Mors

Chapter 18

The iron gates of the Costa estate groaned open, swallowing the SUV into a world of manicured lawns and blinding security floodlights. The gravel crunched under the tires as the vehicle pulled up to the grand stone entrance of the main mansion. The massive structure loomed over me like a fortress, its limestone walls casting long, scary shadows in the night.

The door was snapped open from the outside. The cold night air rushed in, but it brought no relief. Augustino stepped out first, not once looking back to see if I was following. He didn't need to. He knew the invisible leash around my neck was pulled too tight for me to do anything else.

I stumbled out after him, my legs nearly giving out the moment my sneakers hit the pavement. My hands flew instinctively to my chest, clutching my backpack against me like a shield. I was hyper-aware of my tattered state, the collar of my hoodie was stretched and torn, my clothes were wrinkled and stained with the damp mountain mist, and the copper stench of the pastor's blood was drying into a stiff, dark crust on my face and collarbone. The silver rosary dangled heavily against my chest, a constant, mocking weight.

As we walked through the towering double doors of the foyer, the bright chandelier light hit me, exposing every single detail of my ruin. There were people present, several of Augustino’s high-ranking soldiers stood in the main hall, speaking in low murmurs, alongside a few members of the domestic staff.

I braced myself for their stares. I expected judgment, or disgust, or maybe a flicker of human pity. But as I passed them, trailing behind the Don like a defeated prisoner of war, no one gave me a second glance. None of them offered even a shred of sympathy. Everyone looked at me with absolute, chilling indifference. To them, I wasn't a breathing, bleeding human being who had just been shattered in a house of God; I was just a piece of cargo being moved from one room to another. A temporary fixture in Augustino’s orbit.

Their cold, unblinking apathy felt like a physical slap, forcing me to tuck my chin deeper into my chest.

Augustino stopped at the base of the grand winding staircase, unbuttoning his suit jacket with a casual flick of his wrist. He didn't turn to look at me when he spoke.

"Show her to the room on the second floor," he commanded, his voice slicing through the quiet foyer.

A maid stepped forward from the shadows of the hallway. She was different from the one who had attended to me before my escape. This woman was older, her face a rigid mask of strict obedience, her eyes completely devoid of warmth. She gave a stiff, silent nod to Augustino, then turned her cold gaze toward me, gesturing sharply toward the stairs.

I swallowed the lump of bile rising in my throat and silently followed her. Every step up the marble staircase felt like climbing a mountain. My sneakers made a pathetic, dragging sound against the polished stone. We walked past endless rows of oil paintings and golden sconces until we reached the deep, secluded wing of the second floor. The maid stopped in front of a heavy mahogany door directly adjacent to the double-door entrance of Augustino’s private suite.

She opened it, stepped aside, and roughly shoved me inside. The door clicked shut behind me, the lock turning from the outside with a heavy, definitive snap.

I stood frozen in the center of the room. It was vast, suffocatingly luxurious, and decorated in muted tones of charcoal and gold. A massive king-sized bed dominated the space, covered in silk sheets that looked smooth as ice. But I couldn't appreciate the wealth. I felt like a stray animal trapped in a golden cage, waiting for the hunter to return.

Before I could even drop my backpack, the lock clicked again. The door swung open, and two people walked in.

I braced myself, but it wasn't Augustino. It was his younger brother, a man whose features carried a softer version of the Costa cruelty, and beside him was the lady I had met named Abana during my brief time at the estate before I ran. She was an elegant woman, deeply embedded in the syndicate's inner circle, who had previously pulled me aside to give me a piece of chilling advice: Keep your head down. Take advantage of your position as Augustino's w***e to make your life easy, because escaping isn't an option.

Standing there in my ruined clothes, covered in blood and shame, her past words echoed in my mind like a mocking chorus. I thought about how I had completely ignored her warning. I had truly believed I could outrun the devil. If I had just kept her words in mind, if I had just swallowed my pride and stayed put, I could have spared myself the horrific, unforgettable humiliation I had just suffered on that church altar.

The two of them stopped a few paces away, taking in the sight of me. For a moment, the heavy silence of the room was broken only by my broken breathing. Unlike the soldiers in the foyer, a genuine wave of pity crossed both of their faces when they saw the sheer state of me, the dried blood splattered across my face, my hollow, terrified eyes, and the way I was shivering despite the room's warmth.

The woman sighed softly, a look of profound sorrow softening her sharp features. She turned her head slightly, glancing at Augustino's brother. "Go outside," she requested quietly. "Let me talk to her alone for a moment."

The brother hesitated, looking between me and the door, before nodding slowly. He stepped backward out of the room, closing the door firmly behind him, leaving the two of us in the quiet space.

The woman walked closer, her expensive silk dress rustling against the carpet. She stopped just a couple of feet away, her eyes dropping to the silver rosary around my neck before returning to my face.

"I know this world is entirely new for you, Everly," she began, her voice low and remarkably calm, stripped of any professional coldness. "And you don't understand how things work here. You think in terms of right and wrong, of justice and freedom. But you need to start thinking about your own wellbeing. You need to be a disgusting human being if you have to, just to survive. Because right now, there is only one option, and that is to survive. It's entirely up to you whether your survival will be agonizingly difficult, or if you will play the game and live it on your own terms."

She reached out, her fingers hovering near my shoulder as if wanting to comfort me, though she ultimately pulled her hand back, sensing my intense rigidity.

"I'm sorry this happened to you," she whispered, her voice laced with genuine regret. "I really am. I never thought the Capo would actually force himself on you like this. He has never... well, it doesn't matter."

I stared at her, my throat tight, the image of the pastor's twitching crotch and the deafening crack of the gun flashing behind my eyelids. A cold, bitter detachment suddenly washed over me, numbing the raw edges of my panic.

I looked her dead in the eye, my voice sounding completely hollow, flat, and dead. "It was a gun."

The woman frowned, her brow furrowing as she looked at me in deep confusion. "What?"

"He used a gun," I continued, the words slipping out of me like shards of glass. "Not himself. He didn't touch me. He used the barrel of his gun."

The woman froze. She kept looking at me, her eyes still filled with a heavy, lingering pity, but the confusion vanished. Strangely, there was absolutely no surprise left in her expression. The revelation that Augustino hadn't actually used his own body to violate me didn't shock her at all.

"Makes sense," the woman murmured, shifting her weight as she processed my words. "The Capo has never let any woman near him. None of us have ever seen it. We were all completely shocked when he brought you here and openly appointed you as his whore... but seeing how things actually are, it’s clear he is still incredibly wary of women."

My brow furrowed despite my exhaustion. The word caught in my head, pulling me out of my state of shock for a fraction of a second. "What do you mean?" I asked, my voice a quiet whisper.

"The Capo isn't a person who throws himself into physical pleasures," the woman explained, stepping back slightly and crossing her arms. "In fact, to anyone's knowledge, he has never been with anyone. Not a single person. His distrust in people runs deeper than anyone can comprehend. He views intimacy as a vulnerability, a weakness he refuses to possess."

She leaned in a bit closer, her eyes turning sharp, trying to force me to understand the gravity of what she was saying.

"You, however, have just been handed a golden ticket, Everly. You have the opportunity to use his bizarre fascination with you to your absolute advantage. He wants you here for a reason, even if it's a twisted one. Do think about what you need to do to make it easy to survive. Play the part he wants. Learn his patterns. Most of us in this life didn't have the luxury of this kind of privilege or leverage. Don't waste it on useless rebellion."

She gave me one last, lingering look of pity, then turned on her heel. She walked to the door, knocked twice for the guard outside to unlock it, and stepped out into the hallway without another word.

The heavy mahogany door shut heavily behind her. A second later, the sharp, metallic sound of the lock turning echoed through the quiet room.

Once she left, the finality of my isolation settled over me like a suffocating shroud. I didn't move for a long time. I just stood there, staring at the polished wood of the door, listening to the absolute silence of the mansion's upper wing.

My hands finally let go of my backpack, letting it thud heavily against the floorboards. I felt entirely detached from my own skin, as if I were floating somewhere above the room, watching a broken stranger ruin the perfect silk sheets of the bed.

Slowly, dragging my heavy, aching limbs, I crawled onto the massive mattress. I didn't bother to take off my shoes. I didn't try to wash the dried, metallic blood from my face or my hands. I just curled up into a tight, desperate ball in the center of the bed, pulling my knees all the way up to my chest.

My mind was a spinning, chaotic blur, entirely too overwhelmed by the trauma of the church, the betrayal of the pastor, and the confusing, heavy words of the woman to think about anything clearly. I squeezed my eyes shut, clutching the cold silver rosary tightly in my fist, and let the darkness of pure exhaustion finally drag me under.

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