The cell door creaked open, spilling light across the damp stone floor.
Silesia flinched, curling tighter into herself. But it wasn't the mafia king who entered.
It was a woman. Middle-aged, dressed in a maid's uniform, balancing a tray and a bundle of folded cloth. Her steps were cautious, her voice even softer.
"Miss... you should eat."
Silesia's throat burned as she forced words past it. "Please... please tell him I didn't do anything. He has the wrong girl."
The maid froze. She had served Matteo Loki long enough to know the weight of his wrath... and how dangerous it was to question him. Yet looking at this trembling figure on the bed, she felt pity stir inside her chest.
Setting the tray down, she knelt and held out the bundle. "Fresh clothes. Clean yourself. You'll feel better."
Silesia's hands shook as she accepted the garments. Her body was sore, her soul heavier still. As she slipped into the simple dress, the maid's gaze lingered, the timid way she moved, the way her cheeks flushed at the smallest kindness.
So different from the woman Matteo had described.
When she was dressed, Silesia whispered, "What's his name?"
The maid lowered her eyes. "Matteo Loki. King of this city."
The name hit like ice water. King. That explained why no one at the airport had helped her. Why would the police never come? Why her screams had vanished into silence.
The maid gathered the tray and cast one last look at the girl's pale, frightened face before slipping away.
---
Next day
Matteo finally let doubt guide him. For two days, it gnawed at him like rust beneath steel. He had the file spread open across his desk, every report, every photograph of Porsche Wolff, her smirk, her sharp gaze, the arrogance that dripped from her like perfume. And then he thought of the girl in the cellar.
The way her lips trembled when she spoke. The way she flinched from his shadow. The way she had bled.
He studied her face from memory, line by line, searching for flaws in his own conviction. The curve of her jaw. The softness of her mouth. The way her eyes widened with terror instead of fire. She was too different. Too... unpracticed in the art of deceit.
So he ordered his men to dig deeper. Background checks, airport records, street surveillance, anything that would prove him right. Anything that would confirm she was Porsche, that his rage had not been misplaced.
But the truth returned to him like a blade in the dark.
She was not Porsche Wolff.
The reports were clear. No aliases, no hidden records, no evidence of a double life. The woman downstairs wasn't a thief, wasn't a liar, wasn't the one who had humiliated him.
And still, Matteo refused to believe it until he saw her himself.
His footsteps echoed through the stone hall as he approached her cell. The iron door groaned open, and she startled like a bird, curling tighter into the corner of the bed. Her eyes were swollen from crying, her wrists still raw with bruises, her dress hanging loose around her thin frame.
For a moment, he only looked at her, the quiet rise and fall of her chest, the way her fingers clutched the blanket as though it could shield her from him.
Then his voice, flat, unyielding, cut through the silence.
"Do you have a twin?"
The question hung heavy in the air.
I blinked at him, confusion flooding my face. My lips parted, trembling, before the words slipped out, fragile and hoarse.
"No. I don't."
Matteo's jaw tightened. He studied her again, as though the answer might change if he searched her long enough. But her eyes, wet, desperate, unbearably honest, stripped away his last defense.
For the first time in days, his chest tightened. Not with rage, not with the searing heat of vengeance, but with something far more dangerous. Something he couldn't name.
Guilt? Regret? Weakness?
No. He refused to call it that.
Still, he gave the order. His voice was clipped, as if the words cost him something.
"The maiden will clean you up. Return her suitcase. See that she's... whole again."
For a long moment, I couldn't breathe. My ears rang, my body stiff with disbelief.
So... he's not going to kill me?
The thought staggered me. After nights of terror, of thinking every breath might be my last, the realization struck like a foreign language I didn't understand. Am I going to live?
When the maid returned, her hands gentle, her voice softer than before, I let her guide me. She washed the grime from my skin, brushed the knots from my hair, handed me clothes that smelled faintly of lavender. Piece by piece, I began to feel human again. But inside, I was still hollow, my body marked with bruises, my soul carved open by something far crueler than chains.
Then he came.
Matteo Loki, the man whose hands had broken me, whose shadow I thought would end me, stood before me with an envelope in hand. Thick. Heavy. I didn't need to open it to know it held more money than I'd ever seen in my life. Enough to vanish, to build a future, to pretend none of this had ever happened.
His expression was carved from stone, his voice flat, businesslike.
"This is fifty thousand," he said. His voice didn't rise, didn't falter. "More than enough for you to disappear. Go back to wherever you came from. Forget this city. Forget me."
Fifty thousand. The number crashed through me like thunder. My heart thudded so loudly I thought he might hear it. Fifty thousand could erase my poverty, could buy me a life I had never dared dream of. A safe place to sleep, food that didn't run out, maybe even a chance at something like freedom.
But bile rose in my throat. The envelope sat there like an accusation. As if money could stitch back what had been torn from me. As if it could erase the bruises, the fear, the way he had crushed me into the bed and taken what wasn't his.
I lifted my chin, my voice shaking but firm. "I don't want your money."
The words nearly stuck in my throat. My fingers hovered above the envelope, trembling with the temptation to take it, but I didn't. I couldn't. My chest ached as I forced the strength into my arm, shoving the envelope back against his chest with shaking hands.
"No amount of money can erase what you did to me."
The words tore out of me raw, jagged, like glass dragged across my tongue.
Rage, grief, shame, all of it twisted inside me until it felt like fire under my skin. I had been innocent. I had been nothing but a stranger in the wrong place at the wrong time. And yet here I was, used, broken, discarded like trash. I had thought I would die down there. Thought they would carve me into pieces and sell me. And now he thought he could buy my silence. My life. My soul.
I hated him.
With trembling hands and tears streaking down my face, I pushed the money away and turned.
And then I walked out. Crying.
Behind me, he didn't move. Didn't reach for me. Didn't say a word.
Matteo Loki only watched me go, his silence heavier than chains, his shadow clinging to me even as I stepped into the light.
---
