“Please, Sir… I am begging you,” Joanne whispered, her voice cracking with an intense desperation.
She kept her head bowed politely, her long eyelashes casting trembling shadows against her pale, flushed cheeks as she tried to look at anything other than his piercing, predatory eyes.
Her small, delicate hands clutched the lapels of the translucent black nightgown with a tight grip, trying to force the fabric to stretch over her voluptuous chest, but the lace only gaped wider under her panic.
“Kindly just let me wear something proper. Even a basic sheet… anything. I am not used to walking around naked or showing my body to strangers. I’ve spent my entire life in reserved clothes. I cannot do this.”
Alfonso’s hand tightened around her slender waist with an unyielding, authoritative pressure that practically fused her soft hips against his trousers.
He let out a chuckle that vibrated deep within his chest, a sound completely stripped of empathy.
“Then you will simply have to learn, sweet doctor,” Alfonso murmured smoothly, his hot, minty breath fanning across her burning ear as he loomed over her like an absolute master.
“You’ll adopt to the rules of my house soon enough. I know exactly how women function, Joanne. Especially women with such a lovely, youthful, and exceptionally voluptuous body like yours. You all like going around showing off your assets to get what you want, and men enjoy looking at them. It’s the natural order of things. Stop pretending you don’t like the idea of every eye in the room tracking your curves.”
A bitter, freezing realization slammed into Joanne’s mind, making her heart drop like a lead weight into her stomach.
He truly sees women as nothing more than beautiful, disposable sexual tools, she thought inwardly, her teeth clenching in a silent wave of profound revulsion.
He has zero respect for a woman’s dignity, zero regard for boundaries.
She wasn’t like those girls downstairs who flaunted their skin just because they were physically blessed; her body was a temple she had kept hidden, a sacred part of her identity that had now been violently hijacked by this mafia king.
But looking at the cold, unyielding set of his jaw and the dangerous flare in his dilated pupils, she knew with absolute certainty that arguing with him right now would only provoke his feral temper.
She had to stay submissive if she wanted to survive long enough to exact her vengeance.
“It is only… it is embarrassing me deeply, sir,” Joanne whispered softly, forcing her voice to remain entirely polite, meek, and compliant despite the fierce hatred burning in her veins.
Alfonso’s expression hardened into a cold, matter-of-fact line as he abruptly released her waist, stepping back toward the bedroom door.
“I don’t care about your embarrassment, doctor. Get moving right now, unless you want me to drag you down those stairs by your hair in front of my entire syndicate.”
“No, sir… I will go,” Joanne answered hurriedly, her upper lip trembling as she took a shaky step forward.
She desperately didn’t want to cause a chaotic scene that would draw even more physical brutality to her already bruised and aching body.
She walked beside him, her bare feet pressing against the cold, polished hardwood of the upper corridor.
Every single step she took was a localized nightmare; her overstimulated inner thighs rubbed uncomfortably against each other, and the friction sent sharp reminders of his elite stamina straight up her spine.
She kept her arms wrapped tightly across her chest, her fingers digging into her own skin as she tried to make her voluptuous frame look small, trying to swallow the suffocating shyness that threatened to choke her.
But the moment they reached the top of the grand marble staircase, all her hopes of remaining invisible were brutally shattered.
Down in the massive, opulent banquet hall, a sprawling table had been arranged, overflowing with all kinds of lavish meals, expensive liquors, and steaming platters of food.
Seated around the table were dozens of people—hardened, heavily tattooed mafia captains, frontline soldiers, and the palace’s beautiful, half-naked female servants—all of them drinking, laughing, and telling stories from the night’s territorial skirmishes.
The doors at the foot of the stairs were guarded by armed men, but the moment Alfonso’s imposing, charcoal-suited figure appeared at the banister, the entire room fell into an immediate, dead silence.
Dozens of heads snapped upward in perfect unison.
Joanne shrank backward instinctively, trying to hide her body completely behind Alfonso’s broad, towering back, but her height and the striking, translucent black silk of her nightgown made her the immediate, blinding spotlight of the entire hall.
The fabric left absolutely nothing to the imagination under the brilliant, glaring light of the crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling.
Her full, firm breasts, the deep indentation of her narrow waist, and the long, smooth contour of her bare thighs were displayed perfectly to the crowd.
A collective, audible gasp rippled through the female servants seated at the lower end of the table.
All the women who worked in the palace—including Sophie, who sat with a rigid, pale expression—stared up at Joanne with wide, amazed eyes.
They took in the flawless perfection of Joanne’s youthful face, her soft, natural curves, and the undeniable aura of innocence that separated her from the hardened atmosphere of the estate.
They looked like they wanted to tear the silk nightgown right off her skin out of malice.
Alfonso paused at the landing, his hand resting casually on the gold-plated banister as he felt the heavy weight of every single gaze in the hall locking onto the woman behind him.
A slow, sinister, and intensely arrogant smirk spread across his handsome face.
He looked down at his assembled syndicate, his voice booming through the silent room with an absolute, terrifying pride of ownership.
“Well?” Alfonso questioned dryly, his dark eyes gleaming with a wicked satisfaction.
“Do you all like what you’re seeing?”
The room remained completely paralyzed, the hardened soldiers and captains too intimidated by their boss’ lethal aura to dare speak a single word or openly admire his exclusive new prize.
Nobody talked.
The tension in the air grew thick enough to suffocate.
Until Griffin, who was sitting near the head of the table pouring a glass of whiskey, let out a low, deeply amused whistle.
He leaned back in his leather chair, a wide, knowing smirk splitting his handsome features as his eyes raked over Joanne’s trembling, exposed form through the banister.
“Jesus Christ, Boss…” Griffin remarked casually, his voice echoing clearly through the dead silence of the hall as he raised his glass in a mock toast.
“No wonder you took your absolute time inside that room last night dissecting and destroying that perfect body. Looking at her right now, who the hell wouldn’t go the entire night non-stop with a woman like that?”