My father sold me to the Mafia King novel Chapter 53

Chapter 53: 54/Who will you choose?

Chapter 54

Julie’s Point of View

At that moment, I felt as if the hands of the clock had frozen, and time itself had ceased to flow.

My gaze was fixed on him; he stood in his brown suit, which I could distinguish from a thousand others, standing in the middle of the room that had become my private prison after he had pocketed the price of my freedom.

Words vanished from my mind entirely, as if I had never uttered a syllable in my life.

A heavy silence prevailed a silence that screamed with the muffled cries inside our chests.

Robert broke this stillness with a tone poisoned by malice, watching my confusion:

"No hug? No kisses? Not even a bit of longing?"

I shot him a sharp look; he was a master at playing the chords of my pain, mocking my brokenness.

But my vocal cords were completely paralyzed.

Every time I tried to muster my strength to melt the ice in my throat, I failed.

Finally, my father spoke.

His deep voice echoed through the room, making my breath hitch as he addressed Robert:

"Why did you bring me here, Mr. Robert?"

Before Robert could utter a single word, my trembling feet moved across the cold marble with shaky steps toward my father.

I approached him, clutching at the air as if searching for support, and then my words came out stuttering and shattered:

"Why... why did you do this?"

I fixed my eyes on his, searching for a shred of regret, a glint of sadness, or even a flicker of an eyelid that betrayed brokenness.

But his face remained like a stone slab reflecting only emptiness.

Not a single feature moved; instead, he said in a mechanical tone, devoid of any human pulse:

"I was forced."

I extended my hand involuntarily, as if trying to touch any thread of sympathy in his features anything small to prove to me that he was still the father I knew.

But I found nothing but a wall of impenetrable coldness.

Breath rattled in my chest, and a lump formed, blocking the air from my lungs. My voice came out choked, as if I were drawing my last breath:

"Forced to sell your daughter?"

I paused for a second, then continued with a bitter, harsh tone:

"Are you truly my father?"

He raised his hand in a deliberate motion, ran his fingers through his hair, then tilted his head slightly forward to fix his empty gaze on mine.

"You are my daughter, Julie," he said in a resonant voice.

His tone didn’t waver, and his eyes didn’t blink, as if he were stating a scientific fact devoid of emotion.

At that moment, Robert’s raspy voice pierced the stifling silence.

He leaned his massive frame back, his eyes moving between us with clear amusement.

Fixing his gaze on my father, he said with a hidden challenge:

"If you want... you can take her now, Mr. Stewart."

I froze in place, feeling the chill of the marble seep into my very bones. Would he do it? Would my father step forward, take my hand, and lead me out of this hell?

My father’s eyes widened, his features shaking with a bewilderment he couldn’t hide, as if Robert’s offer was a shock he hadn’t calculated.

Before he could open his mouth to speak, and before I gave him the chance to test the hardness of his heart or end his hesitation, I surrendered to all the weakness I had suppressed for years.

A childish tone escaped the depths of my throat an old voice I had buried long ago.

"Papa... please, take me home with you," I pleaded.

I completely ignored the pride I had always boasted of; I forgot the presence of the monster watching us from behind.

It no longer mattered if I looked fragile or broken.

My trembling hands reached out to grip his arms, squeezing them tightly as if clinging to a lifeboat in a hurricane.

I whispered again in a low, broken voice:

"I forgive you... I forgive you for everything... just take me away from here."

My breath came in gasps as I waited for his reaction, my hands feeling the stiffness of his brown suit’s fabric.

I looked into his green eyes, which were darting around the room in panic, as if searching for an exit away from me, or for an answer that wouldn’t shatter what remained of my soul.

My father’s eyes turned away from me, crashing into Robert’s gaze in a feverish inquiry, as if I wasn’t even standing there.

"Can I really take her?"

I turned my whole body toward Robert, trying to see the words as they left his mouth; my ears were no longer enough to believe what was happening.

Robert replied with total coldness, clasping his fingers in front of his chest with a confident tone:

"Yes... take her, and keep the money too."

In that moment, I felt a strange lightness, as if I were in a purple dream that reality refused to acknowledge.

There was a faint voice in the depths of my head whispering the sentence I had filled my paper with:

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