My father sold me to the Mafia King

Chapter 49

Julie’s Point of View

I was utterly convinced that I had taken his life. The terror of the fact that I had become a ”killer” gnawed at me from within like venom, running through my veins and paralyzing my thoughts.

Even my confession to Robert was nothing but a surrender to this bitter reality.

At that moment, I realized with sudden depth that I had truly begun to lose myself in this cursed place; my action hadn’t saved me as I thought, but was rather the heavy stone that drowned me in a deep, bottomless swamp.

Robert and Carlos stood there, shock carved onto their features like statues of bewilderment, while I was in another world, completely detached from my body and the place, as if I were watching the scene from afar.

Suddenly, the silence broke in a way I didn’t expect; Carlos’s strange and mad laughter echoed through the room a laugh that carried not a single ounce of sadness or horror, but was instead charged with admiration and awe.

He said, still laughing hysterically:

”I don’t believe it... I truly don’t believe it!”

His reaction wasn’t pity for the person lying motionless on the floor, nor terror that he might have passed away; it was because of me.

He was laughing in amazement at the action I had taken an action that bore no resemblance to the image they had drawn of me.

For who am I in their eyes? Just a ”commodity” or a weak girl... so how could someone like me have the audacity to shatter a customer’s head?

Carlos paced the room with restless steps, his eyes shining with a brilliance I didn’t understand. He said, shaking his head:

”You shattered my expectations, Julie... just as you shattered this bastard’s head!”

Then he added with a tone full of a mix of mockery and admiration:

”I knew you were crazy, but not to this extent!”

Yes, perhaps I am truly crazy. There is no other explanation for what my hands committed, and no justification for this void that began to consume my soul.

In the midst of my daze, I saw Robert approaching me with his steady, cold footsteps that disasters do not shake. He stood before me, looked at the wreckage, then shifted his gaze to me, saying stonily:

”You are a bold girl, Julie.”

My breath hitched for a second. Did he say ”bold”? Am I the only one who realizes the ugliness of the situation? Am I the only one who sees a corpse stretched out on the floor?

I answered him with a strange calmness a calmness that hid hurricanes of terror and regret behind it:

”I have become a killer... doesn’t any of you see this truth?”

Not a lash of his eyelid flickered; instead, he looked at me in a mysterious way, as if seeing in me a piece of art whose value increased after being stained with blood.

He said with deadly brevity:

”It’s not important.”

I was collapsed on the floor between them, unable to believe what my ears were hearing. I couldn’t grasp the magnitude of the mess I had fallen into. These aren’t just human traffickers; they are mentally deranged. Yes, that is the only logical explanation for everything happening!

I said to Robert in a stifled voice, while images of the accident passed before my eyes like a bloody film:

”I hit him on the head because he tried to approach me... You are the one who sent him to me! You are the reason!”

Suddenly, I jolted from my place as if struck by lightning; I remembered at that moment who my real enemy was, and who was the hidden driver of all this misery.

I lunged at Robert with all the oppression I possessed, and began to strike his chest with my hands, hitting him randomly and angrily, with muffled screams tearing through my throat:

”You are the reason! You are the one who made me a killer!”

But he remained standing with pride and steadfastness, like a deaf mountain unaffected by the winds.

His chest was so solid that I felt my blows were nothing but a gentle massage that didn’t move a single part of him.

My pride froze when I saw him extend his hand toward my face; I closed my eyes and stopped hitting, waiting for a resounding slap or a shove that would throw me to the ground... but instead, I felt a light touch, a soft swipe of his fingertip on my forehead.

He withdrew his hand coldly, looked at his finger then at me, and said with a provocative calmness:

”There was a wine stain on your forehead.”

My mouth fell open in sheer shock, and I took a step back. Am I in my right mind? I am hitting him, screaming in his face, and blaming him for a murder... and in this whole scene, nothing provoked or interested him except a tiny wine stain?!

At that moment, I saw Carlos move toward the man stretched out with slow steps, bending down slowly exploring the mystery crouching on the floor.

He extended his hand toward the man’s neck feeling his pulse, while I held my breath as if my life were hanging on a word from him.

I caught a small smile forming on his lips as he lifted his gaze to me, saying:

”He is still alive... he’s just unconscious.”

”My God... he’s alive!”

The words echoed in my mind like a hymn of salvation; I am not a killer! With the speed of lightning, I threw myself beside him and extended my hand to feel his pulse for myself; I needed certainty, I needed to touch the truth of him breathing away from Carlos’s words.

As soon as my fingers touched his cold neck, I felt his weak pulse transfer to my hand... That pulse was like a defibrillator that brought life back to my heart, which had stopped since the glass shattered.

At that moment, I felt Carlos’s warm hand extend to rest over mine, and he said with a calm smile that never left his face:

”See? You haven’t become a killer yet.”

But his words and the hand that touched me awakened an irresistible revulsion in me. I pulled my hand away from him lightly and firmly, and looked at him with eyes full of anger that had regained its health, and said to him in a decisive tone:

”Don’t try to touch me again... so I don’t have to become one!”

Carlos smiled, and it seemed that the sharpness of my words only increased his admiration for me. He said in a calm tone:

”I won’t touch you again, my little madwoman.”

Meanwhile, Robert’s hoarse and cold voice pierced the void from behind me, saying:

”The man survived you, Julie.”

I turned to him and fixed my gaze on his eyes, which bore no trace of anger or resentment; rather, what I saw in them was much worse.

His gaze shone with signs of hidden satisfaction, as if the violence I committed was an achievement worthy of pride, or perhaps a confirmation of the success of his sadistic experiments in taming me.

Robert moved toward the door with his confident steps, and there he signaled to the guards with his hand; the movement of his hand alone was enough to translate his orders without him bothering to speak.

The guards entered the room with a suspicious mechanicalness, so I moved away from that man stretched out, for them to lift him like wreckage of no value and take him out.

Within minutes, others began wiping the traces of chaos and cleaning the room with extreme skill, as if they were erasing the crime from existence.

Robert turned to me again and said in his commanding tone that accepts no debate:

”Follow me to the office, Julie, and leave the guards to finish cleaning the mess you caused.”

Robert walked out with his steady steps, followed by Carlos, while I trailed behind them with footsteps heavy with apprehension.

I was heading toward that office which had witnessed my previous breakings, thinking of the unknown fate that awaited me now.

We entered the office; Robert went directly to his seat and stretched out on it as if sitting on a leather throne from which he ruled his dark world, while Carlos took his place in the chair opposite the desk with a restless curiosity.

As for me, I chose to sit on the black sofa facing them both; I preferred the distance even though the other chair was vacant.

In this place, the further you are from the centers of power, the more you feel a sense of false security.

A short silence prevailed, broken by Carlos as he looked at Robert with a mocking smile, then burst out laughing and said:

”You created a play, Robert... but it seems Julie is the one who wrote the ending and outdid you!”

My breath hitched for a moment, and I felt as if the ground were tilting beneath me. Was all that terror, and my heartbeats that nearly killed me, just an act?

I looked at them with wide eyes, trying to gather the fragments of my mind and find a single answer to all those questions that exploded in my head at once.

I said in a trembling voice, torn between anger and disbelief:

”What? Do you mean that man wasn’t a customer? Was he just an actor?”