Aurora

The contrast between the penthouse's luxury and human cruelty became evident the moment Renzo walked out.

To him, Aurora was an investment. To the staff, she was a nuisance — a "thing" dragged in from the gutter that now required extra work.

The moment the private elevator's chime signaled Renzo's departure, the penthouse's silence was broken by an irritated sigh from Sofia, the trusted housekeeper. She looked at Aurora, still huddled in the armchair, with a disdain the young woman couldn't see but could feel vibrating in the air.

"Come on, get up," Sofia ordered, yanking Aurora by the arm with unnecessary force. "I don't have all night to play dolls with you. Mr. Vittorino wants you clean, and I want to get back to my duties."

Aurora stumbled, her bare feet fumbling against the cold, unfamiliar marble. She didn't know the map of this place. Every step was an abyss. Without a single word of guidance, she was dragged through the corridors to a bathroom that reeked of mineral salts and lavender — but to her, it felt like a torture chamber.

In the bathroom, gentleness was nowhere to be found. Sofia turned on the shower but didn't bother to adjust the temperature. The water hit Aurora's skin harshly. Before she could react, rough hands plunged into her hair. The housekeeper scrubbed her scalp with a punishing force, as if trying to wash away a sin rather than the dust of the basement. Her fingers tore through the tangled strands without any patience, making Aurora bite her lower lip to keep from crying out. Shampoo ran into Aurora's eyes, stinging, but she didn't have her hands free to wipe it away.

"There, the hair's done. You can do the rest yourself," Sofia said, shutting off the water abruptly and tossing a rough sponge and a bar of soap onto the shower floor. "I'm not your nanny. Learn to wash yourself or sit there shriveling."

Aurora stood motionless, shivering in the cold that followed the water's absence. She was in an enormous space, surrounded by walls she couldn't locate, her body burning from the harshness of the treatment. With trembling hands, she crouched and groped the wet floor until she found the sponge.

She was in a palace, but for her, the darkness was the same. The only difference was that in the basement, the silence had been one of neglect. Here, the silence was charged with a cruelty that wounded her more than the blindness itself.

Minutes later, Aurora was left in the bedroom, wearing a silk nightgown that felt too thin for the cold she carried inside. The fabric was expensive, but the skin beneath it still throbbed from Sofia's rough handling.

She felt her way to the edge of the bed — immense, soft, but terrifying. She didn't lie down. She sat on the floor, her back pressed against the wooden bed frame, where the world felt more solid and safe.

Meanwhile, miles away, Renzo was counting euro notes and dictating rules at Pulse, unaware that the five-million-euro "merchandise" was being treated like garbage under his own roof. He believed money bought order, but he was about to discover that he wasn't the only monster in that house.

The penthouse's luxury was, for Aurora, a labyrinth of strange sounds and icy textures. When the bedroom door closed, leaving her alone with the echo of Sofia's cruelty, silence became her enemy.

She groped the air, her fingertips finding only emptiness until they bumped against something tall and soft. The bed. For anyone else, it would have been an invitation to rest; for her, it was a silk abyss. She ran her hands over the comforter, feeling the exaggerated softness, but couldn't bring herself to climb up. The space was too vast, with no walls to lean against, no limits she could comprehend.

Feeling exposed in the center of the room, she slid her hands down until she found the solid wood of the bed frame. There, the contact was firm. She let herself slip to the marble floor, which, though cold, didn't lie. She pressed her back against the side of the bed, hugging her legs to her chest. In the darkness, the solidity of the wood was the only thing anchoring her to reality.

Aurora stayed there for hours, her senses sharpened by the deprivation of sight. She could hear the whistle of wind striking the double-paned windows — a high, constant sound that told her how far from the ground she now was. A rhythmic ticking from somewhere on the wall seemed to count the seconds of her new prison. She felt her scalp throb where Sofia had pulled, and the sting in her eyes from soap that hadn't been properly rinsed.

She wondered who the man with the thunder voice was. Owner, he'd said. In Mikhail's basement, she'd known what to expect: neglect and hunger. Here, the scent was sandalwood and the touch was silk, but the violence of the housekeeper's hands told her that the danger had merely changed its face.

Aurora didn't cry. Captivity had dried her tears long ago. She simply tried to memorize the sounds of this enormous house. She heard the distant hum of a motor, the sound of doors closing in other rooms, and finally, the sound that made her heart race: the chime of the private elevator.

Heavy footsteps. Hard-soled shoes against expensive flooring. A rhythm that didn't hesitate, that asked no permission. It was the sound of someone who owned everything he touched.

She curled tighter against the bed frame, trying to become invisible. The scent of sandalwood and tobacco began filling the room before he even spoke. She couldn't see Renzo's expression, but she could feel the air pressure shift as he drew closer.

For Aurora, the man who'd just entered wasn't a savior. He was merely the new architect of her darkness.

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