Page 71 of Broken Mafia Bride
“Why?” I ask.
He sighs. “I don’t think this has anything to do with La Rete Rossi at all. I’ve met with some of my inside men and rounded up some of their transporters. It’s all the same thing: They haven’t seen Noemi.”
“If this involves the higher-ups, the lesser men in the hierarchy won’t know about it,” Raffaele points out. “They could have made this particularly discreet because they know you’ll get involved.”
“So what you’re saying is we should just sit on the edge of our seats with our thumbs up our asses, waiting to hear from the bastards who kidnapped her?” my father sneers.
Raffaele’s face hardens into stone. “I’m not saying that. Trust me, if I could, I’d raze this entire island to the ground until Noemi is back where she belongs. I don’t like this any more than you do. She’s my daughter, for god’s sake.”
Lucio chuckles. “Of course. How very like the Americans to have no tact. That mindset is exactly why Chicago is burning right now, and you’re all feeling the heat now, trying to douse a fire that you started in the first place.”
“And how like you to think that you know everything about everything.” Papa slants him a chilling look.
“Tell me which part I got wrong?” Lucio leans forward and staples his fingers over the table. “The part where Chicago is burning, or the part where you’ve become victims of a fire you started.”
Before my father can retort, I cut in. “Forget Chicago, that’s not our focus now. We’re talking about Noemi here.”
I’m beginning to think that bringing these men together is a terrible idea. The animosity in the room is rising to ceiling levels, and I don’t have it in me to try to diffuse this.
It will be too much to ask them to settle their differences for the sake of my daughter, but at least they can pretend to becordial in the meantime. Once I have Noemi back, they can whip out their swords and put them to each other’s necks for all I care.
Lucio’s jaw clenches so hard, and for a moment, I think he’s going to continue his banter with Papa, but then he drags his gaze to me. “We have to consider the very real possibility that you seeing the La Rete Rossi coin was merely a coincidence.”
“I thought about that too,” Raffaele pipes up.
I look over at him with surprise, and he shrugs. “As far as I know, they don’t target anyone specifically. In order to maintain their peace and be free to conduct their activities, they can’t afford to cause any problems like taking the wives or children of well-known family heads. I’ve looked at it from every angle, and honestly, them being behind this is very unlikely.”
That doesn’t seem like a strategically sound move. From any direction I look at it,” my father adds. “Unless Lucio has a beef with them that he’s not telling us about.”
I roll my eyes when my grandfather scoffs. “Unlike you, Enrico, we don’t believe in carrying on with petty feuds and wars. Here, when you have a fucking problem, you meet up somewhere nice and neutral, drink aged wines, air your grievances, settle it, and get the fuck over it.”
“But then again,” he continues with a drawl. “The same can’t be applied to you because you don’t even have any idea what your grievance is about, do you?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe,” Lucio says. “But what I do know is that you promised my daughter a fairy tale and dragged her right into an inherited family feud that eventually killed her.”
“We had nothing to do with her death,” Raffaele pipes up.
“It’s funny how you truly believe that she would have had a better life here.” My father chuckles. “Eleanora left because she wanted nothing to do with your island cult.”
“It’s not a cult, it’s family,” the other man barks. “Something that you know entirely nothing about.”
“It’s a goddamn cult, and you know it. You would have eventually tried to marry her off to one of your loyal men to keep them all close, forever loyal and tied to you,” Papa says. “That’s some sort of narcissism. Wanting to control everybody’s life with the excuse that you just want to keep them safe and do what’s best for them is a mental illness, and she wanted no part of it.”
“She was fine with it until you came along!”
My gaze flies between the two men, and when I look at Raffaele, I see that he’s looking at me. He’s looking at me like he hasn’t even noticed the fight that is brewing right there in that room, as if the men can start shooting at each other right now and he won’t be bothered, like I’m the center of his world, and everything else is secondary.
My mouth goes dry as our gazes hold, that familiar charge rising between us, making my heart pound in my chest. It’s this singular feeling of being alone in the world with him whenever he’s near.
Nothing else matters.
Nothing else even exists.
Just him. And me.
“You ruined everything. You took her away from me and tore my family apart!” Lucio roars, and I’m suddenly snapped back to the room. My father and grandfather are still throwing barbs at each other, trying to blame the other for everything that’s ever gone wrong, and I suddenly can’t stand it.
