Chapter 1 - The Transaction
The employment agency smelled of old documents, cheap perfume, and hopeless decisions. Elena Rossi noticed those things immediately. She noticed the faded paint on the walls, the nervous tapping of the clerk's fingers, and the woman near the window who kept looking at the door as if she wished someone would come and rescue her. Elena noticed everything because she had spent her entire life learning how. People thought being deaf meant living in silence, but they were wrong; silence was not emptiness, it was observation.
She stood beside her mother, Carla Rossi, holding a small worn-out bag containing everything she owned: three simple dresses, a few books, a photograph of her grandmother, and a necklace that had belonged to her father. Carla took another careless drink from the bottle hidden inside her coat and pointed at Elena. "She's deaf. I'll take less for her." Elena did not hear the sentence, but she read her mother's lips and saw the cruel expression.
The front door opened, and Dante Moretti walked inside. Thirty-six years old, tall, powerful, and controlled, the head of one of the most feared families in Chicago entered the room. He had not come looking for Elena, but his eyes locked onto her because she looked directly at him without fear. Carla immediately recognized him and seized the opportunity, naming an amount to settle her debts. Dante stepped forward, handed over the money, and looked down at Elena. "When you take this, everything ends," he told Carla. Then, looking at Elena, he added, "The money does not buy you. The choice is yours." For the first time in her life, someone reminded Elena she had control over her own destiny.
