They called him Ortega on the street: a city constable who'd walked the night beat long enough to recognize the scent of rot in both alleys and institutions. Broad at the shoulders, thin at the moral center, he carried a face trained to neutrality because neutrality cost the least. His eyes had the habit of looking empty, as though they were windows to a room long since abandoned.
Tonight, he sat in a cheap plastic chair under a humming streetlamp, his hands jammed deep into his jacket pockets, eyes fixed on the police station across the street. The precinct's windows glowed with weak, yellow light, but to Ortega they looked like the hungry eyes of some animal guarding its meal. He rocked gently, the chair's legs scraping against concrete, as if he were circling that meal in his head.
Greed, he told himself, was instinct. Survival in Portovelo demanded it. In this city, money didn't care whether it reeked of blood or varnish — money answered only to itself. And lately, his money was disappearing faster than he could earn it. His daughter needed braces; his wife had left him years ago, disgusted with the man he'd become. The paychecks never stretched. Debts piled up. His nights were haunted not by crime scenes but by the soft, pitiful whimper of his daughter asking why other girls could smile without shame. He had promised her the world once. Instead, he had given her hunger and shame.
That was why he was here. That was why he was thinking the unthinkable.
Ortega had heard the rumor often enough: when anyone whispered information about the Morettis, the underworld paid. Not just coins, but bundles thick enough to change a man's life. And the Morettis — or rather, the boy at the center of the myth — were always worth whispering about.
The stories never softened. Some called him a cruel monster. Others, a genius psycho. A boy who became infamous at fifteen, when most kids still carried schoolbags. He left no survivors, not even children. The whispers painted him like folklore: some enemies starved when he cut them off, others were skinned and left as warnings. Nobody dared verify, but every family repeated the legend because fear demanded it.
Ortega had seen firsthand how terror turned into currency. A name, a taxi route, a receipt — even the smallest scrap of information fetched a price.
Tonight he carried something more than scraps. He had the truth: the uploader of the park video — the one that had shown Vincenzo Moretti sitting calm as a stone while others panicked — had already been taken into custody. Secured inside the police station. Guarded, but not untouchable.
That was worth more than scraps. That was worth his daughter's smile. He told himself it wasn't greed. It was survival.
Still, when he stood and walked toward the docks, his hands trembled in his pockets.
---
The café sat hunched against the water, its windows fogged by grease and the breath of men who came only to drown themselves in bitter coffee or rotten gossip. Ortega slipped inside, the bell above the door groaning in protest. The air reeked of burnt beans and seawater.
A man was waiting in the back. Rocco. One of the Moretti couriers. He wore a cheap suit, smelled of cheaper cologne, and spoke with clipped precision. Ortega slid into the booth across from him.
"You've got something," Rocco said. Not a question. An instruction.
Ortega swallowed, felt the sweat prick his temple. He slid the folder across the table. Inside: the uploader's name, the details of his arrest, the fact he was in the precinct right now.
Rocco didn't open it. Didn't need to. He only tapped it once with a manicured finger, then set down an envelope. Thick. Heavy.
Ortega's heart thudded. His palms itched as he drew it close, every bill whispering louder than his conscience.
"What tells you they'll actually move? The boy's inside the station. Guarded. Surrounded. You think even he—"
Rocco's small, practiced smile cut him short. "They don't always move loud. The Morettis prefer quiet. But if they choose otherwise…" He let the sentence die. In Portovelo, everyone already knew the rest. Monsters didn't need explanations.
---
By nightfall, the whisper had spread like fire across dry leaves. A constable had sold the truth. The uploader was in the precinct. And the question wasn't whether the Morettis would act. It was how.
The whisper seeped — through cafés, back alleys, doorways with half-broken hinges, the mouths of old women pretending not to listen while clutching their rosaries. In Portovelo, truth was never carried in newspapers or broadcasts. Truth moved on the damp breath of gossip, disguised as rumor but always heavier than fiction.
By the time dawn pressed pale light across the city, the sale had already unraveled far beyond Ortega's control.
---
At the docks, men loading crates paused to spit into the sea, pretending not to care. But they cared. Every one of them had a story. Every story began with his age.
"Fifteen," one man whispered, voice shaking, "he killed three men alone on the streets. Knives, fists… no witnesses, no trace. Every step calculated. He learned fear like a map."
"Sixteen," said another, gripping a coil of rope, "even the dock gangs learned obedience. Whisper defiance, and you vanished. He doesn't need to touch you; one word, one glance… obedience is instinct. Some starved. Some disappeared."
"Seventeen," a third muttered, eyes flicking toward the city, "the streets themselves bend. Merchants pay in advance. Mothers hide children. Every corner, every alley knows… that monster is untouchable. No proof, no arrests, yet everyone obeys."
"Eighteen, nineteen… twenty," the men added together, voices grim, "he shapes lawless corners, moves through the city like a shadow. Intelligence beyond any normal man. No evidence, no trace, no witnesses that survive. And now, twenty-one… untouchable. Everything he touches becomes fear."
They did not call him a boy anymore. They whispered the word that draped over the city like smoke: monster. Every story carried the weight of dread. Intelligence. Patience. Cruelty. Every act he performed, every disappearance, every humiliation, traced by no hand but remembered by all eyes. He could commit the vilest acts — torture, starvation, disappearance — and the city would never find proof. He would always vanish before the consequences touched him. That was the real terror.
---
The Castellano estate was quiet this morning. Antonello Castellano moved through the halls with the poise of a man who commanded both respect and fear, his presence as deliberate as a chess master arranging his pieces. The lawyers were busy calculating contingencies, the staff attending each order with careful precision. And yet, today, Antonello's focus often drifted toward the drawing room where Sofia sat in her wheelchair, a book open but unread on her lap.
Sofia's dark eyes followed her father, noting the care in his gestures. He adjusted a cushion, straightened a curtain, smiled at a servant's minor error without scolding. She had been told about the engagement, knew the name — Vincenzo Moretti — whispered quietly by her father a few nights ago. She had repeated it in her mind, trying to understand. And today, seeing him treat her with such meticulous attention, she felt confusion bloom.
Why was he acting towards me like that, as if I mattered to him now? Is it because of that gangster but Why. it doesn't make sense if your selling me then sell why act, she couldn't understand why was her father cautious toward someone who is a gangster, why would he hesitate towards this man? Why did he agreed to her engagement to a gangster, isn't her father a legal tycoon, though I am his chess piece. a burden who can't be transacted through rich family because of my legs but doesn't he thinks marrying his daughter to a gangster would bring shame to his name or is that the gangster gave her father some heavy money. if so then why but despite thinking that Sofia had lived long enough to know the world's cruel bargains. She understood that beauty could be sold, that weakness could be exploited. Yet her father's behavior — warm, confident, attentive — made no sense.
Even if the engagement was merely a transaction — a right to her body of a girl who can't walk and doesn't have anyone to support so he will do as he wishes, as she had assumed — but why would her father arrange meetings and precautions regarding the uploader? If Vincenzo were the monster everyone whispered about, even caught in the act, why would he hesitate to break the engagement? Isn't he afraid that police will link him with this? Why did Antonello need to plan, calculate, prepare?
Sofia pressed her fingers to the chair's arms. She wanted to ask, wanted to demand an explanation, but instead, she nodded quietly, letting the room hum with its silent tension.
---
Later, as Karau a maid the one who has normal relationship with Sofia talked together with her as she guided her wheelchair toward her room, Sofia's mind churned with half-formed thoughts. The corridors stretched long, sunlight glancing off marble floors. She talked about some things and then she shifted her to topic to her engagement casually:
"Karau… my father arranged it. The engagement…"
"Really"
"Yes"
Sofia replied lightly without much emotion. karau was suprised but felt a sad for Sofia as she had seen everyone bully this girl and how bad she is being treated by her father mother and her siblings as she couldn't walk, isn't much worth and now she is being sold
"With who madam"
Karau asked softly with pity filling her tone
"with Vincenzo Moretti."
Karau who was listening to her madam in pity froze. The wheelchair slowed. Sofia turned her head, seeing the maid's face pale, lips trembling, eyes wide.
"Why did you stop?" Sofia asked softly.
Karau's voice broke as she whispered, "Madam… did you … mean.. that... monster. With… a look. A look that terrifies…."
Sofia's hands gripped the arms of the chair. as karau started to tell her everything about that man with terrified face
Writer : don't worry it will not be romance or anything I am just writing her for future glazing