[BL] The Mafia Boss Wants My Body

Chapter 161: Between Pain and Love

After a while, he grabbed his phone, his hands trembling as he opened Matteo’s number. He stared at it for a long moment, the silence feeling heavier than ever.

Unable to take it anymore, he swallowed his pride and pressed call.

Matteo’s phone rang, the long dial tones echoing in Adrian’s ear, but there was no answer. After a few moments, the call timed out and disconnected, leaving Adrian staring blankly at the screen.

Panic tightened in his chest. His heart pounding wildly, he immediately pressed redial.

Please, Matteo... pick up, he pleaded silently. Please... just let me hear your voice.

The phone rang again.

Four times.

Five.

Then, on the sixth ring, the call was abruptly disconnected.

Matteo had rejected it.

Adrian couldn’t breathe. A cold fear filled his stomach. Matteo had never rejected his calls before. No matter how busy, no matter how ruthless the business meeting, Matteo would always answer him. Maya’s words echoed brutally in his head: He is done chasing you.

Panic surged through Adrian. Terrified that he was losing the one person he couldn’t live without, he quickly opened their chat history. His fingers trembled violently over the keyboard as tears blurred his vision and he hurriedly typed out a message.

Baby, where are you? Why aren’t you picking up my calls? Please call me back when you see this message. We need to talk.

He hit send. He watched the screen, desperately waiting for the status to change, but the message remained unread.

A wave of frustration and panic washed over him. Adrian muttered bitterly to himself that Matteo was ignoring him, acting as if he were the one who had hurt him instead.

Gathering the little strength he had left, Adrian stood up and slowly made his way upstairs to his bedroom.

Not long after he settled into his bedroom, a soft knock echoed through the door. His maid entered, carrying a small cardboard box. "Sir, I went through the back of the storehouse," she said gently. "I found the black jacket and the umbrella, but there was no handkerchief."

The maid set the box down and quietly left the room. Adrian walked over to the table and reached inside the box to pull out the items, his heart beating faster. But as he did and looked down at the items, his vision suddenly turned completely blurry.

He wasn’t crying at that moment, but his eyesight had gone bad from hours of nonstop weeping.

Everything was a hazy smudge.

For a split second, he wanted to call the maid back in to find the engraved name and read it for him, but Adrian was stubborn; he was determined to see that name with his own eyes.

He carefully set the items back down and forced himself to sit still, squeezing his eyes shut to let them rest. He prayed that if he stayed calm for a few minutes, his vision would return enough for him to finally see the engraved name clearly.

But the silence in the room only made everything worse.

The tears broke free again, falling endlessly as another crushing wave of grief hit him. Not just for Matteo this time... but for the family he had lost. Every emotion he had spent years trying to bury came flooding back at once, suffocating him from the inside.

Adrian tried to stop crying, but the sobs kept tearing through his chest, leaving him trembling helplessly in the quiet room.

"I only got this angry because I love him," Adrian reasoned with himself, trying desperately to fight off the heavy guilt Maya had planted in his mind. That’s why I was so mad at him. How can anyone say I don’t love him?

Maya was his sister. She was supposed to tell him everything.

But then Adrian realized he hadn’t been honest with Maya either. He had hidden the truth about his relationship, his fights with Matteo, and the things happening between them.

A painful feeling settled in his chest.

Maybe... maybe he really did deserve the harsh things Maya said to him.

The more Adrian thought about everything, the more he realized how completely the tables had turned. Somehow, the blame no longer felt entirely like Matteo’s anymore.

He should have sat down and talked to him when Matteo had practically been begging for a chance to explain.

A deep regret settled heavily in Adrian’s chest.

He regretted slapping him. At the time, he had only acted out of hurt and anger. He never truly wanted to hurt Matteo, and he hadn’t realized just how cruel and damaging his cold silence had become over the past month.

Unable to handle the emotional toll, he stood up, stumbled his way to the bed, and lay down. He forced himself to close his eyes and sleep for a few hours. In the past, whenever his night blindness and eyesight grew this severe from distress, a deep sleep would usually restore them. But when he woke up this time, the darkness didn’t fully lift. He could see enough to move around, but everything remained blurred.

Driven by a desperate need for certainty, he went straight back to the storage box. He picked up the umbrella first, squinting closely at the metal engraving. The full name wasn’t written out; it was just the elegant, sharp initials: M.M.

He set it down and grabbed the heavy leather jacket. Tracing his fingers along the lining, his eyes finally focused on the full name beautifully stitched into the fabric: Matteo Marcone.

The sight broke him completely. The tears started all over again, hot and uncontrollable. He grabbed his phone and dialed Matteo’s number, but this time, the call wouldn’t even connect. The line was dead. Completely dead.

Defeated, Adrian walked back to the bed, dragging the jacket with him. It was dusty from years of being locked away in storage, but he didn’t care. He curled around the fabric and buried his face in it, the jacket of the man he had pushed away.

And he wept.

He stayed locked in his room all day, refusing to leave his bed. He couldn’t bring himself to eat a single bite.

The next morning, the first thing Adrian did was grab his phone. The messages he had sent to Matteo were still sitting there, cruelly unread. He tried to call again, but it still wouldn’t go through.

Sighing heavily, Adrian dragged himself into the bathroom and stepped beneath the shower. As the water poured over his body, a cold sense of worry slowly crept into his chest.

His vision was becoming unstable again.

One moment, he could see clearly for a few seconds, and the next, everything around him would dissolve into a blurry haze he could barely make out. The sudden shifts made his stomach tighten with fear.

Adrian tried to calm himself, convincing himself it was only the steam and water affecting his eyes. But deep down, he knew something was wrong.

After he stepped out of the bathroom, he dressed up and headed straight to work. But his eyesight didn’t improve. Sitting at his desk, he tried to sketch out some designs, but the lines kept swimming together. It became impossible to focus. So he dropped his pencil and just sat there in the quiet office, defeated.

Suddenly, his phone vibrated. It was Charles.

Adrian quickly picked up, and Charles spoke the second the call connected.

"Hey, Adrian! Why didn’t you come out last night?" Charles asked. "I sent you so many messages and called you, but you never responded."

Adrian swallowed hard, trying to keep his voice steady. "I’m sorry, Charles. I was just really tired and ended up falling asleep early."

Charles chuckled, his voice teasing through the line. "Are you really just tired, or are you just desperately missing your boyfriend?"

Adrian froze, his heart skipping a beat. "What... what do you mean?"

"Aren’t you the one who told me he wasn’t around? Mark mentioned the exact same thing."

A sudden realization washed over Adrian. He remembered the lie he had spun to Charles days ago, telling him Matteo was away on a business trip. Charles completely believed it because Mark had confirmed Matteo was indeed out of the country.

"Oh... yeah," Adrian murmured. "Yes, I really miss him."

"Well, don’t worry too much. Maybe he’ll invite you to join him soon," Charles said. "Though, I did hear Mark on the phone with him, and Matteo mentioned he won’t be coming back anytime soon."

Adrian’s voice trembled noticeably. "Yes... I might have to go to him later." Trying to gather information without sounding desperate, he asked, "When... when was the last time Matteo called Mark?"

"Oh, they were actually on the phone together right when I stepped out of the bedroom," Charles replied. "Just a few minutes before I came downstairs to call you."

"Alright, Charles... I have to go now. I’ll call you after work."

"Alright, catch you later."

The line went dead. Adrian lowered the phone....