Page 59 of Broken Mafia Bride
He turns away like I’m nothing, and I stagger back in shock, a full-body tremble starting in my toes and rising all the way to my hands. Why is he here? I glance over his shoulder, searching for Pepe’s cousin.
Pepe rises to his feet, a face-splitting smile on his lips. “Raffaele Gagliardi, in the flesh. Long time no see, cuz.”
Oh god, no.
I meet Isabella’s eyes, and she’s looking at me with remorse. I take a shaky step back from the table, then spin away and dash off, ignoring Caterina calling after me.
I don’t stop running until I’m deep in the garden, tall grasses slapping at my face, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
“Giulia, stop—for god’s sake! I haven’t run in years, and I’m wearing seven-hundred-dollar heels that weredefinitelynot made for track,” I hear Isabella griping behind me.
It’s such aherthing to say that I can’t help but let out a broken laugh.
I turn around slowly and meet her eyes. She’s panting like she just ran a marathon, even though it was only from the house to the back garden. My gaze drops to the minimalist white-gold ring on her finger, and my stomach clenches.
“Neither of us wants this,” Isabella breathes, shaking her head. “But it’s the only way. I’m sorry, Giulia.”
“The only way to dowhat, exactly?”
“To stop the war,” she says, and for once there’s no theatrics in her tone—just exhaustion. “You don’t know what it’s like in Chicago right now. It’s a goddamn battlefield. No one’s safe. Not the families, not the kids, not even the foot soldiers.
Blood is running through the streets like water and something—someone—had to give. This was the only way to force peace.”
I blink at her, stunned. “Papa and Edoardo agreed to this?”
“Yes,” she says with a short, humorless laugh. “The great patriarchs. You should’ve seen them. Sitting in the same room like ghosts of themselves. It was… strange. I didn’t even believe it at first. Giulia, they thought you were dead.”
I don’t speak. I can’t.
She softens, but only slightly. “More surprising than them agreeing to peace was walking into this house and seeingyouhere. Afterfour years, Giulia. Four.
Years. Do you have any idea what that time has cost the people who love you?”
My mouth opens, but nothing comes out.
“Raffaele’s been searching for you like a man possessed. Like he couldn’t breathe without knowing if you were alive. And yourfather? He’s sick, Giulia. He’s barely holding on. Do you think this has been easy for him? Do you think watching his empire burn while mourning the daughter he thought he lost didn’t break him?”
She takes a breath, shaky now. “I’m not justifying everything, but… marrying Raffaele—it was a move on the chessboard. One that would save hundreds of lives.”
Isabella’s words echo in my chest, sharper than any accusation could be.
Why didn’t you come back?
I want to tell her everything—that I was scared, broken, surviving. That I thought staying away was the only way to keep them all safe. But my mouth is dry. My guilt is louder than my reasons.
And then it hits me, fully—Isabella and Raffaele.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that my cousin is engaged to the man I once thought I’d spend forever with. My cousin and my…
I don’t even know what Raffaele is to me anymore. Ex-fiancé? Ex-something? That word feels too clean for what we were—for what we still are under all the scars.
It sounds laughable now. After years of being pulled apart by blood and war, by people who refused to let us be together, those same people are now pushing for a marriage.
A union they once forbade, suddenly holy when it suits their strategy.
It feels like fate wanted me gone from the very beginning. Would they have pushed for a marriage between Raffaele and me if I had come back years ago?
“Giulia—”
