Mafia Lord's Mute Sweetheart

Chapter 179: Chapter 179 Captivated

Alessio, however, looked completely unimpressed. He didn’t clap or even smile. He didn’t even look particularly interested. His eyes remained on his phone, occasionally glancing at the screen as if waiting for something more important to appear.

The singer finished her song with a dramatic flourish, holding the last note before letting it fade into the quiet. She waited expectantly, her smile confident.

Alessio finally looked up. "Finished?"

Her expression froze. "...Yes."

"Great."

He stood up, pocketing his phone.

She blinked, startled. "Where are you going?"

"Outside."

He walked away before she could say anything else, leaving her sitting alone at the table with her mouth slightly open.

A few seconds later, Alessio stepped onto the quiet balcony overlooking the city. The noise of the bar faded behind him, replaced by distant traffic and the cool night air. The sky was dark, dotted with stars that barely showed through the city lights.

He rested one hand against the railing and he pulled out his phone and he looked down at his phone again. The screen still displayed his conversation with Daisy. .

Then a strange thought crossed his mind.

He had heard plenty of beautiful voices in his life. Professional singers and Performers. People with voices trained for stages filled with thousands of people. Yet none of them interested him. Instead, he found himself wondering about something completely different.

What did Daisy sound like?

He had never heard her speak. He knew the way she smiled. The way she laughed silently. The way she expressed annoyance with exaggerated gestures. The way her eyes brightened when she was happy. The way her brows furrowed when she was worried.

But her voice... He had no idea.

Alessio stared at the city lights. He wondered whether it would be soft. Whether she would speak quickly when she became excited. Whether she would have a naturally sweet voice. Would she sound shy at first? Would she laugh when she became comfortable?

He imagined her saying his name. "Alessio..."

The thought unexpectedly sent a strange current through him. He immediately shook his head.

"What’s wrong with me?"

❀┈┈┈┈❀

"...Is that her old voice?" Cedric asked, disbelief creeping into his voice. "Her voice from before she became mute?"

He had only been discharged from the hospital this morning and was finally back in his room when his grandfather suddenly called him urgently to see some video and hung up. After watching the video, Cedric had called him back immediately, his heart still racing from what he had just heard.

"Yes! Yes, that’s her!" James said warmly, his voice filled with excitement. "I found the recording in my old phone. Her mother had sent it to me years ago. She participated in an elocution competition when she was younger."

Cedric sat down slowly on the edge of his bed, his legs feeling weak. "Her parents sent it to you?"

"Yes and I remember watching it again and again. I loved her voice so much." James chuckled fondly, the warmth in his voice unmistakable. "That little girl had such a beautiful way of speaking. She was nervous but she still stood there and gave her speech. Such courage for someone so young."

Cedric’s fingers tightened slightly around his phone. "Okay, Grandpa, hang up."

James laughed, clearly amused. "Why?"

"I want to hear her voice again."

"Oh?" There was a teasing lilt in James’s voice.

Cedric ignored the amusement in his grandfather’s voice. "I’m hanging up."

He ended the call before James could tease him any further.

On the other side, Grandpa James chuckled to himself. "Oh, my boy." He shook his head fondly. "He seems to have become addicted to her voice."

Meanwhile, Cedric immediately opened the recording. His thumb hovered over the play button for a moment before he pressed it.

The video appeared on his screen. For a moment, he simply stared dazedly.

She looked around fifteen years old, standing on a small stage in her school uniform, her hair neatly tied back. She looked incredibly young, almost impossibly innocent with both hands holding the edges of the paper containing her speech. Her posture was straight but nervous, her shoulders slightly stiff.

She kept glancing toward the audience.

She was clearly nervous.

Her shoulders were slightly stiff and there was a faint uncertainty in her eyes but when she finally lifted the microphone and began speaking, Cedric’s expression changed.

"...When a person believes in themselves, even the smallest step can become the beginning of something much greater..."

Her voice came through the old recording. Clear, bright, soft and unbelievably beautiful.

Cedric didn’t move.

He had expected her to sound ordinary. Perhaps because he had spent so long thinking of Daisy only through her silence, he had never really imagined what her voice might have been like. He had assumed it would be plain, unremarkable.

But this... this was nothing like what he had imagined.

Her voice had a naturally crisp quality to it, almost like the delicate sound of a glass bell being touched gently.

It wasn’t overly high or childish, yet there was a youthful sweetness underneath every word. Her pronunciation was remarkably clear and there was a slight musical lilt in the way she moved from one sentence to another.

Whenever she became nervous, her voice softened for a moment, almost as though the words were slipping carefully past her shyness but when she reached the important parts of the speech, something changed. Her voice became stronger, more confident, as if she had found her footing.

There was something also crystalline about it, a softness that never became weak and a sweetness that never became artificial. Even through the old, slightly distorted recording, her voice carried an unusual clarity that made him lean closer to the speaker.

Cedric watched the girl on the screen.

She was only fifteen and yet there was already something strangely captivating about her. The way she stood, the way she spoke, the way she looked at the audience with those same dark eyes he knew so well.

When she reached the end of her speech, she paused, visibly nervous, before giving a small smile toward the audience.

A few people clapped.

Young Daisy lowered the microphone and the shy smile on her face became slightly wider.

Cedric stared at the screen.

He replayed the last few seconds. Then again and again.

He leaned back against the headboard, listening more carefully this time. He had heard countless beautiful voices. Jessica’s voice was attractive. He had met singers, presenters, actresses, and countless women whose voices had been trained to sound appealing.

But Daisy’s voice had something none of them had. She sounded ethereal. Like something from a dream, something he had never known he was missing.

Cedric swallowed.

For some reason, hearing it made him feel like he had discovered an entirely different side of his wife. A side he had never bothered to know.

His eyes remained fixed on the fifteen-year-old girl on the screen.