Chapter 160/Slowly Under My Mercy

Chapter 160: 160/Slowly Under My Mercy

Chapter 160

**Stephanie’s Point of View**

His abrupt question was like a splitting whip that violently lashed my pride a humiliating, biting, and embarrassing question to the extent that the words and breath froze in my throat and refused to come out. I remained completely paralyzed under his suffocating entrapment, my eyes wide with terror, finding myself trying with bitter despair and haste to gather the remnants of my dignity that had been trampled under his feet, striving with all my power to reduce the scale of this horrific scandal and limit its ugliness.

My gaze met his stern features, which were masked in cruelty, and I said in a panting, raspy tone, on the verge of crying from the sheer intensity of the humiliation: "How... how dare you, for heaven’s sake, search and dig through my personal phone in this vile and invasive manner?!"

His steel face paled for a fleeting moment from the shock, and he seemed to weigh my pale features and measure my details with a new vision shocked and completely different from what he had drawn in his imagination.

Then, he spoke in a low, husky voice dripping with a tone of suppressed blame: "In truth... I did not expect, nor did my mind imagine, that you could do such a despicable thing. Well, your external appearance, your calmness, and the features of innocence painted across your face do not suggest in any way shape or form that you are this type of loose woman."

I swallowed my saliva with a bitterness that sliced my dry throat, feeling the ink of scandal completely stain my forehead in front of my husband’s closest friend. I cried out in total helplessness and a brokenness that shook my entity: "You truly do not understand the reality of the situation! You don’t realize the background of these matters! The whole thing is not as it appears to your eyes or as it seems to your mind right now!"

He moved his broad shoulder with a freezing coldness, terrifying and devoid of any human empathy, as if he saw nothing before him at that moment except a tiny insect with no value to its existence. Then, he spoke coldly: "In fact, I do not care in the slightest whether you are cheating on Alexander or not... for this entire matter is none of my business, and it does not fall within the boundaries of my responsibilities."

I looked into his sharp, hawk-like eyes with a panic whose roots sprouted deep in my heart to paralyze my movement, and I said with ragged, lost breaths: "Then... if the matter does not concern you, what the hell do you want from me?! Why do you keep my phone and enjoy humiliating me like this?!"

He took an additional, sudden step toward my body pressed against the car, until his hot breaths, mingled with the scent of heavy rain and tobacco, almost brushed my trembling eyelids. He spoke in a tone carrying a deadly menace while clenching tightly on his stern, tensed jaw: "You very boldly slapped me across my face inside the office at the company... and you slapped me again with violence and cruelty in the restroom just a moment ago."

I interrupted him in a choked voice, hot tears beginning to forge their path over my pale cheeks: "Because you are the cause of everything that happened inside! You are the one who began violating my privacy, and you crossed the boundaries of politeness by standing in my way in that brutal manner!"

He was not affected by my crying words or my torn tone in the slightest detail. Instead, he continued with a calm hiss that froze the blood in my veins like ice: "For that exact reason, and to settle these accounts between us... I am going right now to tell Alexander myself every single word and every filthy secret I just heard in that voice note."

My strength collapsed completely after my last defensive fortress vanished. I gripped the fabric of his long coat with my trembling fingertips, and my throat wept with a humiliation and submission I had never known in myself my entire life. I said pleadingly: "Please... I beg you, Mr. Vincente, don’t tell him anything! Please... I am begging you!"

His lips parted into a mocking, sinister, and dark smile, and he lowered his gaze with contempt toward my hand clinging to the fabric of his coat with obvious disgust, before pushing me away from him and saying sarcastically: "Only now, when you feel the noose tightening around your neck, have I become ’Mr. Vincente’ to you? A few minutes ago, wasn’t I just a despicable, vile, and wretched man with no honor?"

I shook my head in utter oppression and helplessness, hot tears completely blinding my sight, and said: "What on earth do you want from me to forget this?! Why are you doing this to me?!"

He closed his eyes slowly, relishing my weakness, and said with a dry cruelty: "I simply want to see you suffer slowly under my mercy."

I screamed in a pain and oppression that ripped through my stifled chest: "Why?! What exactly is your interest in destroying my life and crushing my existence in this manner?!"

He replied as he leaned his towering torso to become level with my eyes, which were wide with terror, and spoke with excessive confidence: "Because you chose of your own free will and with utter stupidity to challenge the wrong person in your life, Miss Miller, and I do not allow anyone to challenge me."

I whispered in a despair and frustration that took hold of my insides: "I only did this to defend myself..."

He interrupted me with absolute decisiveness and a cruelty that silenced my tongue: "Rather, you did it and you resisted a lot! Because you dared with impudence to direct those biting insults at me at the company, and because you raised your small palm and struck me without fear... I want to make you regret that deed now."

I caught my breath with extreme difficulty, a tightness suffocating my chest, and I said, trying to cling to any straw of logic: "And if you go and tell Alexander everything now... what is your real interest in that?"

He placed his hand in his coat pocket calmly, tilting his head in a provocative thought that drove me insane, then said in a low voice: "Hmm... your words do carry some logic indeed, so perhaps I won’t tell him about the matter for the time being."

A faint, weak glimmer of hope ignited in my pounding chest, and I said with extreme eagerness, my body moving toward him: "Really, for heaven’s sake?! You won’t tell him?"

He continued coldly, his eyes narrowing with a sadistic cunning: "But, of course... there is a price for this silence; you will continue your work with me inside the office at the company, Miss Miller, as an obedient employee without the slightest resistance... and you will not think of that stupid idea of resigning again. Instead, you will be under my command."

Without awareness of the consequences, and because of the deadly terror that gripped my entity from the idea of losing Alexander and having my secret exposed, I shouted in a blind impulse that erased my dignity: "I will do anything... anything you ask of me at work without any objection, just don’t tell him anything!"