Page 71 of Broken Mafia Prince
“W-what?” I finally stammer out. “Why would they want…” I trail off, at a loss.
“My father is too blinded by his hatred to realize that the deal is too good to be true,” he sighs.
“Why would the Syndicate want us gone so badly? What can they possibly gain if we are gone? If it were literally any other person on the planet, I’d say they were trying to get their hands on our family property and businesses, but what we own is nothing compared to what the Syndicate owns.”
“That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.” Raffaele looks just as confused as I am. “Why do they want this war?”
At that moment, the silence of the warehouse is broken by the sound of a loud boom. The world seems to rock with the force of the explosion, and I’m flung backward, crashing into some crates behind me. Thick smoke begins to rise around me as fire licks up the walls of the building.
“Giulia!” Raffaele roars, racing for me. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine.” I groan, raising my hand to where I smacked the side of my head against the wall. The area feels sore, but I’m relieved to see it’s not bleeding. I take his hand, staggering to my feet. “What the hell is going on? I’m getting really sick of bombs being thrown at me.”
His eyes narrow, but before he can ask, there’s the sound of heavy footsteps headed our way.
“Don’t let them get out alive!” a man’s voice orders.
Raffaele and I exchange glances, and he whips out his Glock, turning off the safety. “Stay here and?—”
“I don’t take orders from you,” I snap, pulling out my dagger from where it’s strapped to my boot. His eyes widen at the sight of the weapon. I brace for the usual condescension about how I can’t possibly know how to handle it, and I should leave a big, strong man to protect me.
“The darkness is our advantage,” he tells me instead. “If my calculations are right, there are maybe eleven of them.”
I whistle, suddenly wishing I’d brought a gun. “Eleven? They must be getting desperate.”
And bythey, I mean the Syndicate. There’s no one else I can think of who would go through this much reckless effort to get rid of us.
“Don’t die, Giulia.” His voice is uncharacteristically soft, and it gives me pause.
I glance over at him, but he has his gaze fixed ahead, an unreadable expression on his face. Does he care? Or am I being delusional? There’s no time to think about that, though, because at that moment, the men burst into the burning room.
I take a stance, gripping the dagger tighter. There is a moment of silence as we size each other up, Raffaele and me versus ten armed men. I crack my neck, the sense of calm that envelops me whenever I’m in the training ring filling me now. And then all hell breaks loose.
The men charge. I throw my dagger with all my might, and it digs into one man’s head. He drops dead just as another opens fire. I leap for one of the crates, taking cover as the man continues to shoot in my direction. I turn my head and see Raffaele crouching behind a crate, too.
Our eyes meet, and he nudges his head forward. I give him a slight nod, and together we crawl around the stacks of crates, in sync in a way that only people who’ve worked together for years can achieve. The thought makes me falter for a second, but there’s no time to send myself into a spin.
The men haven’t noted that we’ve shifted positions and are now directly behind them. I spy the first man’s dead body with my knife in it. Raffaele catches my eye and shakes his head subtly.
I roll my eyes but decide to listen this time around. His mouth presses into a thin line at my attitude. Before I know what’s happening, he’s aimed his gun between two crates and fired.
I leap out of my hiding zone, grab my knife, and rush to where the men are just beginning to turn, finally realizing that they’ve been shooting in the wrong direction for a while. One of them tries to shoot at me, but his gun merely clicks.
A smile curves my mouth as I stab him in the stomach. The one at his side aims at me, but I turn in time and swing my arm up in an arch. He lets out a roar of pain as the blade slices off his fingers. I catch the gun before it can drop to the ground, then stick it in his mouth and fire.
Behind me, I hear the sickening sound of bone crunching.
I turn to see Raffaele clutching one of the men in place while his massive fists come down over and over again on the man’s face until it’s reduced to pulp. The other men lay dead at his feet, and eventually, he lets the one he has a hold of go. The man’s body drops to the ground with a thud.
When he turns in my direction, I take a cautious step back. The violence pouring out of him feels like a living, breathing thing. Goosebumps rise on my arms, my breath catching in my throat at the darkness in his eyes.
“I have a safehouse somewhere in the city,” he says. “Not even my father knows about it.”
My eyebrows crawl up to my hairline at the implication of his words. Would his father really send the Syndicate’s men after his own son? If he did something so diabolical, then there’s truly no low he won’t go to.
“Let’s get the hell out of here.”
It’s when Raffaele is slipping into the driver’s seat of the Dodge that I notice him wincing. “You’re hurt.”
