My father sold me to the Mafia King

Chapter 15: 15/Impact

Chapter Fifteen

Robert’s Point of View

I watched her as she tightened her grip on my blue pajamas, which she had stolen from my closet as if they were her only shield.

She stood with her back to me, but her tense shoulders and racing breath betrayed all the terror she was trying to hide.

Seeing her wearing a shirt stained with strawberry cake and her hair disheveled in that mess did not diminish her prestige in my eyes; rather, it made her look like a wild cat trapped in a narrow corner, still refusing to surrender.

It was funny how she thought a piece of silk belonging to me might protect her from me, while she stood in the middle of my kingdom, and in my room whose contents no one had ever dared to meddle with before.

I took an additional step until my chest almost brushed against her back; I wanted to make her feel how small she was in the face of my authority.

I said to her in a low voice, terrifyingly calm:

— ”Silence is not an answer, Julie.. do you think I won’t know about your little performance in front of the doctor?”

I was enjoying seeing her internal struggle, and it seemed to me that her pride was the only thing preventing her from collapsing right now.

I was waiting for a single movement, a single word from her, to see to what extent this ”angel” with the sweet voice could turn into a devil carrying a scalpel.

She turned to me forcefully, as if my words were the straw that broke the back of her false composure.

She looked at me with her burning eyes, which were igniting with a mixture of resentment and rebellion, and said in a sharp tone:

— ”It doesn’t seem that secrets stay hidden in this place!”

I suppressed a mocking smile that almost appeared on my lips; this little girl truly thinks I run this empire by mere chance, or that my eyes sleep through what goes on behind closed doors.

I filled my lungs with what remained of the scent of my cigarette smoke in the room and replied with a coldness that matched the sharpness of her words:

— ”There is no place for secrets here, Julie.. everything that happens, I know in tedious detail.”

She raised her small finger in my face with a defiance I wasn’t accustomed to from anyone, and said, her voice trembling from the intensity of the insult:

— ”Your doctor cannot ask me to take off my clothes.. and with all insolence, she wants to verify my virginity!”

For the first time, I see a rebellion this dangerous; she doesn’t just reject orders, she refuses to adapt to the rules of this ”club” in any way, as if she were created to break every rule I set.

I replied to her in a dry tone, trying to reclaim my authority that seemed to be shaking before her anger:

— ”This is the club’s protocol, and you cannot bypass it.”

She bit her cherry lip hard, as if trying to suppress an insult, then said in a sharp tone:

— ”You cannot force me to follow any protocol, Mr. Robert.”

The word ”Mr. Robert” came out of her mouth with a completely different tone; I was used to hearing my name from everyone with reverence or fear, but from her, it sounded like a silk-wrapped bullet, carrying a different impact in my ear.

I couldn’t help myself, so I took a decisive step and placed my hand on the door behind her, trapping her between me and the cold wood, until nothing separated us but our labored breaths.

I said to her in a low voice, carrying a final tone of threat:

— ”Don’t make me force you into this.. believe me, you don’t want that to happen.”

She lowered her head with a graceful movement and slipped from under my hand like a small bird escaping a hunter’s grip, then stopped a few steps away from me.

She didn’t turn around; instead, she threw her words, which were a blade sharper than that scalpel she left with the doctor:

— ”Are you going to take off my clothes yourself to check your merchandise?”

I froze in my place, my insides boiling with a mixture of astonishment and suppressed anger.

I was surprised by the extent of her audacity; how did she possess such courage to hurl such words in my face even though her body was visibly trembling—a trembling my eyes could not miss?

She was like someone dancing on the edge of an abyss while shaking with fear of falling, yet never stopping.

I asked her in a tone I tried to keep balanced despite the storm she had caused:

— ”Do you really think I would do this?”

She didn’t hesitate for a second; instead, she slowly raised her hand and tucked a rebellious lock of hair behind her ear, then looked at me with eyes challenging my authority and said with a provocative coldness:

— ”What.. did I wound your ego?”

At that moment, I realized I wasn’t facing just a stubborn girl, but a small hurricane trying to demolish my fortresses with carefully chosen words. ”My ego?”.. The question itself was an insult to my usual coldness.

I approached her with calm steps—the calm that precedes an explosion—and I felt that the rules of the game had changed.

It was no longer about a club protocol or a medical exam; it had become a conflict of wills between a jailer who refuses weakness and a prisoner who refuses to break.

I said to her in a low voice, like the omen of a storm:

— ”You trust yourself a lot, too much.. and this confidence of yours does not fit your current situation.”

I wanted to remind her of her place, and that she was here at my mercy, but she did not break.

She stepped back two steps slowly and raised her eyebrows in a movement signifying clear disdain for all my threats, then said in a tone dripping with defiance:

— ”It is enough that my confidence can withstand your laws.”

Her words stirred a strange feeling in my chest, a mixture of annoyance and suppressed admiration.

How could this ”prey” stand in the middle of my den, Carry my clothes , and declare war on my laws that men much stronger than her had submitted to?

She thought her confidence was her shield, and she did not realize that this shield in particular was what made me want to shatter it more than ever.

I said to her in a sharp whisper, cornering her with my gaze:

— ”Laws were not made for anyone to withstand, Julie.. they were made to be obeyed, and this confidence of yours will be nothing but your gallows rope.”

Her green eyes, which resembled a burning forest, widened, and she didn’t blink.

Instead of retreating at the mention of death, she lunged into her stubbornness to say words that fell upon me like a thunderbolt:

— ”I cannot obey you even if I were hanged.. it is enough that I stood against your unjust system!”

I froze in my place while contemplating her; she looked small, fragile, but her soul was bursting with a rebellion that an entire army did not possess.

”My unjust system?”.. I felt a strange urge to laugh and another to smash everything around me.

She had stripped me of my prestige with one word, and turned me, in my own private room, into a mere ”tyrant” she was fighting with all the weakness she possessed.

She was panting slightly, as if her words had drained her energy, but her chin remained lifted with a loftiness that drove me mad.

In that moment, I didn’t see her as just ”merchandise” or a ”prisoner,” but I saw the only opponent who managed to hit me in the place I don’t allow anyone to approach: my pride.

I smiled coldly a smile that didn’t carry friendliness as much as it carried a certain military victory and said to her in a calm tone:

— ”You impress me.. how is it that death does not scare you, yet you are so afraid of sleeping in a man’s arms.. isn’t that so?”

In that moment, I saw the tables turn.

Her facial features changed in seconds; the flame of defiance faded from her green eyes, and in its place appeared features of sheer shock and horror.

I saw the words freeze in her throat, and her facial muscles trembled as if I had touched a raw nerve in her soul. I had hit her fatal weak point, that area that neither her confidence nor her rebellion could protect.

She didn’t wait to reply, nor did she even try to regain her composure.

With a hysterical movement, she grabbed the doorknob and opened it quickly as if escaping a predatory beast, leaving the room and leaving behind a heavy silence smelling of tobacco and oud.

I stood in my place watching the door close behind her, and I felt a bitter victory.

She had escaped with my pajamas, but she left her pride shattered on the floor of my room.

She thought she was strong enough to face my system, but she had now discovered that I know things about her that she herself ignores.