

"But you have a job, don't you? You have the swimsuit business that you and mom started ..."

"You know your mother was the one with the head for business, Brooklyn. And since she died nothing's been the same. I couldn't manage the business like she did. I thought I could make it work. I really did. You have to believe me. I tried, Brooklyn."

"So that's it? Now I just go with some strangers because you can't pay your debts? I can't believe you're doing this to me! I can't believe you're letting these men take me away! Dad? Are you there?"

But there was no answer on the other end. He had hung up. I stood there on the street sobbing and staring at my phone as the two giant men walked toward me again.

"I'd advise you to stop making a scene. It's not going to do you any good," one of the men said into my ear as they each took an arm and walked me over to the limo. The door opened in front of me and I got in the back like I was told. I was in complete shock. I couldn't believe that my father had just given me away to some strange men. He didn't even seem to know where I was going. He didn't even seem to care.

"Here, drink this and calm down. It's going to be a long trip," one of the men said as he took a bottle of water out of the fridge and threw it next to me on the seat. "There's food and soda in there too," he said, then shut the limo door. I couldn't see anything that was going on up front so I looked out the side windows as we pulled away from the curb.

I continued to cry as I watched the streets whiz by and I thought about my dad and how he could possibly do this to his own daughter. Wasn't a father supposed to protect his daughter no matter what?

I knew my mother would never in a million years have let this happen. It was always her dream that I follow what was in my heart and do my own thing. She told me the last time I saw her in the hospital just before she died that all she ever wanted was for me to be happy.

She told me that she thought marriage and money were the things that would bring her happiness in life, that she had been raised to believe that.

She said that she loved the swimsuit business that she and my father had started, but her true dream had been bigger. Too big. She didn't believe in herself enough to think that she could actually go out on her own and be a designer, so she played it safe and sold other people's designs.

That was something we had in common. I was afraid to promote my own designs as well and wound up reporting fashion trends instead of setting them.

But now I didn't know what was going to happen or how much of a life I had left to pursue my dreams. My life might be over in a matter of hours or minutes.

I grabbed the bottle of water off the seat next to me. I didn't even think about whether I should drink it or not but after a few gulps, when I couldn't force my eyes to stay open any longer, I knew I had made a mistake.

"Well, I'm sorry but that's the way it has to be, John. You knew the terms of the agreement from the beginning."

As I knocked on the open door of my father's study he looked up at me and hung up the phone.

"Come in, Adrian, and close the door. It looks like we have a new transaction to take care of. Another big spender is unable to pay and we absolutely can't let this one slide."

"Of course," I said as I sank down into one of the massive leather chairs opposite my father's desk and waited for his instructions. "Lucas just got back from Mykonos late last night, but he should be over here soon ..."

"I'd like you to take care of this one, Adrian. Lucas can be a little rough with the transactions and this girl is special. I have a feeling she'll bring in well over a million on the market if her family can't make the due date. And I'm willing to bet that this debt won't be settled by the girl's father. We've been lending to him every month for just under a year and he hasn't made a single attempt to repay. So, now he has six months to come up with the one million he owes us. We're going to need her in pristine shape. Broken, but with no signs of physical damage whatsoever."

"I haven't spent much time doing the actual training for a while now, but I'm sure I can handle it, no problem. Who's the girl?"

"I'm texting you her Twitter page right now," he said as he looked down at his phone. "Her father is John Pierce, you may remember the family from the trip we took to the Maldives about six or seven years ago.

He and his deceased wife had a fairly lucrative swimsuit business that seems to have gone belly up since the wife's death. Apparently she was the one with the head for business in the family. He has one daughter, Brooklyn, which should have been enough to put the pinch on him. He knew the drill from the beginning but he hasn't made any attempts ..."

My father kept talking, but as soon as I heard the name Brooklyn his voice faded into the background. I looked down at my phone, at the link I had just clicked on, and there was her face.

Brooklyn Pierce; @brooklynbaby; over 850,000 followers; last tweet:

Accepted by #HarperRandyll for fashion internship! So excited!

#dreamsdocometrue

Shared 1,452 Liked 289,579

I had to take a minute to compose myself. I couldn't believe what my father was telling me. As I stared at the image of Brooklyn smiling brightly I could only make out bits and pieces of what my father was saying to me.

"... he's been borrowing over one hundred thousand a month for almost a year ... isn't paying back the money ... mid-life crisis ... only seems to be concerned with status now that his wife has passed ...."

My hand was gripping my phone tightly and I could feel sweat start to drip down my forehead. I didn't know how I was going to convince my father that this wasn't a good idea.

"From what I know about her, she's a pretty high profile girl, Dad. Do you think it's a good idea to try and move her on the market?" I asked, trying to wrap my head around what was happening.

Good Lord, not Brooklyn. I thought as the surrounding room turned black and I continued to stare at the image of the beautiful blond girl on my phone.

"Yes, well most of them are, Adrian, but we really don't have much choice. It is getting more difficult to put these daughters on the market but they bring the most money by far. And we need to set an example here, not just with the Pierce family, but so that everyone that we do business with gets the message.

You're going to have to make the hard decisions like this one soon, son. You're going to be in the position to make the tough choices, the unpopular decisions that ensure our standing. If we go soft on one of our accounts now, we could lose all of our clout. And not just on the East Coast, Adrian; all over the world. I know I don't need to remind you of what Lucas did with the Fairchild girl. If her family, and the families of the other girls found out that we let an account slide we'd pretty much have a riot on our hands.

We do plenty of business with international law enforcement and I'm sure when the time comes you'll be able to figure out how to negotiate and complete the transaction with her. I'm putting my faith in you on this, Adrian. Don't let me down."

I didn't know what to say to him, so I lied. I had never lied to my father before.

"I'll take care of it. Where is she?"

"She's in transit right now. She should be arriving any time and when she does, she'll go right into the cell. And, like I said, I don't want Lucas to have anything to do with her. I need her in good shape."

"Absolutely. I'll make sure of it."

I got up and headed for the door, still in a daze over what was being asked of me. There was no way I could train Brooklyn. No way. The fact that my father had put her into my hands was the one silver lining to this black cloud that hung over me. That meant that my brother wouldn't be able to get his hands on her. He was just as afraid of our father as I was. But other than making sure Lucas stayed away, I honestly didn't know what the hell I was going to do with her.

"Adrian."

I stopped just as my hand touched the doorknob and waited. I didn't want my father to see a trace of the panic that I knew was probably plastered all over my face.

"I'm putting my complete trust in you on this one. I don't think I need to emphasize how important it is that this transaction goes exactly as planned. We've been on shaky ground for a while now with so many rivals popping up with the whole bitcoin craze. If we lose our standing our family is as good as dead. There are at least ten investment firms that are just waiting for us to make one wrong move. They won't have any mercy on us. No one will."

"Of course, you can trust me," I said, turning towards him but without looking him in the eye. I continued out the door and down the hall then went into my own office. I checked the surveillance monitors in the induction cell and saw that she hadn't arrived yet so I got on my computer and did a little research.

It looked like she had done what she told me she was going to do. Brooklyn had been busy making a career for herself in the fashion industry. I smiled when I thought back to the summer we had spent together and how excited her face got whenever she talked about her ideas. Fashion wasn't something I was even remotely interested in, but when Brooklyn talked about glimmering, sequin-studded gowns I was captivated.

I looked through the last month or so of her posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and I was impressed by what she had done for herself.

She was graduating from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in fashion design in a couple months and she had thousands of followers on all social media platforms. And according to her last tweet she had just secured an internship at one of the most prestigious clothing design companies in Manhattan.

Her posts were all positive and full of praise for other designers and no matter how far back in her history I read I noticed that she never put any other designers down.

That kind of behavior on social media was really rare in any form of business. It seemed like there was so much jealousy and bitterness that poured through so many people's tweets and posts it was astounding to me that those people actually believed it made them look good. When in reality it made them look like complete fools. And there was Brooklyn with her incredibly beautiful smile and the profound kindness I remembered from all those years ago.

I sat there and stared at a page of images of her at events and clubs and couldn't believe that this was the girl that I was going to have to break and turn into a slave for some cretin to use as he pleased for the rest of her life. I'd seen some of the men that bought the transactions and they were certainly nothing to look forward to. Most of them were vile pigs that most girls wouldn't even give the time of day unless they were being paid.

As I sat there and thought about this mess Lucas popped into my head again and the idea of him getting anywhere near Brooklyn infuriated me. I didn't think my father knew even the half of what his younger son was capable of, but I had seen it all first hand. I had seen the changes in him over the last decade. I had seen him go from a reckless kid that wanted to do anything in his power to impress his father, like me, to a psychopath that got off on torture and agony and pushed every limit to see what he could get away with.

I watched him starve girls and then feed their own shit back to them. I watched him leave girls impaled on a dildo five feet off the ground overnight. I watched him remove all the teeth from one girl with a pair of pliers and send them back to her family in a box. But the last straw for me was when he skinned a girl alive, the Fairchild daughter my father had mentioned, then sent her body back to her family in a wooden box.

My father was particularly pissed about that one because he couldn't make any money off of her at all after that. Not even as a brain dead fuck doll. And money was the name of the game for my family. That and power. If we didn't keep the money flowing, then half of the mob-related organizations in the world would come to a screeching halt.

Somehow throughout the last few generations, my family is had become the bank for the mob. Investments, offshore holdings, lending; you name it. If what you were involved in had to do with money and something illegal, you went to the mafia. If what you were involved in required a hundred million in capital and was illegal, you came to my dad. And if the mob was harsh about getting the money that they were owed, my family had to be twice as harsh. There was just no fucking around.

Most people considered us mafia but my father always made a point of telling people that we were just a family in a long line of investment bankers. He was usually pretty vague about the specifics when asked, but I knew the distinction was very important to him. I think it had to do with his grandfather or great-grandfather being snubbed for a high-level position at a family-run investment firm. My father always said that if our family were mafia, he would have never been passed over like that. End of story.

So, that was why my father didn't want to put a stop to Lucas's antics, he just wanted to try to control them. I, on the other hand, wanted to stay as far away from those kind of business practices as possible. I was right there with him for years. Breaking the girls, then training them to do whatever they were told. For years, I could fuck a couple different girls in three different holes five times a day and would still need to jerk off before I fell asleep.

I was down there in the underground training grounds with Lucas all day every day. We had a constant stream of girls coming in that would start out in the induction cell for the first few days or a week, and then would be moved to one of the rooms in the main training grounds.

Lucas and I developed a system that worked very well and the fabulous thing was we barely broke a sweat doing any of what was referred to as our work.

Although at the height of taking daughters in lieu of payment, when we had four to eight girls down there at any one time, we had to expand the training program a bit. We brought in a few friends to help out and we didn't even have to pay them, they loved the work so much.

But in the last few years that part of the business had cooled off a bit. Lately, we would only have two or three girls at the most in training and sometimes a pretty long break when there was no one down there at all. I took the opportunity that came with the slowdown to switch my focus to other areas of the business and I let Lucas run amok in the training ground caverns.

It was apparent to me that my father wasn't particularly concerned with Lucas's reputation as a sadistic loose cannon. In fact, I was pretty sure he was proud of the reaction he got whenever he mentioned his youngest son's name during a negotiation. He didn't seem interested in participating in that level of quality control, as my father called it, but he appreciated the power that Lucas's reputation gave the family name.

After that incident with the Fairchild girl our family seemed to gain a whole new level of respect that had dwindled over time. Afterward, no matter where we went in the world we weren't messed with, let alone looked at in the eye by people who had felt my family's wrath.

The weird thing was, we were more well-known than most celebrities. Not by the general public but by anyone who had any ties to organized crime throughout most of the world. And that included law enforcement, airport security, hundreds of thousands of businesses and restaurants, government agencies in just about every country, rich and powerful families, higher education, you name it. Anything that had even the most remote ties to any form of mob activity had people in it who knew exactly who every member of my family was.

All I had to do was say my name when I walked into a five-star resort or restaurant and I couldn't take my wallet out without the owner making a fuss. It was hilarious how much people would give away to my family when we were the ones that held the purse strings. We had more money than any of them could even dream of.

But even with everything he had under his belt my father was always worried about someone else taking over. He had armed guards set up around the villa twenty-four hours a day and he had security men with him at all times. I didn't really remember a time when my father wasn't paranoid of losing status or being over-run, but it seemed like that mental state just came with the territory in this business.

It all really just boiled down to who had the money. Even some of the high powered mafia assholes were always spending above their means. Like my father said, they were always going to spend it faster than they could steal it themselves and when the money was gone, they always came back to the Bellini family. At any one time, my father could get his hands on enough capital to buy an Airbus or a private island or a fleet of tanks and there weren't many other private investors that could say the same.

I had been proud of our reputation for a long time. I respected my father's business skills, and I respected the family name, but for a while, I had been losing respect for myself. I just wasn't interested in being involved in the training on the level that Lucas was, so I tried to distance myself little by little. I only involved myself in that part of the business as far as the acquisition of the transactions and the induction period. The rest of it I left to my brother while I took the opportunity to learn other aspects of the business.

But this new transaction I had been given almost felt like some kind of turning point. I couldn't even bring myself to call Brooklyn that and I knew there was no way I could keep her down there in the training grounds, especially if there was the remotest chance that Lucas would have any kind of access to her. But I also knew that there was no way that I could change my father's mind about her.