THE BLIND SOVEREIGN: King of The Underworld

CHAPTER 3: Exile to the Villa of Ghosts

The roar of the black SUV’s diesel engine sounded like a monster’s growl in Dante’s ears. Since his sight had been stolen, sound was no longer mere background noise. It was an indicator of speed, vehicle load, and road surface. The smooth vibration of tires on asphalt shifted into harsh jolts as the car climbed a rocky, sloping path.

“Tuscany, Mr. Moretti. Welcome to the most beautiful dumping ground in Italy,” said Enzo, a stocky man whose breath always reeked of cheap tobacco and stale coffee.

“You talk too much for a courier, Enzo,” Dante replied flatly. His eyes were hidden behind pitch-black sunglasses, but the burn scars around his temples gave his face a chilling look.

Enzo chuckled, his raspy laugh echoing inside the cramped cabin. “A courier? Maybe. But this courier has eyes, and you? You do not even know we just passed through a rusted gate.”

“I know the gate was rusted from the scream of its hinges in the wind two hundred meters ago,” Dante answered calmly. “And I know Rico beside you is nervous because he keeps fiddling with the safety on his gun. Isn’t that right, Rico?”

Rico, the younger and thinner man, flinched. The metallic click of his pistol stopped abruptly. “How did he...?”

“Shut up, Rico. He’s just bluffing,” Enzo snapped. “He’s just a blind man trying to sound smart.”

The car came to a stop with a hard jolt. A door opened, and the cold air of the Tuscan hills crept in, carrying the scent of damp earth, cypress trees, and the strong stench of rotting wood. Dante was forced out. His legs, still weak after two weeks in a coma, touched the uneven ground.

“Walk. Your palace is waiting,” Enzo said, shoving Dante’s shoulder roughly.

Dante stepped forward carefully. He could feel the vastness of the space around him through the echo of his footsteps bouncing off old stone walls. Villa Moretti. He had been here as a child, but the visual memory of its former grandeur clashed with the auditory reality he now perceived, a leaking roof, creaking wood, and a suffocating silence.

“Careful, great sir. There’s a hole in front of you,” Enzo said in a mocking tone.

Dante stopped. He used his hearing to measure distance. But before he could map his next step, a foot deliberately hooked around his ankle.

Thud.

Dante crashed down. His face slammed into the muddy ground. Cold seeped into his still-expensive suit as pain shot from his knees up to his waist.

Enzo burst out laughing, followed by Rico’s awkward chuckle.

“Oh, look at that. King Moretti is kissing Tuscan soil,” Enzo laughed until he coughed. “Sorry, sir. I forgot to mention the mud here is very welcoming to new guests.”

Dante remained sprawled on the ground. His hands sank into the slick mud. Rage surged in his chest, a fire that nearly drove him to lunge toward the sound of that laughter. But he drew a deep breath. He focused his hearing on Enzo’s heartbeat two meters to his left. Fast, irregular, the mark of a low-grade sociopath who enjoyed the suffering of others.

“Are you finished laughing?” Dante’s voice was low, almost like a growl from inside a cave.

“Not yet. I’m just getting started.” Enzo stepped forward and kicked a bit of mud onto Dante’s suit. “Get up. Don’t make me drag you inside like a dead dog.”

Dante rose slowly. He did not wipe the mud from his face. He let it stay as a reminder. “You’ve made a very big mistake, Enzo.”

“Oh yeah? What mistake? Getting you dirty?”

“Your mistake is thinking that because I can’t see you, I can’t kill you.”

Enzo fell silent for a moment, then laughed even louder. He stepped closer until his nose was almost touching Dante’s forehead. “Listen, blind man. You’re here because Lorenzo wants you alive so he can watch you rot. If it weren’t for his orders, I would have put a bullet through your skull back in the car. So watch your mouth, or I’ll make sure your next meal is mixed with broken glass.”

“Do it,” Dante challenged. “But make sure you never sleep at night. Because in the dark, you are the prey, and I am the master.”

“Enough of this nonsense. Rico, take him upstairs. The farthest room, the one with the nailed-shut window,” Enzo ordered.

Rico grabbed Dante’s arm roughly and dragged him into the villa. The air inside felt heavier. The thick smell of dust stung Dante’s nose. He counted his steps. Ten forward, turn right. A wooden staircase, sixteen creaking steps. A long corridor.

“This is your room,” Rico said, shoving Dante inside.

Dante heard the key turn from outside. Click.

“Good night, Mr. Moretti. Don’t try jumping out the window. It’s ten meters down and you’ll just break that precious neck of yours,” Rico shouted through the door before his footsteps faded away.

Dante stood motionless in the center of the room. Silence settled once more. But to Dante, the room was not truly silent. He heard the ceiling creak under the wind. He heard rats scurrying behind the walls. And most importantly, he heard the echo of his own breathing.

He removed his sunglasses, letting his faded, sightless eyes stare into nothingness. He began to move.

He stepped with his right foot and tapped the toe of his shoe against the wooden floor. The echo told him there was a large wardrobe on the left.

He moved in the other direction. The echo returned faster. A wall.

Dante began mapping the room with the precision of a cartographer. He ran his hands along the walls, feeling peeling wallpaper and the cold stone beneath it. He found a bed, an old mattress with rusted springs. He sat on the edge of the bed, his hand brushing the surface of a small table beside it.

“One, two, three,” he murmured, counting the steps from the bed to the door.

He returned to the center of the room and clapped his hands once, softly.

The sound bounced through every corner. Dante closed his eyes, processing each reflection. In his mind, a three-dimensional model began to form. A table there, a crooked chair in that corner, a small gap beneath the door.

“Enzo, Rico, and one more outside the gate,” Dante whispered to himself. “Three guards. One night shift. They think they’ve locked up a crippled man.”

He touched his mud-streaked face. Pain still throbbed from his burns, but he ignored it. He began doing what had become routine since the hospital, breathing exercises. He slowed his heartbeat to its lowest point, sharpening his hearing until he could detect the sound of crickets in the fields beyond.

Suddenly, he heard footsteps in the corridor. Light, uneven. Not a guard’s steps.

“Who’s there?” Dante asked, his head turning precisely toward the door.

No answer came, but Dante heard a breath being held behind the wooden door. Someone was watching him through the keyhole or a narrow crack.

“I know you’re there,” Dante said again, his voice sharper. “Your perfume, jasmine and iron. You’re not one of Lorenzo’s people.”

The footsteps retreated quickly, as if the person had panicked after being discovered.

Dante frowned. Jasmine and iron? It was a strange scent. Expensive floral perfume mixed with the smell of a freshly cleaned weapon.

He stood again and moved toward the wall. He began tapping the stone surface with his knuckles, searching for any section that sounded hollow. In an old house like this, the Moretti family always kept secret passages or hidden storage rooms.

“If I cannot see the world,” Dante murmured as he kept tapping, “then I will make the world submit to what I can hear.”

His hand stopped on a wooden panel near the cold fireplace. The sound was different. Deeper. Emptier. He felt along the edges, searching for a lever or a mechanism hidden for decades.

Outside, lightning split the sky, followed by a crash of thunder over Tuscany. To ordinary people, it was the sound of a storm. To Dante, it was the perfect curtain of noise. He began striking the panel harder, using his strength to break whatever his ancestors had concealed.

“Lorenzo said this would be my tomb,” Dante smiled faintly, an expression that looked terrifying in the darkness. “He forgot that tombs often have space beneath them.”

Dante sat back down on the floor, his back resting against the mysterious wooden panel. He closed his eyes, letting his thoughts return to the ship, The Sovereign. He recalled every detail of the explosion, remembered Lorenzo’s laughter, and began assembling a plan. A plan that required no eyes, only patience, echoes, and measured death.

That night, in the Villa of Ghosts, Dante Moretti did not sleep. He kept listening. Listening to a world that believed he was finished, unaware that the predator had just begun mapping his new hunting ground.