[BL] The Mafia Boss Wants My Body

Chapter 165: Standing Between My Brother and His Pain

But just as Adrian was about to speak to Matteo, the hospital door swung open again.

The room fell perfectly still as everyone turned to look. Standing in the doorway, his expression etched with severe concern, was Adrian’s father.

Maya murmured. "Father..."

Adrian’s father stepped inside the hospital room, his commanding presence immediately altering the atmosphere. Maya walked forward to greet him, followed by respectful nods and quiet greetings from everyone else in the room.

The moment Matteo saw Adrian’s father approach, he instinctively loosened his grip on Adrian’s hand. He wanted to step back, to give the older man space to see his son and speak to him without any tension.

But Adrian tightened his fingers, refusing to let go of Matteo’s hand. He held on as if Matteo were his only anchor in the dark.

Adrian’s father stepped closer to the hospital bed. Before he even reached it, his cold, piercing gaze swept across the room.

Adrian’s father stepped closer to the hospital bed. Before he even reached it, his cold, piercing gaze swept across the room.

"Everyone, leave," he ordered, his voice heavy with authority. "I want a moment alone with my son... especially someone who doesn’t deserve to be anywhere near him."

Maya looked up, her expression filled with instant surprise and worry at her father’s harsh words.

"Everyone should leave," Adrian’s father said again, his tone leaving no room for argument. His gaze swept across the room, making it clear the order applied to everyone present except Maya.

Sensing the suffocating tension, Matteo leaned down slightly and spoke to Adrian in a gentle, reassuring tone. He slowly tried to extract his fingers, telling him that he would step out for a little while. He hadn’t flown back to cause a dramatic scene; his only priority, his only care in the world right now, was making sure Adrian’s surgery went successfully.

Adrian nodded. "Alright."

But as the silence stretched and everyone slowly turned to walk out of the room, Maya’s gaze swept over Adrian’s friends... Then to Mark, and finally, Matteo. Something inside her snapped. The weight of years of silence and compliance suddenly crushed under a wave of righteous anger.

"No," Maya said, her voice cutting through the clinical quiet of the hospital room. "This is wrong. Everyone here should stay."

She turned directly toward her father, her posture rigid, her eyes blazing with a fierce determination she had never shown him before. "I disagree, Father. Everyone in this room stays. No one leaves. No one is going anywhere."

Her father spun around to face her, his features darkening with immediate fury. "Maya!" he shouted.

"No! I won’t let this happen!" Maya yelled back, refusing to back down. "You cannot just walk in here and chase everyone out with that tone! These are the people who truly care about Adrian. So no one should leave!"

His father glared at her, stunned and deeply offended. "Maya, since when do you go against my words? What do you mean, they really care?"

"Father, yesterday, you were the first person I called after hearing about Adrian’s condition!" Maya said, "I spoke to you first! Before I even called Matteo! Matteo wasn’t even close, he was completely out of the country, yet he has been here since before you! You are only just arriving, when it is just a few minutes until your son’s surgery, and you still think you have the right to make a statement about who is worthy to stand near your son?!"

The room was deathly quiet, every eye glued to the explosive confrontation.

Maya let out a bitter laugh. "Did you even listen to yourself?" Maya pressed, her voice trembling with a mixture of heartbreak and anger.

"I always wondered why you despise Adrian so much. I always thought you just didn’t like him because of what happened in the past. But now I’ve figured it out. It’s not just that, Father. You have simply never seen him as anything important. Because if I were the one lying on that hospital bed, you would have been here the exact minute you heard the news!"

Despite Maya’s fierce defense, the heavy weight of the family dynamic made the atmosphere unbearable. One by one, Adrian’s friends, Mark, and Matteo still decided to step out.

They didn’t leave because they were afraid of Adrian’s father, but out of respect for the raw emotion in Maya’s voice, choosing to give the family the privacy to have this painful conversation.

The door clicked shut, leaving only Adrian, Maya, and their father in the sterile room.

Her father turned to her immediately, his voice shaking with anger. "Look at the way you are talking to me in front of those people—"

"I can’t take this anymore!" Maya interrupted, as she let out the agonizing truths she had been holding onto for years. "I will not pretend that I’m okay with the way you treat him anymore. If you can’t see him as your son, it is better for you to stop showing up just to make him feel like he’s nothing! Because you, Father... you are the main reason Adrian questions everyone’s love around him!"

Adrian sat frozen on the bed, silently listening as his sister poured her heart out.

"Because if his own father couldn’t love him as a son, how could an outsider ever love him? That is the question you planted in his head!" Maya sobbed, her voice breaking.

"You are the reason he is constantly trapped in doubt. And you know what? That traumatized him and it traumatized me too! Every time Adrian called me asking for help, I panicked every single time because I was afraid that if I failed him even once, he would think I didn’t love him either.

"I have spent years carrying the weight of being everything to him because you chose to be nothing. I wanted to be there for him as his sister. I wanted to protect him from the pain you put inside him, the pain he has carried for years because of you."

"I’m not complaining because I was willing to do it, I love my brother. I’m saying this because you have no right to decide who stays or leaves his life when you failed in your role as his father."

Maya’s voice broke into a devastating sob, but she pressed on, letting out all the accumulated heartbreak of their fractured family.

"The incident happened years ago, and you are still punishing him for it! You still blame him! People die, Father—everyone leaves this world one way or another! Why are you still holding that tragedy over his head like a death sentence? He was just a child! He didn’t deserve to lose his family, and he certainly didn’t deserve to lose his father’s love because of it!"

"He deserves a father’s love too. And if you won’t give him that, it’s better you stop showing up altogether. I am enough for him as his blood family. He has a wonderful partner now who loves him deeply, and friends who truly care about and protect him. So if you won’t be the father he needs, I’m pleading with you, stop coming around just to make his life miserable. He can live happily without you now."

Her father stared at her, utterly paralyzed, as if he were looking at a ghost. In his entire life, Maya had never once dared to raise her voice to him, let alone go to such extremes to stand up against his authority.

Her raw, biting words cut straight through his cold exterior, striking a nerve so deeply that he froze, completely unable to move or speak.

For a long, suffocating moment, the old man just stood there, stunned into silence.

He finally made a hesitant move to step toward Adrian’s bed, but before he could reach his son, the hospital door swung open.