The moment she left, Eros called the security command center. "Pull up the twelfth-floor cameras now," he ordered. The monitors didn't lie. The footage clearly showed the pantry attendant sliding the watch into Sophia's bag minutes earlier. Sophia was entirely innocent. An unprecedented wave of guilt and frustration struck the Don. He'd punished the wrong person, and she hadn't even cared.
If the day at the hotel had been bad, the night at home became the fifth circle of hell itself.
Owen had found out through gossip from other soldiers that she'd spent the entire week locked away for hours in Eros Wisbech's presidential suite. In Owen's sick, possessive mind, the equation was simple: his fiancee was fucking the Don. The fear he had of Eros transformed into a murderous rage directed at the weaker target.
The second Sophia walked through the front door, she was met with a punch straight to the stomach that knocked the air out of her.
"You whore!" Owen roared, dragging her by the hair to the center of the living room. "You're spreading your legs for the Don?! Is that why you've been crawling around that luxury hotel?"
Sophia's parents watched the whole thing from their armchairs. Sol was leaning against the wall with a cynical smile on her lips.
"Owen, I swear... I was just cleaning... he made me clean..." Sophia tried to speak, her voice choked by the tears that finally spilled over once she was home.
"Shut your mouth, you psycho!" Lucia, her own mother, spat on the floor. "You're a disgrace! Cheating on a good man like Owen, who pays for this house and was gonna get us our citizenship? You deserve to die!"
What followed was the worst beating of Sophia's life. Owen used his hands, his feet, and his belt. He humiliated her in every way imaginable, breaking not just her body but the last remnants of her dignity. Sophia took it until she had no strength left to scream. Her parents and sister didn't lift a finger. When Owen finally stopped, panting, he kicked her one last time.
"It's over, Sophia. I'm done with you, you crazy freak," Owen said, wiping the sweat from his forehead and walking over to Sol, pulling her sister by the waist right before Sophia's half-open eyes. "I'm marrying Sol tomorrow morning. Your family already agreed. She's a real woman — beautiful, someone who makes me proud. You're out of this house. Get lost before I kill you and dump your body in the river."
Rogerio grabbed Sophia's small suitcase, already packed and sitting in the corner, and threw it on top of her.
"Get out. You're not our daughter anymore. All you bring is misery to this family."
In the cold hours before dawn, Sophia was thrown onto the sidewalk. Her entire body burned with fever and pain. She had no medicine to take, nowhere to go, and no tears left. She walked the streets like a zombie, the psychological exhaustion stripping away whatever thread of hope still remained. The total humiliation pushed her to the absolute edge. There was no way out anymore. She didn't want to wake up the next day.
The following morning at the Wisbech Hotel, Eros was monitoring activity through his office cameras when he saw her walk in.
Sophia looked like a ghost wearing the blue cleaning uniform. But something was very wrong. Her movements were absurdly slow, her face was far too pale, and she was visibly limping. When she passed through a brighter corridor, Eros zoomed in on the image and cursed viciously. The cheek where his soldier had struck her was purple, but the other side of her face bore a shallow gash and her left eye was nearly swollen shut from an ugly bruise. Her neck had finger marks on it.
Someone had beaten her after she'd left. And it had been much worse.
Eros felt a strange burning in his chest. He knew she was innocent of the theft. The guilt mixed with a morbid, possessive curiosity. He kept watching her move between floors, but instead of grabbing the cleaning cart for the rooms, the cameras showed Sophia taking the service elevator down to the basement. To the industrial laundry. The most isolated and noisiest area of the hotel in the morning.
A dark, violent premonition hit the Don. Eros shot out of his chair and sprinted for the elevator.
In the basement, the roar of the massive industrial washing machines drowned out every outside sound. Sophia walked to the darkest corner of the linen storage room, behind rows of metal shelving. She sat down on the cold cement floor, her back against the wall.
She opened her uniform pocket and pulled out a utility blade she'd taken from the maintenance department. Sophia looked at her own wrists, finding the old scars. This time, she wouldn't hesitate. This time, it would be final. She pressed the metal against the skin of her left wrist and pulled hard, tearing through the veins. Warm, living blood gushed out immediately, staining the blue fabric of her uniform and the gray floor. Then she switched the blade to her other hand and cut her right wrist.
She closed her eyes, feeling the cold begin to take over her body, a sensation of peace finally floating through her mind. It's over,* she thought. The hell is finally over.*
"Not in my hotel, goddammit!" Eros's voice echoed like thunder through the empty basement.
Sophia opened her eyes slowly, her vision already blurred, and saw the tall silhouette of the Don running toward her. Eros's face, always so controlled and cold, was twisted with panic and fury.
He dropped to his knees on the floor, staining his thousand-dollar suit pants in her blood. Without a second thought, Eros ripped off his own tie and tore it in half, binding it with brutal force around Sophia's left arm to stop the bleeding. Then he pulled off his jacket and pressed it against her other wrist.
"Stay awake! Look at me, Sophia! Look at me!" he roared, his voice shaking in a way he'd never allowed in his life. He yanked the phone from his pocket with his bloody hand and dialed the internal emergency number. "Bruce! Bring the fucking med kit and get down to the basement-two laundry now! Now, Bruce! She's bleeding out!"
Bruce, the underboss of the mafia, Eros's best friend and a man with advanced combat medical training, was there in under two minutes. He kicked in the storage room door carrying a black case, freezing for a second at the shocking scene: the Don of the Cosa Nostra, covered in blood, holding a cleaning lady in his arms as if his life depended on it.
"Holy shit, Eros..." Bruce muttered, dropping to the floor beside them and pulling tourniquets and suturing supplies from the case. "What the hell happened here?"
"Just save her, Bruce! If she dies, I swear I'll kill you!" Eros snarled, his eyes bloodshot, pressing Sophia's limp body against his chest.
Sophia felt the warmth of Eros's body, his expensive cologne mixed with the metallic smell of her own blood. She tried to push him away with the last strength left in her numb fingers.
"Let me go... let me go... please... it hurts so much..." she whispered, a single tear finally escaping from her bruised eye.
"No. You're not going anywhere," Eros hissed close to her ear, holding her with a sick possessiveness that was born in that exact moment inside his chest. "You thought you could die on my territory? You're mine, Sophia. I didn't give you permission to die."
Bruce worked fast, cleaning the area and applying emergency surgical stitches to close the deep cuts, while Eros held her steady, feeling her heartbeat slow against his own chest. In that blood-soaked basement, the Don understood that the game had changed. He no longer just wanted a wife to fulfill a council contract. He wanted that broken woman. And he would destroy every last person who had left her in that state.
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