My father sold me to the Mafia King-Chapter 63 - 64/First alcoholic drink

Chapter 64:

Robert’s Point of View

My hand reached out to grip the neck of the dark bottle; her fingers, which touched my hand,

were as cold as death, and her gaze behind the mask was hollow, extinguished,

as if her soul had departed her body leaving only wreckage behind.

At that moment, I realized that the "Julie" who entered this place tonight was over,

and what stood before me now was a new monster created by my own hands.

I removed the cork with a faint pop, and the scent of aged grapes filled the void between us.

I said in a tone that carried a cold appreciation:

"Excellent choice... this is a fine red wine."

She snatched the bottle from my hand with a crude motion;

she didn’t wait for an elegant glass, but instead took a large mug designated for "beer" that was perched on the bar,

filling it until the dark liquid almost overflowed its edges.

I watched her hand trembling as she raised the mug, and said calmly:

"It seems you have never drunk before."

She didn’t answer with a word;

she merely shook her head left and right in silent refusal,

then brought the mug to her lips and took a large gulp.

The moment the liquid touched her tongue, her facial features contracted violently;

her forehead puckered and she shut her eyelids so tightly that wrinkles emerged around her eyes.

I saw the muscles of her throat moving with difficulty as she swallowed the drink as if she were swallowing embers.

Then she placed the mug on the marble with force, 𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

opened her eyes which had welled up with tears resulting from the sharpness of the taste, and said with clear disgust:

"What is this filth?"

She wasn’t actually cursing the drink, I knew that;

she was cursing the bitterness that had settled in her throat from the moment she tucked the bag into that young man’s pocket the bitterness of survival that tastes nothing like wine.

I pulled the stool next to her and slumped my body onto it,

watching the slump of her shoulders and the wilting of her features caused by implicating that inventor called "Jake Simon."

Hatred was boiling in my chest toward him, so I said in a low voice saturated with contempt:

"He doesn’t deserve for you to bleed a single drop of regret for him, he is just a wretch named J...."

I had barely uttered the first letter of his name when I felt her small,

cold fingers invade my face; her hand lunged with the speed of light to rest over my lips,

silencing my voice with a force I didn’t expect.

I froze in my place, feeling the pulse of her fingers hitting my skin, while her eyes pleaded with me with a broken shimmer.

She whispered in a wavering tone:

"Don’t tell me who he is... I don’t want to know his name, or his life, or anything about him."

At that moment, I felt a strange spark running through my veins a fire whose origin I didn’t understand ignited in my chest just from the contact of her skin with my lips;

the heat of her tensed body was transferring to me, unsettling my usual coldness.

She withdrew her hand very slowly, as if fearing to leave that false safety, then recoiled her body backward,

leaning her head heavy with disappointments while muttering bitterly:

"The bliss of ignorance is much better... than the hell of awareness."

I clenched my jaw tightly as I watched her return to sipping that filth from her mug,

and I felt that the hand which had silenced me had closed a Chapter in her soul forever.

She whispered again, her eyes fixed on the crimson liquid at the bottom of the mug, while her fingers cramped around its glass:

"I don’t want my soul to be tortured while remembering his name or knowing his identity... I will keep him as an anonymous face, just a ghost that crossed my life and left."

Before I could respond, she raised the mug to her mouth and swallowed its contents in one go;

I saw the veins of her neck bulge with every powerful gulp, and her body shuddered with a light tremor when the liquid settled in her gut.

She had barely put it down when her trembling hand reached for the bottle to fill it again to the brim.

I grabbed her wrist and squeezed it

lightly:

"Enough, Julie."

She looked away from me, continuing to stare at the glass with eyes that had begun to be clouded by fog, and replied in a wavering voice:

"It’s not enough... because I haven’t forgotten yet."

At that moment, I felt a sting in my chest I hadn’t known before;

I hated myself because I had stained her innocence with this mud,

and I hated her more because she made me feel this weakness toward a girl who was, in my eyes,

nothing but merchandise her father paid the price for.

I watched her in bitter silence as she emptied the second glass, then the third,

until the bottle made a hollow sound when it hit the marble; it was completely empty.

Her body swayed on the stool, and her head tilted toward me as she almost fell, her cheeks flushed a dark red and her eyes lost in the void:

"Open... open another one."

"You’ve drunk a whole bottle, Julie... you are drunk now, come on, to your room."

A loud, hysterical laugh erupted from her, her entire body shaking to the point that she had to grip the edge of the bar so as not to fall:

"I am not! I’m not drunk... come on, just open another one!"

Her laugh was cracked, carrying within it a suppressed sob,

and I saw the weight of her eyelids overcoming her as she tried hard to keep her eyes open before my face.

I clenched my jaw firmly and said in a decisive tone:

"No more alcohol."

I stood up from my seat and tightened my grip on her hand to pull her upward;

her body collapsed like a stringed puppet, and if I hadn’t pulled her forcefully toward my chest, she would have hit the floor.

Her trembling hand settled over my chest, and she began passing her fingers with a strange slowness over the fabric of my suit,

her eyes lost in the details as she muttered in a deep voice:

"Very beautiful suit... I liked it."

Suddenly, her gaze tensed and she turned toward the dark corner of the hall, her movement stilling completely as she whispered:

"Who is that young man standing there? He is staring at us..."

I shifted my gaze toward the void; there was nothing but the silence of the upturned chairs.

I said in a calm voice trying to soothe her:

"There is no one, Julie."

She raised her swaying finger, pointing weakly toward the shadows:

"Look... he is there, he isn’t moving."

I couldn’t suppress a mocking smile drawn by her miserable state, so I said:

"You crazy girl... that is just a chair upturned on the table."

She shook her head with childish insistence, her eyes widening in awe:

"But he is a young man... don’t you see him?"

I exhaled with a lack of patience and said, going along with her delirium:

"Yes, I saw him."

I clamped my hand on her arm to walk, but she suddenly jerked and pulled her arm from my grip with a violence that led to her losing her balance.

She landed with her body over the thick hallway carpet, and instead of trying to stand,

she began stroking the carpet’s pile with her fingers with excessive tenderness, muttering with a withered smile:

"How beautiful this little puppy is... is he yours?"

At that moment, I realized that her mind had left the place entirely,

and that the dam of sobriety had collapsed to sweep away every link she had to reality.

I leaned toward her slender body, tucked my arms under her back and knees, and lifted her in my hands with ease.