The corridor stretched endlessly before them, its polished marble floor swallowing the faint echoes of the wheelchair's slowing wheels. A hush settled over the Castellano estate as if even the walls had inhaled and held their breath.
Karau's hands froze on the handles. The steady rhythm of the wheelchair came to a halt, the silence sharper than any sound. Sofia felt it immediately—the sudden stop, the absence of movement, the air tightening around her shoulders.
She turned her head.
Karau stood stiff, her lips parted but soundless, her eyes wide, trembling with a horror Sofia could not understand. Her face had drained of color, as though the very mention of the name had leeched the blood from her veins.
"Why did you stop?" Sofia asked, her voice calm, but her brows pinched slightly.
Karau swallowed hard, the movement visible in her throat. When she finally spoke, her voice was cracked, fragile, like porcelain straining under pressure.
"Madam… did you… mean… that name? Vincenzo… Moretti?"
The syllables dropped in the corridor like stones into deep water.
Sofia tilted her head, studying the maid's reaction with growing unease. Why does she look like that? She had spoken the name herself, lightly, as if it were nothing but a business deal. But in Karau's eyes, the name was not a word. It was a curse.
Karau's hands shook on the wheelchair's handles, her knuckles paling as she gripped too tightly. Her breath came shallow, broken, as though she feared the walls themselves would carry the sound of her words back to him.
Sofia frowned. "He's… a gangster, yes. But why do you tremble as though he could hear us from here?"
Karau's gaze darted down the corridor, toward the faraway shadows, before lowering her voice until it was barely above a whisper.
"Because, madam… they do not call him a gangster."
Her lips quivered, but she forced the words out, each syllable coated with dread.
"They call him… a monster."
The word echoed in Sofia's chest, but she only blinked, uncomprehending. "Monster?"
Karau nodded slowly, and in that motion, Sofia saw a depth of terror she had never witnessed in another human being. It was not the fear of gossip or exaggeration. It was the fear of memory.
"Do you know, madam, how old he was when the stories began?" Karau's voice wavered, as if the memories were not hers but had been carried on the backs of whispers that refused to die.
Sofia stayed silent, her lips pressed together.
Karau's hands tightened once more before she leaned closer, her breath warm and trembling near Sofia's ear.
"Fifteen. Only fifteen, madam. And already the streets whispered his name."
Sofia's dark brows arched faintly. She wanted to scoff, but something in Karau's tone pinned her in place.
The maid continued, her voice growing colder with each memory.
"They say his first killings were not simple. He did not just stab or shoot. No… they say he cut three men down with knives and fists, piece by piece, with precision far beyond his years. No survivors. No mistakes. As if he had studied fear itself and mapped every way to unravel a man before the final blow."
Karau's eyes flickered, as though she could still see the scene painted in rumor, her voice lowering further:
"Those who found the bodies… said one had been left hanging, another starved for days before death took him, the last—" she swallowed, her face paling, "—the last was skinned in a way that made the police vomit on the street."
Sofia's stomach tightened. She gripped the armrests of her wheelchair, her knuckles whitening. The image pressed against her mind even as she tried to push it away.
But Karau was not finished.
"Do you see now, madam, why we fear him? Because from fifteen… he proved not just that he could kill. Many can kill. But he proved he could do the vilest acts imaginable… and still walk free. Untouchable. No witnesses. No evidence. Only corpses, rumors, and fear."
The corridor felt colder now.
Sofia's lips parted, but no words came. She wanted to say her father had arranged this only for money, that the engagement was a transaction, that her beauty and her crippled body had been bartered away like unwanted goods. She wanted to say that was all it was.
But the word monster clung to her. And Karau's trembling whispered something darker: perhaps money had not been enough. Perhaps fear itself had been the price.
The word monster would not leave her mind.
It lingered, echoing, gnawing at the edges of Sofia's thoughts as the corridor seemed to stretch further, the silence becoming unbearable.
Sofia shifted slightly in her chair, her hands trembling against the armrests. "Rumors… that's all they are," she muttered under her breath, almost as though trying to steady herself.
Karau's lips pressed together. Her eyes—wide, haunted—betrayed something far heavier than rumors.
"They are not just whispers of gangs, madam," Karau said finally. "They are the kind of stories people lower their voices to share… and even then, they shiver. The kind of stories where even the boldest men cross themselves after speaking his name."
Sofia felt her heartbeat slow and throb at once, a strange unease crawling up her neck.
Karau bent closer again, her voice sharp with restraint, as though terrified the walls themselves would betray her.
"When he was sixteen… there was a man, a debt collector, they say, who mocked his family. They found that man three days later—" she faltered, her eyes flickering to Sofia's face, gauging whether to continue.
"Say it," Sofia demanded, her voice a little harsher than she intended.
Karau swallowed. "The man's tongue had been nailed to a wall, his eyes carved out. His body was left in such a way that no priest would approach it. The police could not even write the details into their report."
Sofia's lips parted soundlessly. She wanted to scream at Karau to stop, yet the horror glued her in place.
Karau's voice broke again into a tremble.
"And when he was seventeen… a rival family accused him of smuggling weapons. Their youngest son vanished. They searched for weeks. When they found him…" Karau's throat tightened, "…his limbs had been severed, and yet the body showed no sign of bleeding where it should have. As if—" she gasped slightly, shaking her head. "As if he had been kept alive during it. Alive."
The corridor swam in Sofia's vision for a moment. The walls, the gilded frames, the marble—they all felt colder, suffocating, pressing in.
Karau's whispers didn't stop. They spilled out now, as though once the name had been spoken, the dam of silence could no longer hold.
"By eighteen… they said he drowned three men in barrels of oil. Their lungs were torn when they tried to breathe in the thick liquid. At nineteen, another rumor claimed he buried a man alive beneath his own restaurant's foundation, and when the cement dried, the screams still echoed for hours until they stopped."
Sofia's hands trembled violently. She pressed them against her lap, clenching until her nails bit her skin. Her mind reeled, trying to reconcile the image of her father—calm, commanding, proud—with the idea that he had given her away to this.
To that.
Karau leaned closer, her words sharper, harsher now.
"They call him untouchable not only because he kills, madam. Many killers leave chaos. But him… he leaves silence. No witnesses. No mistakes. Always precise. Always cruel. He does not only end lives—he takes joy in how. He makes sure the body itself tells the story."
Sofia could not breathe for a moment. Her chest constricted, her throat tight.
Her father's words from days ago echoed back in jagged fragments: "This is for your future, Sofia. For your safety, your stability."
Safety? Stability? To be handed over to a monster?
Her stomach twisted. Not once had she believed her father bent to a gangster. She had thought it a mere transaction—money, protection, influence. A sale. She had always believed she was sold, like a burden offloaded.
But now—now, a worse thought slithered in.
What if he gave me away out of fear?
Not for business. Not for money. Not for prestige. But because he knew that saying no to this Vincenzo Moretti could mean ruin. Death.
Did my father think I would die?
The thought struck like a knife, slow and deliberate. It made her stomach tighten until she nearly retched.
Karau was still speaking, her voice so faint it was almost a prayer:
"By twenty, madam… they whispered he forced a priest to drink poison at the altar for refusing to bless his family. The priest's insides burned. They say even the holy robes could not hide the stench of his body when it was found."
Sofia closed her eyes tightly, her nails digging deeper into her palms, fighting the sickness rising in her throat.
Her father's face returned again in memory—stern, proud, commanding. But now she saw it differently. Not as the mask of a man in control, but as the pale restraint of someone walking near a beast's cage, smiling to keep from provoking it.
And he had offered her as the meat.
The wheels of her chair creaked faintly against the marble floor. For a long moment neither of them spoke, only the dull rhythm of their movement filling the silence.
Sofia's head throbbed. The rumors were grotesque, sickening, each one more vile than the last. Yet her father's face, calm and collected at the family meeting, returned again and again. That calm had not been pride—it had been fear.
Her lips quivered as she finally spoke, her voice hoarse.
"Karau… tell me something."
The maid hesitated, her hands tightening on the handles of the wheelchair. "Yes, madam?"
"Why…" Sofia swallowed, trying to keep her voice steady. "Why does my father smile so kindly at me now? Why does he soften his tone, offer little comforts, even though he never did before? It's not love. It's not guilt. I know him too well." Her voice cracked. "It's because of that man, isn't it?"
Karau froze. The chair stopped moving mid-corridor.
Sofia frowned. "Why did you stop?" She turned her head slightly, confusion lacing her tone. "I asked you a question."
Karau's face had gone pale, her eyes glistening with something close to panic.
Sofia tilted her chin, forcing strength into her voice despite the trembling inside her chest. "If my father is cautious, it is not for me. It is for him. For the one he has promised me to."
She paused, her next words tasting like ash as she forced them past her lips.
"Vincenzo Moretti."
The name hung in the air, sharp and heavy, cutting through the silence like a blade.
The effect on Karau was immediate. Her hands slipped from the handles of the chair. She staggered back half a step, as if the very syllables had struck her chest. Her breathing quickened, ragged, and her wide eyes locked onto Sofia with a terror she could not mask.
Sofia's brows furrowed, her own pulse hammering in her ears. "Why do you look like that? Why—why are you trembling?"
Karau's lips moved, forming words that seemed reluctant to leave her throat. Finally, in a voice lower than a whisper, soaked with dread, she answered.
"Because, madam… you do not marry Vincenzo Moretti."
She swallowed hard, her voice shaking as she forced out the words.
"You are given to him. And once given… no one comes back."
Sofia stared at her, stunned, her stomach turning violently, a chill spreading through her bones.
The wheels of her chair stood still, the silence stretching unbearably, broken only by the faint echo of Karau's terrified breathing.
And for the first time, Sofia felt a creeping, suffocating certainty settle into her heart—her father had not sold her. He had delivered her into the jaws of a monster.