Owned By The Psychotic Billionaire (Mafia BL)

LOUISE’S POV

The cold, sterile smell of the hospital corridor burns the back of Louise’s throat. She hates this smell.

She sits on the edge of the narrow, metallic bed in Room 408, her fingers wrapped tightly around a tiny glass vial.

The liquid inside is murky, shifting like muddy water every time she tilts her hands. The bedsheets beneath her are crisp and stiff, stripped clean of the man who had occupied them for eleven long years.

There is no body here anymore. Only the lingering scent of antiseptic and the ghostly silence of a room that has forgotten how to echo a human heartbeat.

Louise has never liked her mother.

That is not a strong enough truth. She has hated Alice Dubois long before the woman ever acquired the shiny, expensive surname of Dubois.

She hated her back when she was just Alice. Plain, ambitious, hollow Alice. An orphan woman wandering the world with a small daughter she had no genuine need for, dragging the girl along like unwanted baggage.

To Alice, a child was not a blessing.

A child was an expense, a chore, a lingering reminder of a past that did not fit into her grand dreams. She looked at little Louise not with the warmth of a mother, but with the cold calculation of an accountant staring at an unnecessary debt.

Even as a child, Louise already knew she would never measure up.

When Louise was very young, before the money, the designer dresses, and the heavy diamond necklaces that now weighed down her mother’s neck, Alice met a man.

His name was Mateo.

He was a Spanish Christian man with soft brown eyes that crinkled at the corners whenever he smiled, a deep, warm love for the Bible, and a surprisingly gentle affection for a little girl who was not his own.

He was the first person to warm Louise’s small heart.

At that time in her life, Louise was just a normal girl. She was small, quiet, and constantly searching for a safe corner in a world that felt far too big and far too cold.

She had not met Henri Dubois yet. Henri, the powerful, cold father of Adrien, could not be with Alice back then. Not while his original wife was still alive, breathing, and holding the legitimate title of Mrs. Dubois.

Louise remembers the dark of those early years with immense clarity. She remembers standing behind the heavy, dust-laden thick curtains of their tiny rented apartment when she was only six years old.

She had held her breath, her small chest aching, while her mother whispered into the receiver of a small black phone late at night.

"If she were gone, we wouldn’t have to hide," Alice had murmured into the dark, her voice dripping with sweet, lethal venom. "Wouldn’t it be so much simpler if she just slipped away? You wouldn’t have to feel guilty anymore, Henri. We could finally be together."

Alice basically spent four long years making Henri wish for his wife’s death, feeding his darkest desires, whispering poisonous ideas into his ear until the poor, sickly woman finally passed away in her bed.

But during those four years, while they waited for a dying woman to cross into the grave, Louise and Alice had Mateo.

Louise adored Mateo, because Mateo adored Louise.

Even if Louise had understood what a real father was supposed to be at six years old, she still would have called Mateo her father without a second of hesitation.

There was no doubt in her small, desperate heart. Mateo was not a rich man, nor was he terribly poor. To any elite walking the high-end streets of the city, he was completely unremarkable, just a small-scale businessman with a modest bank account, a simple leather briefcase, and plain clothes.

To little Louise, Mateo was the sun. He was the only warm light in an otherwise freezing room. He was the man she wished with every fiber of her soul was her true father.

She used to lie in bed at night in that tiny, drafty apartment, pressing her face deep into her thin pillow, praying to the God Mateo talked about so much.

She did not pray for toys or pretty things. She prayed that Mateo would take her away from Alice, that he would sign some official legal papers and adopt her as his own daughter, rescuing her from a mother who looked at her with constant annoyance.

He always called her name so warmly. Whenever he stepped through the front door, his voice would bounce off the peeling wallpaper, light and full of genuine joy.

"Louise, my small flower," he would call out, setting down his heavy leather briefcase by the entryway.

"I’m here now, Louise."

He bought her pretty dresses with delicate lace trim, dresses that Alice would turn her nose up at because they were cheap off-the-rack clothes rather than designer labels. But to Louise, those dresses were priceless treasures.

He spent long, quiet afternoons sitting beside her on the worn fabric sofa. He would pull out his thick, black leather Bible, its spine cracked from years of faithful use. He would trace the gilded edges of the thin pages with his calloused thumb, reading passages aloud in his soft, heavily accented voice.

"You are special, Louise," he used to tell her, gently tapping her small nose with his knuckle while she giggled. "Never let anyone in this cold world tell you otherwise. The Lord has a grand plan for your life, my small flower. You must always hold onto your kindness."

He held her little hand firmly whenever they walked down the street to the corner bakery. He bought her sweet strawberry candies, carefully tucking them secretly into her coat pockets so Alice would not see them and throw them in the trash for being unrefined.

When Louise babbled on and on about nonsensical childhood drama, about stray cats or broken crayons, he listened to every single word as if she were delivering a royal decree.

He would sit there, resting his chin in his hand, smiling down at her with so much genuine warmth it made her young chest ache with love.

"Boys are dangerous creatures," he would warn her with a dramatic, secretive hush, leaning in close and shaking his head while she chewed her candy.

"They will promise you the moon, they will hand you the stars, and then they will leave you standing in the dark. You should never get married, my flower. Stay my little girl forever."

He was a protective gem of a man. An innocent, kind soul who stepped willingly into the dark, barren wasteland of her childhood and assumed the role of her father without ever asking for anything in return.

Louise loved Mateo with every drop of her childish devotion.

But Mateo loved Alice.

And that love served to be his utter undoing.

Because Alice had no love for anyone but herself. Not for the men who fell at her feet, not for the world, and especially not for Louise.

They did not even live with Mateo. He had offered them his modest home a hundred times, promising to work double hours to provide whatever small comforts he could afford, but Alice always refused him with a fake, delicate sigh.

She insisted on maintaining her own little rented apartment, keeping her options open, keeping her distance clean so no one would connect her to him when the time came.

During the bright light of day, they had sweet, gentle Mateo. He brought them fresh groceries every morning, paid for Louise’s school shoes when the soles wore thin, and smiled at Alice as if she were a pure angel dropped directly from the heavens to save him.

He was completely blind to the rot beneath her skin. He never saw the coldness lingering in her eyes. He never noticed how Alice subtly wiped her palm on her skirt every time he held her hand for a second too long.

At night, after Mateo had returned to his quiet flat with a heart full of grand dreams for their future, Henri Dubois would visit Alice in the dark.

Henri was everything Mateo was not. Cold, arrogant, dripping with ruthless wealth, and carrying the heavy, terrifying authority of a man who believed he owned people.

Louise hated him the exact moment he first stepped over their threshold. She hated the way he looked at her mother like a prized piece of property he was waiting to buy, and she hated the way his sharp eyes flicked over Louise like she was an accessory that he would obtain with his prize.

Then, the news finally came. Adrien’s mother passed away.

The poor woman who had suffered in silence, confined to a cold room and surrounded by no one but her son, finally closed her eyes for the last time.

The moment that woman was put in the ground, Alice moved with calm, precise speed. She did not shed a single tear for the dead woman whose mind and marriage she had slowly helped dismantle over four agonizing years.

Instead, Alice turned her sights toward Mateo to clean up the final loose end.

Her actions were cold and utterly calculating.

Over a few short weeks, she carefully swindled Mateo of every single penny he possessed.

She spun elaborate, breathless lies about a brilliant investment opportunity for their future together, promising him a grand house in the countryside where the three of them could finally live as a real family.

Mateo, blinded by his boundless, desperate love for a woman who possessed none, handed over his entire life savings. He signed over his small business assets without reading the fine print.

He took out massive loans from dangerous people that he could never hope to pay back, all to give Alice the golden world she claimed she wanted.

All to secure a future for the daughter he loved.