Page 32 of Broken Mafia Bride
Nera glances around the table, meeting everybody’s eyes one after the other. When she gets to me, her gaze holds for longer than a moment. I cock a brow and raise my glass in a mocking salute.
“Did you really think we’d just sit back and watch you destroy yourselves and us along with you?” she snarls. “You two have made a fucking mess of things.”
“It’s simple,” Enrico says, his eyes turning to steel. “The bastard gives me back my daughter, and this war ends. Just like that.”
I don’t bother pointing out that the war was already in full swing when Giulia was still here. Her disappearance didn’tstop it—if anything, it gave Enrico something new to drape in martyrdom.
Maybe he is grieving. Maybe losing his whole family hollowed him out.
Maybe this war is the only thing keeping him standing.
I scoff, and his gaze swings over to me. “Is that funny, Raffaele? Is my daughter being taken away from me hilarious to you?”
“Shut up,” I grit out.
He jumps to his feet, shoulders tense. “I dare you to say it again.”
I look him in the eyes. “Shut the fuck up, Enrico.”
At the other side of the table, my father lets out a bark of laughter. “That’s my boy.”
I turn to him and motion with my glass of alcohol. “You too. Shut up.”
“Enough!” Regina smashes her fist against the table, jumping to her feet. Her expression is hard with fury as she shifts her focus between Enrico, my father, and me. “And you’re not helping, Raffaele.”
I throw my head back and laugh. “You’re wasting your time, Nera. This mess is already far too gone to be stopped. The best course of action is to let it play out.” I pretend to think. “Or on a second thought, we should lock Enrico and my father up in a cage and squeeze some real entertainment out of this feud.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she snaps. “You think this is a joke? People are dying! Businesses are crashing, and now we have the feds on our tail, disrupting things and reining in losses.”
“You’re a little late to the party,” I say, spreading my arms in a mocking welcome. “Two years late to the damn party, to be exact. But I guess it only became your problem when it startedaffecting you. Where were all of you when I was fighting tooth and nail to stop this?”
“Did you expect us to be a part of a fight that had nothing to do with us?” one of the men who spoke before cries.
I shrug. “Then don’t expect me to be a part of it now that I don’t give two fucks about what happens.”
“You little brat!” The bald, fat man rises to his feet, his face red. “You think just because you’ve had everything handed to you on a silver platter that you can just spew whatever shit you want? We have had to work to build everything we own, and we’re trying to protect it before this damn mess with your families ruins it all. Look at yourself, you’re a mess, a loose cannon. You should be ashamed to sit here with us.”
If he thinks those words are supposed to stir anything other than cold indifference, he’d better think again. I stopped giving a damn the moment Giulia went over that cliff.
“Sit your fat ass down, Vitale,” I chuckle. “If the others talk about hard work and achieving shit, you?—”
“Raffaele! Enough!” Isabella’s manicured nails dig into my thighs, and the rest of my words dry up in my throat. “Are you trying to get shot?”
Over twenty sets of eyes are pinned on me, and it feels like my skin is crawling. An easy smile curves my mouth. “Apologies. Carry on.”
“The only way this ends,” Regina Nera says, voice cutting through the room like a blade, “is if we strike at the rot at the center—the blood feud between the Montanaris and the Gagliardis.”
Her eyes lock on mine. Unblinking. Cold. Calculating.
“This war didn’t start in the streets. It started in your homes. In your bloodlines. In your fathers’ pride and your mothers’ silence. And it will keep bleeding out into our businesses, our alliances, our futures—until someone binds the wound shut.”
I feel the shift before she says it. Like air being sucked out of the room.
“Raffaele. Isabella.”
A pause thick with implication.
“You need to finish what your families never could. Join the houses. Cement the alliance. End this war before it burns us all to ash.”
