2026-02-09 20:05:36Inside the cramped bathroom, damp and reeking of cheap floor cleaner, Emily clutched Chloe so tightly she could feel her daughter’s heart hammering wildly against her chest. They were crouched in the corner, behind a thin, fragile plastic door.
“Mama… why are they yelling?” Chloe whispered, her voice hoarse from too much crying. “Where’s Papa? Papa said he was coming home with ice cream.”
Emily bit her lip until she tasted blood, forcing herself to hold back her sobs so no sound would escape.
“Papa is on his way, sweetheart. Papa’s buying the biggest ice cream for Chloe. Now close your ears, okay? Just pretend we’re playing hide and seek with Papa’s friends.”
BAM. CRASH.
The pounding on their apartment door grew more brutal. Each impact felt like a sledgehammer slamming into Emily’s chest. She knew the wooden door would not hold much longer.
“Hey! Emily! I know you’re in there, pretty!” a man’s raspy voice shouted from outside. “Don’t make this hard. Come out now or I tear this place apart and rape you in front of your kid!”
“Open the door, bitch! Your man’s already dead, crab food!” another voice chimed in, followed by loud laughter. “Now your body belongs to my boss, and nobody’s gonna know if I take a little taste first!”
CRACK.
The sound of splintering wood and snapping hinges told them their last line of defense had collapsed. Emily squeezed her eyes shut and hugged Chloe even tighter. Heavy footsteps entered their small living room.
“Damn, this place stinks,” muttered a thick built man named Marco. He kicked over the small dining table. “Find her. She’s gotta be hiding in the bedroom or the kitchen.”
“Boss, look at this. A picture of her husband,” Slim said, a skinny thug with yellowed teeth, holding up a framed photo of Eduardo. “How does a loser with a face like this get a supermodel wife? Life’s really unfair.”
CRASH.
Slim slammed the frame to the floor and ground Eduardo’s face beneath his dirty boot.
“Emily… oh Emily… come on out, sweetheart,” Marco said as he paced the room, dragging his baseball bat across the concrete floor, the scraping sound piercing and cruel. “I don’t wanna get rough. If you behave, maybe I’ll give you a nice warm up before I deliver you to Boss Claude.”
“Bathroom, Marco! It’s locked from the inside!” Slim shouted from the narrow hallway.
Emily’s heart nearly stopped. She stared at the bathroom door as it began to shake.
“Found you,” Marco whispered from the other side. “Come out nicely, beautiful, or I break this down and drag you out naked in front of your kid. Your choice.”
“Go away! Leave us alone!” Emily screamed, forcing courage into her voice. “The police are coming! I already called them!”
Marco laughed loudly, the kind of laugh that crushed courage.
“Police? In this district? You’re hilarious, Emily. The cops here wouldn’t show up even if a bomb went off, let alone to save a loser’s widow like you. Besides, who’s gonna believe a whore’s report?”
BOOM.
Marco slammed his shoulder into the door. The plastic cracked.
“Mama, I’m scared…” Chloe whimpered, struggling in Emily’s arms.
“Shh… Chloe, close your eyes. Don’t open them, sweetheart. Mama’s here,” Emily whispered through tears.
BOOM.
The door burst open. Marco stood there with a filthy grin, staring at the helpless pair. He licked his lips when he saw Emily’s thin nightgown.
“Well, well… look at this, Slim. We even got a little bonus toy,” Marco said, his gaze sliding toward Chloe in a way that made Emily’s blood boil.
“Don’t touch my child, you bastard!” Emily stood up, trying to block Marco with her trembling body.
Marco grabbed her by the throat and slammed her against the bathroom wall, her head cracking against the tiles.
“Listen up. You’ve got nobody left. Eduardo’s dead. He died like a dog on the pier. Now you’re just a piece of meat to pay off that useless man’s debt.”
“Eduardo… he’s not dead… he just called me!” Emily screamed into Marco’s face.
Marco froze for a second, then burst out laughing along with Slim behind him.
“A call? Hahaha. Must’ve been his ghost calling from hell. I saw him beaten to death myself by Boss Claude. Stop hallucinating.”
Marco yanked Emily by the hair, dragging her out into the living room. Chloe screamed hysterically and tried to grab Marco’s leg, but Slim viciously kicked the little girl, sending her flying into the sofa.
“CHLOE!” Emily screamed. “Let me go, bastard! Do whatever you want to me, just don’t touch my child!”
“Oh, don’t worry. We’re definitely gonna do whatever we want to you,” Slim said as he stepped closer, his hand sliding toward Emily’s exposed thigh as her gown rode up. “But this kid’s too noisy. Maybe I should tape her mouth shut so we can focus.”
Marco threw Emily onto the filthy living room floor, littered with shards of Eduardo’s shattered photo frame. He stepped on her hair, forcing her face toward the broken doorway.
“Look at that door, Emily. Nobody’s coming to save you. No hero, no loser husband, just us,” Marco said as he crouched down, roughly grabbing her face. “I wonder if Eduardo ever made you scream and climax over and over like I’m gonna do tonight,” he hissed, kissing her cheek and brutally groping her chest.
“Eduardo will kill all of you…” Emily whispered, hatred blazing in her eyes as she slapped his hand away, but she was too weak.
“Hahaha. Eduardo? That pier loser?” Marco sneered, squeezing her chest again. “He couldn’t even stand straight in front of me without shaking.”
Marco stared at Emily’s furious glare, finding it intoxicating.
“The only thing your man’s doing now is rotting at the bottom of the sea, and the only thing you can do is enjoy my touch and choke on my manhood with that cute little mouth.”
Marco shoved himself close to Emily’s face.
“Come on. Unzip me.”
“Mama… Mama…” Chloe cried, unable to watch anymore.
Emily ignored Chloe’s screams. She refused to let her daughter see her beg or break. If she had to die, she would die without being defiled in front of her child.
Emily spat on Marco’s pants.
“Disgusting. I’d rather die than suck your rotten piece of trash.”
“Bitch!” Marco snarled, releasing her chest and raising his hand in fury.
Emily closed her eyes, waiting for the slap. She felt her life was over, that she had failed to protect Chloe. The ruin felt real, thick, suffocating.
But the slap never came.
Instead, Emily heard a gunshot.
BANG.
The deafening blast echoed from the corridor outside the shattered door.
Blood and fragments of brain sprayed across the floor near Emily.
Slim, who had been standing near the door laughing, suddenly lost the top half of his head. His body remained upright for a second before collapsing like a sack of grain.
Silence.
The world seemed to stop. There was only a ringing in Emily’s ears and the sound of Marco’s breath catching in terror.
“What… what the hell…” Marco stammered as he turned toward the doorway now swallowed by shadow.
There stood a man.
His clothes were soaked, clinging to a body that looked broader yet stiff. His face was deathly pale, his eyes burning red beneath wet strands of hair. In his right hand, a Glock 17 still smoked faintly.
He did not look human. He looked like a devil crawling out of the grave to collect vengeance.
“Eduardo?” Emily whispered, barely audible.
The figure stepped into the room. Each step left trails of seawater mixed with blood on the floor. He did not look at Emily. His gaze was locked on Marco, whose foot was still planted in his wife’s hair.
“What did you just say about me?” Eduardo’s voice was low, hoarse, and utterly inhuman. “Say it again. I didn’t hear you.”
Marco trembled violently. He tried to reach for the pistol at his waist, but his hands were paralyzed by terror.
“No… no way… you’re dead! I saw you thrown away!”
Eduardo tilted his head slightly, staring at Marco as if he were an insect.
“You’re not wrong. The Eduardo you knew is dead. Unfortunately, hell rejected me. Said I still had some lives to collect tonight.”
Eduardo raised the pistol and aimed it straight at Marco’s groin.
“Now move your filthy foot off my wife’s hair before I make sure you can never have children again,” Eduardo hissed.
“Whoa… calm down, Eduardo! We can talk about this!” Marco shouted, hands raised. “It was Claude’s order! I was just doing my job!”
“Wrong answer,” Eduardo said coldly.
BANG.
“AAAAAARRGGHHH!” Marco screamed as the bullet tore into his right thigh, dropping him onto the broken glass.
Eduardo walked closer, his movements calm, predatory. Ignoring Marco’s screams, he glanced briefly at Emily.
“Emily, take Chloe. Go into the bedroom, close the door, and don’t come out until I call you,” Eduardo ordered, his expression blank.
“Eduardo… are you… are you okay?” Emily stared at her husband with a new kind of fear. This was not the gentle Eduardo she knew. This was a monster wearing her husband’s skin.
“Go. Now,” Eduardo snapped, his voice rising, cold and absolute.
Emily scrambled to Chloe, who was still shaking on the sofa, and ran into the bedroom. As soon as the door closed, Eduardo turned back to Marco, who was crawling across the floor, trying to escape through the window.
“Where do you think you’re going, tough guy?” Eduardo stepped on Marco’s hand as it reached for the window frame.
CRACK.
“I’m just getting started,” Eduardo whispered with a grin as a black aura began to coil around his body.
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Ch 150. The Price of a Memory
The evening breeze drifted gently through Rome, sweeping across the square once known as Piazza della Mafia, now renamed Piazza del Fantasma, Ghost Square.At its center stood a monument that defied time itself.The ten-meter-tall statue, cast in black bronze, had no distinguishable face. It was only the silhouette of a man in a suit, his left hand missing one finger, gripping a grim reaper's scythe pointed toward the earth.At the foot of the monument, thousands of tiny candles lit by the citizens flickered beneath the wind, creating a sight that resembled a galaxy scattered across the asphalt that had once been soaked in blood.The golden plaque beneath it still gleamed.THE PRICE OF A MEMORY: PAID IN FULL.A young tourist turned to his guide."Why doesn't he have a face?""Because he traded it away," the guide answered with almost sacred reverence. "He gave up his face and his name so we would never have to look into the face of fear every time the sun went down."Far from the worl
Ch 149. Requiem (Song of Death)
Twenty years.Long enough to turn a pile of rubble into a monument, and vengeance into history that was almost forgotten. Yet in Rome, time seemed to revolve around a single axis, a white marble gravestone atop Crystal Heights. The cemetery was no longer merely a burial ground. It had become a cathedral for those who worshiped shadows.That morning, the Roman air was remarkably clear, as though the sky had been washed clean by the night's rain. A convoy of armored black limousines climbed the hill at a measured pace, passing rows of tactical security personnel standing at attention every ten meters along the private road.Vito Eduardo stepped out of the lead vehicle.At twenty-one years old, he was no longer the little boy who played with pebbles around a gravestone. He stood nearly six foot three, dressed in a custom-tailored charcoal gray three-piece suit crafted in Milan. His hair was jet black, sharply contrasting with his pale complexion.But the most striking feature was his eye
Ch 148. The Legacy of the System
Dust that had accumulated for nearly two decades swirled through the air as the soundproof steel door deep beneath Sark Tower groaned open with a piercing screech.This room did not exist on the building's official blueprints.Even Belerik, the keeper of the numbers, only dared enter once a year to make sure the ventilation system was still functioning.This was Sector Zero, the place where the Ghost's darkest secret had been sealed away behind walls lined with solid lead.Vito stood at the entrance.He had just turned twenty years old.He was taller than the average Italian man, broad-shouldered, with the solid posture forged through relentless training alongside the remnants of the Iron Guard. He wore a black suit without a tie. Thin leather gloves covered his hands, a habit he had copied from his father. His arms rested calmly at his sides.His pitch-black eyes, devoid of warmth yet as sharp as an eagle's, swept across the room.There was only a steel table.And resting in the cent
Ch 147. The Right Hand
Ten years had passed since the dust settled over the Commissioner's headquarters in Rome. Yet at the top of Sark Tower, time itself seemed frozen within the endless circuitry and the glow of monitors that never went dark.The main control room had become much quieter. There were no more explosions or pounding against reinforced steel doors. Only the steady hum of server cooling systems running twenty-four hours a day to keep trillions of dollars flowing smoothly across the world.Belerik sat in his advanced electric wheelchair, now equipped with sophisticated life-support sensors attached to his increasingly frail body.His hair had turned completely white.His skin was wrinkled like aged parchment.His carbon-fiber prosthetic leg rested stiffly against the wheelchair's foot support."Look at that number blinking in red, Vito. What does it mean?" Belerik asked in a raspy voice, interrupted by heavy breaths.Beside him stood a twelve-year-old boy with perfect posture.Vito.He wore a f
Ch 146. The Golden Cage
Snow fell relentlessly over Zermatt, Switzerland, until the majestic peak of the Matterhorn seemed to vanish beneath an endless sea of white fog. Atop the most isolated hill stood an ancient Gothic villa, completely renovated yet still imposing in its timeless grandeur. A thirteen-foot steel fence, charged with electricity, surrounded the estate, sealing it off from the outside world.The villa had everything: a heated swimming pool, an underground wine cellar stocked with vintage bottles from the 1940s, and furniture expensive enough to support an entire village in Italy. Yet inside the eight-hundred-square-meter mansion, the only sound was the soft clink of ice against crystal.Emily Eduardo sat before her vanity, surrounded by luxury cosmetics from Paris and bottles of Scotch whisky from Scotland. She wore a silk robe worth more than a teacher's annual salary, yet the radiant confidence of the once-proud "Parasite Queen" had long since disappeared.The face staring back at her had
Ch 145. A Conversation with a Ghost
The Roman sun slowly sank beneath the western horizon, leaving behind streaks of orange that looked like burn scars across the cooling evening sky. Within the grand private mausoleum, the last traces of Emily and Chloe's hypocrisy had vanished with the dust drifting across the pavement.Now, only silence remained.The kind of silence so dense that Freya could hear the slow rhythm of her own heartbeat, as if it were dying alongside the memories buried beneath this white marble.Freya knelt beside Eduardo's headstone, a simple monument with no carved portrait. Her expensive black dress was stained with dried mud and scattered gravel, but she didn't care. Beside her, two-year-old Vito sat with his chubby little legs stretched out, happily picking up white pebbles around the grave and stacking them into uneven little piles."Easy, Vito. Don't throw them," Freya whispered.Her voice was hoarse, still raw from the fury she had unleashed on Emily earlier.Vito glanced at his mother for only
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