Page 12 of Broken Mafia Bride (His to Break #2)

RAFFAELE

I n our world, it’s almost impossible for a woman to earn a seat at the table—let alone one where men shut up when she speaks.

Regina Nera has carved out an empire for herself through her blood, sweat, and tears, and if there’s one thing I respect, it’s a person who’s fought through doubt and come out on top.

The business of high-end contraband and trade has always been a luxurious one. From rare diamonds to priceless art pieces, to designer goods, and antiques. The cunning and ambitious aristocrat takes it one step further by trading in a currency that’s more powerful than dollars.

Information.

In our world, information is power. Whoever has it has a fuck lot of control over others. It makes Nera both feared and respected. So, when she gives me a direct invitation to a meeting, there’s no way I can refuse, and she knows it.

Of course, if I had known that I’d be seated a few feet from Enrico Montanari and my father, I’d have laughed in her face and gone off to get shitfaced. I grit my teeth, tapping my foot in impatience under the table. A hand drops down on my thigh, nails digging in.

I turn my head and see concern written all over Isabella’s face.

“I’m fine,” I tell her. She’s insisted on following me everywhere like a loyal dog, nagging at me when I drink too much and seizing my car keys when I want to go to the underground fighting ring.

I know it’s her way of caring, but all of the pressure inside me needs an outlet, and eventually, she should be ready to deal with shit hitting the fan when I blow up.

“Are you?” she asks, eyeing the two older men carefully. “I’m surprised they aren’t shooting at each other.”

I snort. “Give it a minute. They just got here.”

“Who thought it was a great idea to have them both in the same location?” She grins at me. “I’ve already mapped out an exit for when they start roaring at each other.”

“This cannot continue,” one of the men spits. “I haven’t been able to do any business in over a month because local thugs have overrun my warehouses on the north side.”

“We have no more control over the streets and drug distribution,” another man adds. “It’s a mess, and I’m afraid this will be the perfect opportunity for these local gangs to get some sense of cooperation and take over.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” my father waves his hand dismissively. “There’s no way those greedy thugs will ever decide to work together.”

“That’s not the point,” Regina glares at him.

“This damn war between your family and the Montanari is the exodus of the chaos happening on the streets now, and it simply can’t continue.

It might have started as a family feud, but you both must realize that it’s escalated far beyond your control… all our control, as a matter of fact.”

I sigh, reaching for the bottle of whiskey in front of me. I ignore Isabella’s chiding look. If it bothers her so much, she’s free to walk away.

“Is that what this is?” Enrico sneers. “An intervention? Who the hell made you queen, Nera?”

He looks worse than the last time I saw him—gaunt, gray, like something vital has been hollowed out. His eyes are dead, his skin clings to sharp cheekbones, and he’s lost even more weight, like he’s been starving on grief. Losing your whole family without answers would destroy anyone.

I get it. At least a little.

I lost my mother. Then Giulia. Both ripped from me in ways that still don’t make sense.

That kind of loss doesn’t fade—it infects you.

Clings to your bones, crawls under your skin.

Maybe I look like him now. A ghost in a tailored suit.

A man walking through the world as a shadow of what he used to be.

The dark-haired, voluptuous woman leans back, mouth spreading into a smile that reveals her single diamond tooth. “Don’t be stupid, Enrico. I’m not trying to become the boss here. I’m simply doing what everyone here has been wanting to do for a while now. It’s long overdue, and you know it.”

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’t stop 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 started affecting 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.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

And all I can hear is the sound of a noose tightening.

“How come this union is supposed to fix everything, while being with Giulia did the opposite?” I snarl.

“Raffaele—” my father starts.

I cut the air with my hand. “Don’t.”

Then I reach for the nearest bottle of whiskey, uncork it, and take a long pull, letting the fire burn its way down. “You know what? I don’t give a damn anymore.”

“The streets are chaos,” one of the men snaps. “We’re bleeding control, losing allies, and the feds are closing in. This war is sinking everything.”

My father leans forward. “Then what’s your solution?”

Regina slams her palm on the table. “You fix your shit. That’s the solution.”

Her voice cuts through the room, sharp and rising. “I don’t care if you fight, shake hands, start a joint business, merge your families, or drag each other to hell—this blood feud is rotting everything from the inside out. And the rest of us are done paying the price.”

She lets the words settle, then adds, lower, darker:

“This ends now. Because if it doesn’t, it’ll take every last one of us down with it.”

I don’t bother telling her she’s wasting her breath. If Giulia vanishing off the face of the earth or my father ending up in a wheelchair didn’t make them see the cost of this war, then nothing will. They’re too far gone. Too soaked in the blood they helped spill.

I glance at Enrico. Maybe he’s grieving—but if he’s looking for Giulia, it sure as hell doesn’t show.

No noise, no blood, no real effort. He didn’t raise hell.

Didn’t even flinch when she vanished. Because she was never someone he fought for—just a pawn in his game.

And now? Her absence is the perfect excuse to keep lighting matches.

Bitterness churns in my gut. We should’ve run. Giulia and I should’ve burned the map the second we saw what this life was doing to us. But we stayed. Tried to fix it. Tried to save people who never wanted to be saved.

Now she’s gone. And I’m sitting in this goddamn meeting like I still owe them anything.

Giulia and I would’ve been curled up in some villa, far away from all this. Sometimes I dream about it—strolling hand in hand with her along the beach. In some of the dreams, there’s a little boy with her hazel eyes between us. In others, it’s just the two of us.

But they all end the same way.

One moment, her hand is in mine. The next, a force more powerful than anything on earth is tearing her away. She screams for me, begs me not to let it take her—and I try my damnedest, but I always fail, no matter how hard I fight—I always lose her.

It’s agony. Having to replay my failure every single time I close my eyes.

Reliving the worst moment of my life, again and again.

So when I hear my father’s voice slice through the fog, it hits like a slap.

“Joining our families may be the only viable solution,” he says, calm and cold, like we’re negotiating stocks, not blood. “But Raffaele seems more interested in dragging this war out than ending it.”

My jaw tightens, rage spiking behind my eyes.

Enrico folds his arms, his tone clipped. “Isabella’s willing to step up—for the sake of all our families. If the Gagliardis can’t meet that same level of sacrifice, maybe peace was never what you were after.”

There it is. Not a proposal—an accusation. A challenge disguised as diplomacy. They’re painting themselves as the reasonable ones, the peacemakers, while I play the villain in their tidy little narrative.

And maybe I am. Because if peace means backroom deals, marriages made for optics, and papering over rot with a polished smile… then it’s not peace. It’s theater—a rigged play with blood under the stage.

My fingers curl into fists under the table. So now they’re ready to talk peace—after years of bloodshed, after sending men to die for their pride. Not because they regret it, not because they’ve changed. But because it’s finally starting to cost them something.

They don’t even have the grace to end this by themselves; they still require sacrificial lambs to go along with their sick plan.

Well, they can forget about it. I was willing to do whatever had to be done to stop this war once upon a time, but now, I don’t give a damn if Chicago burns down to the ground.

On the contrary, I’ll love to see it burn. Maybe the fire will be enough to warm my frozen heart.

Let them sit here and dress this up like politics. Let them pretend this is about solutions. All I see is a pile of corpses and a girl with hazel eyes I can’t stop chasing through nightmares.

I rise to my feet, face blank. “How cute, Enrico and Edoardo finally agree on something.” Snorting, I take another swig of my drink. “If you fuckers want this family joined so bad, you’d better put your heads together and figure out where Giulia is.”

“Raffaele! Raff!” Isabella calls, but I ignore the lot of them. Bottle tucked under my arm, I march out of the room, blood thrumming with the desire to toss a grenade over my shoulder and watch it all go boom.