Page 119 of Broken Mafia Bride
His gaze is still fixed on the screen. “That bastard!” he hisses.
“Apparently, Martina was on his payroll too,” I continue. “She was in the background of one of Caterina’s pictures, and she confirmed that she’d seen Martina come in and out of the estate in the past.”
I pause, swallowing. Just saying the words alone made my throat tighten. Why would Lucio do this? And worst of all is that he’s been pretending to be the good guy, the hero, and we’ve all been eating it up. I feel sick at the reminder that I’ve been so grateful to him for all his help.
The bastard!
Raffaele lets out a sigh, and when his eyes meet mine, they’re dark with determination. “I didn’t want to tell you this until I had more information, but…”
“What is it?” I ask when he trails off.
“Lucio’s reports were botched. According to him, there was an empty seat on the plane that left Sardegna a few days before Noemi went missing. But Matteo looked into it.” I suck in a breath, dreading what I know is coming. “The seat was occupied—and my best guess is that Martina was in it.”
Oh god.
“I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but I figured there was someone in his ranks responsible for botching the report,” he tells me. “But after seeing these photos, I don’t think this has anything to do with someone in his ranks.”
My head is spinning. I can’t help but ask myself why. Why would he take Noemi? What does he plan to do with her? I can’t help but think that this is his way of punishing my father for taking my mother from him. He lost his daughter in the past, and now he’s trying to gain back a daughter in any way possible.
A full-body shudder moves through me at the implication of that.
If that’s really why he’s doing this, then Lucio isn’t just dangerous—he’s a psychopath. And the urgency to get Noemi out of his depraved hands only grows. Suddenly, Casa Bianca doesn’t feel like much of a paradise anymore. It might look like one, but in truth, it’s a cage.
Sienna’s words replay in my head.
“Don’t tell me that you really believe this place is the slice of heaven you’ve sought after all your life. It may look like paradise, but beneath the colorful paint is the dark and the ugly.”
When she said those words to me, I had assumed she meant the mafia side of things. But now it’s clear that she felt something I didn’t, because I was too blinded by the lure of family, by the faint traces of my mother in the ancient halls.
This entire place is some sort of cult, with Lucio at the helm of things, manipulating situations like a fucked-up puppeteer. I find myself suddenly worried about Caterina. Was her entire relationship with Pepe fabricated by my grandfather in his desperation to keep her trapped here?
Does she know what kind of man he is? I know she loves and respects him like family, but?—
I shake my head to clear the thought. My first priority is my daughter.
“We have to find Noemi,” I tell Raffaele. “And we have a lead now. There has to be some information in this house. I need to talk to Caterina and?—”
He grabs my arm, halting the rest of my words. His eyebrows are pulled down in a frown. “Giulia, no. You have to let me do this.”
“I’m not going to stand by and do nothing now that I know he’s behind this!” I snap.
“You don’t understand how dangerous he is, the lengths he’ll go to.”
A thought suddenly occurs to me. “You think he had Isabella killed because she knew something?”
Raffaele rakes both his hands through his hair. “Isabella wasn’t the target. I was.”
“W-what?” I croak, eyes flying wide. “I don’t understand. Why would he want to get you killed? Why didn’t you tell me about this? What else are you hiding?” I hate the sudden hurt that rises inside of me.
I thought Raffaele and I were a team now, that we were in this together. After all, our daughter’s life is at stake. Doesn’t he trust me? How long has he had this information?
“I’m not hiding anything,” he says immediately. “I just found out about this. The man who made the shot was little more than a kid. Barely twenty. It took Pepe a while to find him, and then we questioned him.”
“And?” I ask impatiently.
He hesitates. “Still no idea who sent him, but that bullet was for me, not Isa. And my biggest guess is that whoever sent him was trying to stop my investigation.”
“You think it’s Lucio?” I ask carefully, hoping he’ll say no and tell me I’m being crazy, that my grandfather isn’t a kidnapping, murderous psychopath.
