Mafia Lord's Mute Sweetheart

Chapter 1: Chapter 1 Mute

"Your wife is beautiful... but I heard she is mute?"

The old middle-aged man’s voice dripped with false politeness, the kind that masked gossip disguised as concern. He stood beside Cedric Evermont, swirling whiskey in his crystal glass, his eyes flickering between Daisy and her husband with hungry curiosity.

Cedric Evermont was six feet of cold, sculpted beauty. Deep blue eyes like frozen oceans. Dark hair swept back from a face so handsome it belonged on magazine covers or wanted posters. His jaw was carved from marble. His smile never reached anywhere warm.

Inside, he was burning with humiliation.

Mute. Of course they’re talking about it. Of course everyone knows he married damaged goods.

He had never wanted this girl. If not for his grandfather’s threats, marry her or lose the company shares, he would have thrown her out the night he first saw her trembling in his foyer with her single suitcase and her dead family’s photograph clutched to her chest like a child’s security blanket.

But the shares meant everything. Power and control. The ability to crush anyone who looked at him wrong.

So he smiled.

Cedric’s voice was warm, practiced, almost loving. "So what if she is mute? I love her. That’s what matters." He pulled Daisy close, his arm tightening around her waist like a snake coiling. He pressed his lips to her cheek.

The kiss felt like ice.

Daisy Winter blushed.

She couldn’t help it. Even after everything, the cold silence, his ignorance, the nights she pressed her ear to the wall and listened to him with someone else, the nights she cried into her pillow until her throat burned from silent screams, her heart still lurched at his touch. Her cheeks still flushed. Her pulse still raced.

Fool, she thought. You hopeless, stupid fool.

She was beautiful in the way broken things could still be beautiful. Big, dark black eyes framed by thick, long eyelashes that cast tiny shadows on her cheeks. A sweet, soft face with rosy color that bloomed even when she wished it wouldn’t. Fair, milky skin that bruised too easily, yesterday’s fingerprints still fading on her wrist from when he grabbed her too hard. Long caramel hair falling past her shoulders, tucked behind one ear the way her mother used to do when she was small.

She wore a light pink dress, her mother’s favorite color. The dress was the only thing she had left that didn’t feel like borrowed sorrow.

The middle-aged man raised his glass with a smirk that said I don’t believe you for one second. "Haha, of course. Love matters."

He walked away, chuckling under his breath.

The moment his back turned, Cedric let go. His arm dropped, and his body shifted away from hers like she had burned him. The warmth vanished from his face, replaced by something arctic and empty.

He didn’t look at her.

"Don’t embarrass me again," he said quietly, smoothing his jacket. "Stand still. Don’t speak. Don’t even breathe too loud. You’re already enough of a humiliation without adding clumsiness. Last week at the Henderson dinner, everyone asked me why you wouldn’t sing at the piano like a proper wife. Do you know how that felt? Explaining that my wife has no voice?"

Daisy’s blush died.

She looked down at her hands. They were trembling. One fingernail was still broken from when she clawed at the locked closet door three nights ago. He had locked her inside for six hours because she accidentally dropped a glass of water on the dining table.

She wanted to type on her phone: I didn’t do anything. I just stood here. You’re the one who kissed me. And I can’t sing because I can’t speak. You knew that when you married me.

But she didn’t. Because the last time she typed something back, he had taken her phone for three days. She had spent seventy-two hours in absolute silence, screaming into pillows, writing on her own skin with a pen just to feel like words still existed somewhere. The ink stains on her palms had just faded yesterday.

So she nodded. Just a small dip of her chin.

Cedric walked away toward the bar without another word. Within seconds, a woman with long red nails and a tight black dress slid next to him, laughing at something he said. His hand found her lower back. Daisy recognized her: Jessica, his current girlfriend.

Daisy stood alone in the middle of the party. Crystal chandeliers sparkled above. Expensive perfume choked the air. Laughter echoed off marble floors. She looked around and found a corner behind a large potted fern. She didn’t dare appear in front of him or others because he would scold her later behind closed doors. Last time she stood too close to a male guest, he pinched her arm so hard the bruise lasted two weeks.

She knew he cared about his reputation and what others thought of her. She was a display doll. Pretty, silent, and obedient. A trophy that gathered dust when no one was looking.

And she cared about him. Because despite everything, he married her when she had no one. After her parents died in the car accident, the one that also took her voice, the doctors said from trauma, she had nowhere to go. No relatives. No friends. No money. The orphanage was going to take her. She was twenty years old and about to become a ward of the state.

Then Cedric’s grandfather appeared when she needed him most. He offered her a marriage. A second chance to live.

She had cried with gratitude.

She didn’t know then that the second chance was actually a cage.

But Cedric provided her food, shelter, and clothes. Three meals a day. A warm bed. A roof that didn’t leak. That was more than she had after the accident, when she slept in her car for three weeks because the hospital discharged her and she had nowhere to go.

She was grateful to him.

Grateful people didn’t complain. Grateful people didn’t leave. Grateful people swallowed their tears and hoped for better tomorrows.

She hoped he would just break up with Jessica and love her. She hoped that one morning he would look at her and see not a burden but a wife. She hoped that if she was patient enough, quiet enough, and good enough, he would change.

Every night she prayed the same prayer. Every morning she woke up to an empty pillow beside her.

From her corner behind the fern, she watched Cedric whisper something in Jessica’s ear. The girlfriend threw her head back and laughed. His hand slid lower.

Daisy looked away.

Her eyes found the garden doors. Moonlight spilled through the glass. Somewhere out there, a fountain trickled. She remembered sitting by that fountain last month, writing in her journal, when a servant found her and said Cedric was looking for her. She had run inside, her heart pounding with hope.

He just wanted her to iron his shirt.

Finally, when the party ended three hours later, Daisy sighed in relief. Her feet ached from standing. Her back hurts from holding herself straight. Her jaw ached from the forced smile she had worn all night like a mask.

Social settings drained her, even if she didn’t have to speak. The whispers followed her everywhere. That’s the mute wife. Such a shame. So beautiful but so broken. I heard she can’t even laugh. I heard she just stares at walls.