The darkness in his eyes, the dangerous smell of alcohol in his breath, and his deathly grip keeping me bound to him made my heart pound in my chest and my body quiver beneath him. Shamefully, it wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to, because…the things I let him do to me? When he was frustrated and angry at the world, I was here to be his pound of flesh. In return, he masked the void of my loneliness because for months, that was the transaction of our relationship. He’d pin me to the wall, bend me over the counter, pull my hair, slap me, choke me, and I enjoyed every second of it because in that moment, it finally felt good to be powerless. Irony is a funny thing. I enjoyed being in pain because it made me forget how much I was hurting. *** My name is Mercy Carter. I'm a physics graduate student. His name is Marcello Saldívar. However, at the time, I didn’t know that the heir to the Saldívar Mafia empire was the man that I had offered myself to. As smart as I am, I was stupid all the times it actually mattered. He warned me he was dangerous. I just didn’t think he could be much worse than my thug of a brother. My name is Mercy, and I belong to him. I am the Mafia’s Mercy.