The halls of the Castellano estate had always been hushed at night, but tonight the silence felt sharpened, deliberate. Servants passed like shadows, their slippers brushing the marble without sound, their eyes lowered, their hands quick. Even the dogs in the courtyard had been chained farther from the windows, their growls muffled by distance.
In her room, Sofia lay awake. The candle beside her had long since guttered into wax, leaving the faint glow of a single lamp across her bookshelf. She could not sleep. Karau's terrified whispers clung to her ears like a sickness: bodies skinned… enemies starved until they ate one another… priests humiliated, police mocked… women disappeared, no one ever saw them again.
Her chest rose and fell with uneven breaths. She told herself to stop thinking, but the words burrowed deeper, wrapping themselves around her ribs like vines.
Then she heard it — a murmur below. Not the hushed gossip of maids or the clinking of late-night glasses, but her father's voice. Low, precise.
Her hand froze on the wheel of her chair. She tilted her head toward the crack of the door.
The study was directly beneath her room. The floor carried sound up like a drum.
And her father, Antonello Castellano, was speaking.
---
Downstairs, Antonello stood in his study with the poise of a man who had lived his life performing authority like a second skin. The wide oak desk before him was littered with papers, but he didn't glance at them. Two lawyers sat stiff in their chairs, backs straight, expressions carefully composed.
Antonello rolled an unlit cigar between his fingers, a nervous tic disguised as ritual. His words, when they came, were quiet but edged, like a knife wrapped in silk.
"You think I made this decision lightly?" he began.
One of the lawyers shifted but didn't answer.
Antonello paced to the window, looking out into the black gardens. "Do you think I don't know the stories about him? I hear them every day. Men too hardened to flinch at a corpse whisper like children about monsters under the bed — and always, always, it is the same name." He turned, his eyes glinting. "Vincenzo Moretti."
The lawyers exchanged glances.
Antonello's lips twitched as though the name itself were sour. "Fifteen, they say he gutted men like fish in the open street. Sixteen, he starved his rivals' children until they begged him to end them. Seventeen, he made dockworkers disappear in daylight, and the fishmongers found pieces floating in their nets." He placed the cigar on the desk carefully, as if the wood might splinter beneath the weight of the word seventeen.
The first lawyer cleared his throat. "Sir… these are rumors. Terrifying, yes, but—"
"Rumors?" Antonello barked a laugh. "Rumors that make grown men vomit into the gutter. Rumors that drive magistrates to avoid cases with his name in the margins. Do you know what rumor means in this city? It means survival. It means obedience. A rumor in Portovelo can bury you deeper than a bullet."
His voice steadied. "And I have no intention of letting the Castellanos be buried."
---
Upstairs, Sofia sat frozen, her knuckles white against the wood of her chair. Her lips parted slightly, but no sound came. She had wondered — hoped, even — that her father's strange kindness these days was rooted in fear, or guilt, or shame. Anything human. But the way his voice carried up the walls… it was not guilt. It was calculation.
Her heartbeat drummed in her ears.
---
Antonello resumed pacing. His words grew colder, almost detached. "Do you know why I gave her to him? My daughter? Because she is nothing."
The second lawyer stirred, visibly uncomfortable. "Sir, with respect—"
"Nothing," Antonello repeated, unblinking. "A cripple who cannot walk, cannot dance, cannot bear heirs without help. A burden in a family of wolves. She is a failed piece, a pawn that cannot move. But a pawn can still be sacrificed."
His hand brushed the edge of the desk. "And to him — to Vincenzo Moretti — her very weakness is her value. He can do what he wishes with her. Use her body, crush her bones, silence her completely. And the world will understand: the Castellanos bent willingly, offered even their most helpless blood to the monster. It is a message written in flesh. That is what keeps us alive."
The room was dead still.
The first lawyer swallowed hard. "And… if she does not survive him?"
Antonello's expression did not change. "Then she has served her purpose. Her body becomes proof of loyalty. A sacrifice no man can misinterpret."
He picked up the cigar again, rolling it between his fingers. His voice softened, almost musing. "Every army burns bridges to win wars. Every general feeds soldiers to the mud. I am no different. My daughter's body is the fire that will keep this house warm."
---
Upstairs, Sofia's lungs constricted. She pressed her hand against her chest, nails biting into fabric.
She had suspected her father might be willing to sell her, but hearing him speak so plainly — not with shame, not with hesitation, but with calm acceptance — hollowed her out.
He had already buried her.
Her father's voice reached her once more, each word sinking like a nail.
"Mark me," Antonello said softly, almost reverently, "the day she leaves this house in his shadow, the Castellanos will never be touched. No bullet, no rival, no law. Because we will have given the monster something no one else dared: our own blood. And if she screams, if she suffers, if she dies… it will echo louder than any promise I could make."
---
Sofia's hand slipped from the wheel of her chair. For a moment she thought she might faint.
Her father had not saved her. He had traded her.
Her helpless body was not a burden to him anymore — it was a tool.
And tools were meant to be broken.
Antonello didn't sit. He stalked the length of the room like a predator pacing a cage, his voice steady but carrying venom. The two lawyers tried not to meet each other's eyes. They had worked for him for years, had seen contracts stained with blood, signatures signed with trembling hands. But this — this was something different.
"You still think these are only rumors?" Antonello asked, his lip curling faintly. He leaned over the desk, knuckles pressed against the oak. "Then let me remind you what men whisper in alleys."
He lowered his voice, and somehow that made it worse.
"They say he once kept an enemy alive for twenty days, chained in a cellar. No water, no food. Just salt rubbed into his wounds until the man begged for rats to chew his skin. When the screams finally stopped, Vincenzo sent what was left of him back to his family — a jawbone, a strip of skin, nothing more."
The first lawyer shifted, his jaw tight.
Antonello's gaze flicked to him, sharp. "And do you know what happened to that family? They vanished. All of them. No graves, no ashes, nothing. The neighbors swore they heard clawing at the walls for weeks, but no one dared open the door."
He straightened, almost serene.
"And then there was the priest." His tone sharpened, cruel. "The one who dared to say Vincenzo's sins could be washed away. He was found nailed to his own pulpit. Mouth sewn shut with wire. A Bible shoved down his throat until his ribs cracked."
The second lawyer went pale, his hand twitching at his collar.
Antonello lit the cigar this time, the flame briefly illuminating the hollows of his face. Smoke drifted in lazy spirals toward the ceiling.
"They say," he continued, almost lazily now, "that Vincenzo makes women disappear not for ransom, not for revenge, but for amusement. A girl from the opera house, bright voice, pretty hair — gone. A magistrate's mistress — gone. And when the river swells after rain, sometimes they float back. Not whole. Never whole."
The lawyers' silence grew heavy, one of them clutching his handkerchief tightly.
Antonello exhaled smoke through his nose. "This is the man who now looks at my daughter. Do you think I can protect her from him? No. But I can use her." His eyes gleamed in the haze. "Her body is the rope that ties the Castellanos to safety. If she breaks under him, if she dies, the message will still stand: we obey. We offer flesh. We bend where others refuse. And that obedience will save us all."
Upstairs – Sofia
The words crawled through the floorboards, into her skin. Each rumor struck like a blade pressed against her chest.
A cellar. A pulpit. A river.
Sofia felt bile rise in her throat, her hand trembling over her lap. Her father's voice carried no disgust, no grief. Only cold arithmetic.
She remembered the softness in his tone at dinner, the way he had spoken her name as if she mattered. Now she understood. It had been performance. A lie to keep her calm, to make her walk willingly into a cage.
She pressed her palm against her mouth, forcing down a sob. The last thing she wanted was for her father to hear her, to know she was listening, to know she knew.
Below, Antonello's voice continued, like a prayer offered to darkness.
"Even if she screams," he said, smoke curling from his lips, "it will not be wasted. Her scream will echo louder than bullets, louder than bribes. And when men hear it, they will remember: Vincenzo Moretti owns not just the city, but the blood of his enemies, their sons, their daughters. Even their cripples."
The lawyers flinched at the word. Neither dared interrupt.
Antonello smiled faintly, as though he had spoken poetry.
Sofia
That word landed harder than the rest. Cripple.
Her chest tightened until she thought her ribs might crack. She gripped the wheel of her chair, nails digging into the wood.
He had said it like a curse. Like a truth.
Not a daughter. Not flesh of his flesh. A cripple — and therefore expendable.
Her stomach lurched. She rolled herself back from the door, away from the sound, her body trembling. She wanted to stop listening, to unhear everything, but the words were etched into her, carved like the stories Karau had whispered.
A monster waiting.
A father trading her like currency.
A city watching for her scream.
Her eyes stung with tears she refused to shed.
When she finally closed the door to her room, it felt less like shutting out the noise and more like sealing herself inside a coffin.