Page 10 of Broken Mafia Bride (His to Break #2)

GIULIA

“I can’t find her socks,” Marco calls out from the inner room. “Are you sure they’re in the drawer?”

I give him a dry look. “I don’t know, Marco, you were laundry captain, remember? Where did you keep her socks?”

He pokes his head out the door, a sheepish smile on his face. “I think I may have misplaced them. I found one of the Barney socks—but the other’s gone.”

“Who’s going to care that she’s wearing different socks?” I laugh, tickling her tummy. “She’s a kid, she doesn’t care. She just needs her feet to be warm.”

With a sigh, he trudges back to the room. As soon as my daughter sees him, she shoots him a face-splitting smile. “Marco!”

“Hey, princess.” He smiles at her, waving the single sock in front of her. “Let’s get you suited up, shall we?”

Noemi glances down at her feet. “That don’t match.”

“Doesn’t,” I correct. “The thing is, Uncle Marco misplaced your socks, so you’re not going to match today. It can be our little secret.”

She makes a face, looking unimpressed by my explanation, and I press my mouth together to hide my smile.

At just two years of age, she’s already extremely smart and almost impossible to fool.

She started walking early, and by the time she turned one, she was already pointing at things, mimicking sounds, and reacting to simple instructions.

Sometimes, I catch myself wondering if I’m being cruel by depriving Raffaele of the chance to watch his daughter grow. I know that this life I’m living here is all a facade. I feel like a coward, running from everything I know.

But it’s not just me anymore.

I can’t afford to be brave and careless about Noemi’s life by barging right back into Chicago and jumping back into the thick of things. Not when I don’t know if it’s safe for us, or if we will even have a place there.

If he’s moved on, walking back into his life after all this time will be unfair.

The right thing to do will be to let him be happy with whoever he’s moved on with, not appear out of thin air and destroy whatever progress he’s made.

Maybe, just maybe, this is my life now—and Chicago’s just a place I used to know.

“Are you all right?” Marco’s soft question snaps me out of my thoughts.

I blink back to the present to see that he’s staring at me with open concern.

“Y-yeah, I’m fine,” I clear my throat. “Let’s just get her shoes on and?—”

When I turn to my daughter, I see that Marco’s already helped her into her socks and shoes. I must have tuned out for a while.

Shaking my head to clear my thoughts, I go about packing Noemi’s lunchbox while Marco gathers her into his arms, telling her about the fish he caught last night.

“We should get some sugar from the store,” I tell him as we step out. “I want to make some cookies to serve after dinner.”

“Yay, cookies!” Noemi cries excitedly. “Is Doctor Si coming for dinner?”

I can’t help but laugh. I have no idea how my daughter ended up knowing Sienna as Doctor Si, but it’s sweet, and the two are inseparable. Which is yet another reason why returning to Chicago is a problem.

My daughter has already made connections here: Marco and Sienna’s family. They’re more or less her family now, and ripping her away from them will hurt her.

Or maybe all of this is just an excuse because I’m too much of a coward to get my heart broken when I find out he’s moved on.

“Doctor Si will be at dinner,” Marco assures her. “And guess what?”

“What?” she asks excitedly, big blue eyes so like her father’s trained on the other man.

“I’ll let you have two glasses of juice if you eat all your food.”

She hesitates, glancing over at me for confirmation, and I shoot Marco a look before nodding. “Yup, it’s a deal.”

“Okay.” She nods.

After we drop her off at the daycare, Marco and I continue on our way. Eventually, we get to the junction where we split ways, him to the lake and me to the small-town store where I work as a cashier.

Olive, who works the night shift, is already waiting at the door when I arrive. She’s smacking on another layer of dark lipstick, her usual impatient ritual. She checks her watch, shrugs, and saunters out, even though she still has fifteen minutes left on her shift.

“Hey, Ariel,” an older woman with dyed red hair calls as she steps inside, her voice brimming with the promise of gossip. “Did you hear about the fire at the high school?”

I offer her a fond smile, steeling myself for an hour of small-town tales.

Her visit here almost every day is a welcome distraction from the storm that still churns inside me.

Even though I know my real name now, and the missing pieces of my past have returned, I still tell everyone to call me Ariel.

It keeps me safe, first off. And I still don’t fully get what happened to me that day—it’s a big, messy question I can’t answer.

One thing I’ve come to understand is this: Some questions don’t need answers.

Not because they aren’t important, but because chasing them will only tear open wounds I’ve barely managed to scar over.

This quiet life, this small world I’ve built—it’s not what I imagined for myself, but it’s peace.

And my daughter, Noemi, is the center of it. The reason I keep moving forward.

Still, some days, I miss Raffaele so much it feels like I’m drowning in air.

Like my lungs forget how to work because he isn’t here.

I miss Isabella too—her sharp tongue, her fierce love.

There were nights I laid awake wondering if she was safe.

But a quick, desperate search online told me she’s okay.

That she’s still standing. The person who took me only ever wanted me. Not her. That should bring me comfort.

But it doesn’t. Not really.

And of course, I miss my father. He was tough and mean sometimes, but he’s still my papa. Every day, I wonder how he’s doing, if he thinks about me or cares at all. It hurts to think about him.

But it’s been two years since everything shattered.

And somewhere between the moment my memories came rushing back and the first time I held Noemi in my arms, gasping with love and fear, I made a choice.

A quiet, aching, necessary choice. This life—calm, steady, without shadows lurking at every turn—is what my daughter deserves.

I won’t drag her back into that world of blood and vengeance just to chase a man who might not be waiting, or a father whose mistakes nearly cost me everything.

I’ve had nights—hundreds of them—where I played out every version of going back.

But in the end, I always come back to one moment: her eyes blinking up at me for the first time, her tiny fingers wrapping around mine.

That’s when I knew. This was the only path. The right one.

And I’ve held to it. No matter how much it’s broken my heart.

“No, I didn’t. What happened?” I ask, eyes wide, snapping out of my thoughts.

I’ve gotten to know a lot of people in this town. Some are even my friends now, which feels good after all I’ve been through.

She shakes her head, mouth pulled down into a frown. “You won’t believe it. It all started from a fight in the cafeteria.”

“What’s with the regular fires at the high school anyway?” Mrs. Amato asks, dishing out food on Marco’s plate.

Her husband catches my eye and shakes his head, and I bite back my smile. Sienna’s mother’s love language is feeding people. And no matter how many times I try to convince her to just sit down and enjoy a nice dinner, she still insists on showing up hours earlier and taking over the cooking.

“No idea,” I say. “But it was all I heard about today. I’ve heard so many variations of the story that I’m starting to think nobody survived it at all.”

Paolo, Sienna’s younger brother, rolls his eyes. “Someone set a book on fire in the courtyard. Big fu?—”

“Paolo!” his mother cries, turning her wide eyes to my daughter, seated in her highchair, sipping from her plastic sippy cup.

“Big effing deal,” he immediately corrects. “Sorry.”

“You’re going to make Ariel regret raising her kid around you lot,” Mrs. Amato sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Hey, what did I do? I’ve been an exemplary figure,” Marco argues, turning to me. “Haven’t I?”

“The absolute best.” I wink at him.

Noemi giggles from her highchair, then throws her arms in the air. “Best!” she echoes, beaming.

Paolo makes a face. “Ew, stop flirting. You’re going to make me lose my appetite.”

“If you showered more than once a week, maybe you’d have a girl now, and you wouldn’t be so bitter watching other people flirt,” Sienna quips.

Red rises on his cheeks. “I have a girlfriend, as a matter of fact.”

Noemi lets out a giggle, and the entire table bursts into laughter. The teenager shrugs with a sheepish grin. “Whatever. I’ve just never really clicked with American girls. I guess I’m a bit old-school.”

“Unless you plan on moving back to Italy on your own, you’d better start clicking,” I say, wagging my fork at him.

“If Marco had gone back to Sardegna when he was supposed to, Paolo could’ve moved in with him and started high school there,” Sienna adds, her mouth half-full of meatballs.

I blink, confused. “What do you mean, when he was supposed to ? I didn’t know he was…” I trail off, lost for words, while the doc glances between Marco and me, wide-eyed.

“Oh my god, you didn’t know, did you?”

I glance over at Marco, who’s doing his best to look casual, but casts a scowl at Sienna, who I’m looking at now. “It’s not a big deal.”

She mouths, “Sorry,” and looks at him with the eyes she uses when she annoys him. Which is almost every other day with them.

I turn back to Marco. “What is she talking about?”

He sighs. “It’s really nothing, Ari…”

“Tell me,” I ask, my tone firmer.

My stomach tightens. I don’t know what I expect him to say, but something about the way he won’t meet my eyes tells me it’s going to change things.

“I extended my stay here for a while so I could help you settle in. As I said, not a big deal.”