30 October 2025 @marinnewest's Freewrite Writing Prompt Day 2906: Merchant Of Death

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This is my post on #freewriters2906 #dailyprompt merchant of death hosted by @marinnewest's. The fog clung to Venice like a shroud as Viktor Kane stepped off the vaporetto at the Rialto. Locals called him Il Mercante di Morte, though no one dared say it aloud. His ledger wasn’t in gold or spices, but in lives—each transaction stamped with a passport, a visa, a quiet disappearance. Tonight’s client waited in a palazzo whose frescoes peeled like old skin. The man, a diplomat with trembling hands, slid a photograph across the table: his daughter, smiling in a school uniform. “She spoke to the wrong journalist,” he whispered. Viktor studied the girl’s eyes—bright, unafraid. He felt nothing. Feeling was a luxury he’d sold years ago. “Ten million euros,” Viktor said. “Half now, half when she forgets how to breathe.” The diplomat nodded, already dead inside. Viktor pocketed the envelope and left through a side door that opened onto a canal black as ink. A gondola waited, rowed by a boy who’d once been the merchandise. The child’s silence cost extra. At dawn, the girl’s body would surface near the Arsenal, throat bruised like overripe fruit. The diplomat would weep on television. Viktor would be in Zurich, sipping espresso, counting the seconds until the next bell tolled. In his breast pocket, a single bullet remained—his own, engraved with a date he never spoke. One day, he’d told himself, the Merchant would buy his own death. But not yet. The market was too good.