Mafia Lord's Mute Sweetheart

Chapter 50: Chapter 50 Degree

The smell of old paper floated up, musty and familiar. Daisy pulled out clothes she no longer wore, faded and out of style. Books she no longer read, their spines cracked. Photographs she could not look at without crying, so she set them aside without seeing them.

Then she found the documents. A folder, thick and heavy, the corners worn.

She opened it.

Degrees, certificates and transcripts.

Daisy spread them out on her bed, covering the blanket with paper. Her hands moved carefully, almost reverently like she was handling something sacred.

She had two degrees.

She did not remember which. She just remembered going to college, walking across campus, sitting in classrooms, taking exams. The memories were fuzzy and blurred, out of focus like looking through frosted glass. Only now she realized how many loopholes there were in her memory, how much was missing, how much she had lost.

She picked up the first degree.

Elite Degree in Perfumery.

Daisy’s eyes widened.

Perfumery. The art of making scents. The thing she loved doing in secret. She even had a degree in it. Her eyes widened even further when she saw she had passed with high grades, top of her class, honors.

She flipped to the next page.

Grade jumping documents.

She had started college at sixteen. Two years early. She had been a child among adults and she had excelled.

She set the paper down and picked up another.

A second degree. B. Voc. Bachelor of Vocation.

She did not know what that meant. She had never heard of it before.

There were more papers.. Certificates.

Voice training.

Daisy’s hands stopped moving.

She stared at the words, her heart pounding. Voice training. She did not remember that either. She did not remember studying her voice, practicing it or training it.

But the dream. The lady’s voice.

Was that her?

She picked up the next certificate.

Communication.

Another one.

Hypnosis.

Daisy’s eyes widened.

Hypnosis. She had even studied hypnosis.

She touched her throat again, her silent throat. Why would she need hypnosis? Why would she study communication? Why would she train her voice when she could not even speak now? None of it made sense.

She did not understand.

She looked at the papers spread across her bed, the degrees and certificates, the documents that proved she had been someone else before the accident but she did not remember that person. She did not know her. She was a stranger.

Daisy picked up the B. Voc certificate. She read the fine print.

Her heart pounded. Her hands shook. She set the paper down as if it had burned her.

She looked at her hands. Her clean hands.

She thought about the dream. The bloody fingers playing a dark and moody piece, the red dripping onto the yellowed keys and about the man watching from the window, his face in shadow, his arms crossed.

Who was he? Why was he watching her? Why did her fingers bleed?

Daisy shook her head. She could not think about that now. She needed to focus. She needed to find a job.

She had a degree in perfumery. She could use that.

She did not need her B. Voc. She did not need her voice training or communication certificates or hypnosis papers. Those were useless to her now, since she could not speak, since her voice was gone. She could not use her voice. She could not hypnotize anyone. She could not practice whatever strange art her old self had learned.

But she could make scents.

So she separated the documents she needed. For the documents that were useless to her, she folded them carefully, smoothing each page, stacking them neatly. She placed them back in the folder and zipped her old suitcase. She pushed it back into the corner, behind her wardrobe, where it belonged.

❀┈┈┈┈❀

Daisy sat on her bed with her old laptop open, her fingers hovering over the keyboard. She did not remember when she had bought it, but it had been with her before she even married Cedric. Back then, she had thought about selling it to get money for when she became homeless but her heart had not let her. Now the laptop sat on her lap, its edges worn, its screen slightly scratched. It did not have any details or any files other than one software called Audacity, for editing audio.

The sunlight streamed through her small window, casting warm light across the faded quilt and the cracked mirror on the wall. Dust motes floated in the golden beam, dancing lazily. She had spent the past hour searching for freelance resume makers online, reading reviews, comparing prices, trying to find someone who would not judge her for being mute.

She found one. A woman named Penny who specialized in helping people with disabilities. Daisy sent her a message, explained her situation, attached her old documents and paid the fee.

Three hours later, her new resume arrived.

Daisy opened the attachment and her eyes scanned the pages. Clean, professional, beautifully formatted. Penny had highlighted her degree in perfumery, her grade jumping achievements and her creative skills. She had minimized the gaps in employment, explaining them as medical leave.

Daisy smiled. She saved the file and opened the job portal. She tried to create a new account using her old email, but the website told her an account already existed. So she logged in.

Then she clicked on her profile to see how it looked.

And she froze.

The profile was not empty. There was already an account, already a profile in her name. Daisy Winter.

Thirty thousand connections.

Daisy’s eyes went wide as saucers. She stared at the screen, her heart pounding. Thirty thousand. Not three hundred, not three thousand. Thirty thousand people followed her. People connected with her. People knew her name.

She scrolled down.

Past posts. There was only one photo.

Daisy held her breath and clicked on it.

The image loaded slowly, pixel by pixel. When it finally appeared, Daisy’s breath caught in her throat.

She was standing in front of some high-class place with glass doors and marble steps, a fountain in the background. She looked around nineteen or twenty, young and full of life. Her caramel hair was shorter then, just brushing her shoulders. She was wearing a black top and a matching skirt, the fabric hugging her figure, confident and bold. Her dark eyes were bright, and her lips were curved into a smile that reached her eyes.

She looked charming and breathtaking.