Mafia Kings: Roberto: Chapter 67

Ihad been hosting parties for five months when my father’s thugs came to my day job.

I was sitting at my cubicle, reading an analysis of Hong Kong stock market trends, when my mild-mannered manager came over to me. His face was pale behind his round glasses.

“What’s wrong?” I asked in alarm.

“These… gentlemen want to have a word with you,” he wheezed.

I looked behind him to see two men in black suits and sunglasses. The visible tattoos on their necks and hands immediately gave them away as triad thugs.

I felt a jolt of terror, afraid that I was about to be kidnapped again –

But then I realized if that were going to happen, they would have grabbed me in a parking lot, not come to my place of work.

My face burned with shame as I realized my father had sent them.

“I’m so sorry,” I apologized to my manager. Then I stomped over to the men and hissed, “How dare you come here!”

The older one said in a low voice, “Your father wants to speak with you.”

“He could have called!” I rage-whispered.

The thug ignored my temper tantrum. “You can come quietly, or we can make a scene. Which do you prefer?”

I opted to accompany them quietly – one on either side of me, like they were transporting a prisoner.

Which, in a sense, they were.

As we left, I stared at the floor in mortified silence…

And tried to ignore the fact that all my co-workers were watching me get marched out of the office by criminals.

The two men drove me to my parents’ house in a Rolls Royce.

Once we arrived, they escorted me past the household staff to my father’s study.

The room looked like something out of the British colonial period – which it was. Every wall was lined with shelves of leatherbound books. The vanilla scent of old paper hung in the air, and a grandfather clock tick tick ticked in the background.

My father was sitting behind his desk, dressed in a suit and tie like always, reading over some papers.

When the two men knocked, he looked up. His expression immediately darkened.

“Wait outside,” he ordered.

The two men closed the door behind them.

“Sit,” he said coldly, pointing at a chair across his desk.

I sat down. “If you wanted to talk to me, you should have just – ”

“Quiet,” he snapped.

“I don’t appreciate you sending two of your thugs to embarrass me at work – ”

“QUIET!” he shouted, the veins in his temples standing out.

I froze in my seat, suddenly seven years old again.

With sick dread, I realized this was about something more than my father’s usual controlling nature.

He found out, a little voice whispered in my mind.

No – that’s impossible –

I was so careful!

But then my worst fears were confirmed.

My father began sliding photographs across the desk, one by one.

They were shots taken with long lenses through windows, or grainy pictures snapped with cellphones in low light –

All from fetish parties I’d thrown over the last two weeks.

In one photo, I laughed as I wore a black bra, panties, and thigh-high boots under a leather trench coat.

In another, I playfully paddled a naked man bent over a pommel horse.

In another, I sat tied up with rope in a high-backed chair, my face contorted in pleasure.

Picture after picture, which would have been shocking to anyone not familiar with the BDSM community –

But especially to a father seeing his daughter in them.

I wanted to sink into the floor in shame…

But a flicker of rage sparked inside me.

Someone betrayed me.

I wondered who it had been.

“First I hear you quit school,” my father snarled. “Now I find out about this. Explain yourself.”

I forced myself to remember I wasn’t a child anymore.

“This is none of your business,” I said firmly.

“THE HELL IT ISN’T!” he roared, frightening me as he bolted up from his chair. “You think a respectable family will let their son marry you if they find out about this?!”

“I don’t want to get married,” I snapped. “Especially not to any of your handpicked little Mini-Me’s.”

He didn’t understand the ‘Mini-Me’ reference, but he heard the defiance in my voice loud and clear.

He circled around the desk, his face a mask of rage. “What the fuck are you doing with your life?! Becoming a degenerate?! A whore?! I am ashamed to have you as my daughter! You have brought dishonor upon our family!”

Every word was like a knife in my gut.

In Cantonese, the phrase You have brought dishonor upon our family might as well have been a curse.

But it was the part about I am ashamed to have you as my daughter that felt like he was cutting out my heart.

However, I wasn’t about to go down without a fight.

The last six months – which I’d spent doing what I actually wanted to do for the first time in my life – had given me more of a backbone than that.

I blinked back tears and scoffed. “Me? I brought dishonor upon our family? You’re a criminal – a bully – a murderer and a thug. I’m ashamed to be your daughter. If anyone has dishonored our family, it’s you.”

My father was always an angry man, ever since I could remember.

But at that moment, his rage was incandescent, his expression absolutely demonic.

Before I could react, he reared back his hand and slapped me in the face. Hard.

My head whipped painfully to the side, and I burst into tears.

“Get out,” he snarled as he towered above me. “Get out of my house. You are no longer part of this family. I am cutting you off; you are no longer welcome here.”

I stared at him in shock. “Father – ”

“GET OUT!” he roared. He flung open the door and yelled at the two men who had brought me here. “Get her the fuck out of here!”

I stumbled out of the study, weeping and holding my bruised cheek, as the two thugs followed behind me.

The servants in the hallway averted their eyes and scurried away. I knew they feared my father’s anger if they showed me even a hint of compassion.

My mother walked into the foyer as I was about to leave.

“Mother!” I cried out, tears running down my face. “Please – ”

But she turned her face away from me, her expression hard as stone.

“You made your choice,” she said coldly.

I sobbed even harder as the two thugs gently ushered me outside to the car.

Of all the people in the house that day, they were by far the kindest.