Page 46 of Broken Mafia Bride (His to Break #2)

RAFFAELE

A couple of minutes earlier

I stare at Pepe, my face a mask of confusion. “I don’t think I heard you well. Did you just say that Lucio had a hand in Eleanora’s death?”

My cousin sighs, suddenly looking very worn and tired. He drops down onto the foldable seat I vacated. “I think you’re going to have to sit down for this.”

“I prefer to stand,” I bite out.

My fists curl. Every muscle in my body is tight, coiled like I’m about to be hit. Maybe I already have been.

He shrugs. “Your choice.”

“Spit it out. What the hell did you mean by that?”

His eyes meet mine, and a cold shiver runs down my spine.

It’s the same look I saw in the eyes of the man from the parking lot of the underground fighting ring—right before he killed himself to escape whatever fate being a traitor would surely bring.

It unnerved me then, and I’m not ashamed to say it’s just as unnerving now.

“You think Lucio is an evil bastard for kidnapping your kid?” he asks.

“That’s barely the tip of the iceberg, Raffaele.

I told you I joined his ranks at sixteen, but before then, I used to report to his second.

I don’t know much, but I was thirteen when I accidentally walked in on a conversation between Lucio and his second-in-command. ”

His throat bobs with a swallow. “They were talking about a kid. Not just any kid—Lucio’s granddaughter. I was confused at first because I didn’t think Re Ombra had any family. I’d never heard about him having one on the streets where I grew up.”

“They were talking about Giulia?” I ask, shocked.

He shoots me a look so sharp it could slice skin. My words die on my tongue.

“It wasn’t just any mission,” he says, voice low and lethal. “Lucio had a daughter. She ran from Sardegna years ago—cut all ties. He wanted her back. All of her. So he sent men to retrieve her… and her daughters.”

He pauses. A beat of silence so heavy it hums in my ears.

“It went sideways. Horribly. What was supposed to be a quiet extraction turned into a massacre.”

My breath catches. I already know where this is going—and it makes my blood run cold.

“They were run off a cliff,” he says flatly. “Eleanora didn’t make it.”

I reel back like he just slammed a fist into my chest.

“ Fucking hell .” The words scrape out of me like gravel. “So Lucio’s the one who tore Giulia’s world apart. He killed her mother. Her sister .”

That wasn’t just the day Giulia’s life shattered.

It was the day ours did.

It set Enrico on a warpath of revenge against my family, escalating the feud and tearing Giulia and me apart before we even had a chance to be together.

Now, after all these years, there’s nothing left standing in our way—except for the fact that a madman has our daughter in his grip.

I can’t even begin to understand why. If he’s so obsessed with keeping his family intact, why would he rip Giulia away from her own child?

No matter how I look at it, it doesn’t make any sense.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?” Pepe’s question snaps me out of my thoughts. “Eleanora was the only person who died that day on the cliff.”

It takes a second for the meaning to register, and when it does, my blood runs cold.

“Valentina is alive?”

My ears start ringing.

My brain refuses to accept the words forming in front of me.

That means…

This fucked-up situation runs far deeper than I could have ever imagined.

“Where is she?” I rasp. “Where the hell has he been hiding her?”

My thoughts are shredded. Nothing makes sense—and yet, suddenly, everything does.

We’ve been chasing ghosts in the wrong shadows.

The second Lucio became our prime suspect, the locks started clicking. Doors opening. Truth bleeding out.

And now, every piece of this cursed puzzle is snapping into place—forming one massive, blinking arrow. Pointing straight to Noemi.

Then Pepe smirks. But it’s not amusement—it’s bitter. Haunted.

“I’d ask you to guess, but we don’t have a lot of time.”

He looks me in the eye. “Yeah… small detail I left out—I’m married to Giulia’s twin. Caterina is Valentina Montanari.”

The ground tilts beneath me. No. No, that can’t be.

I stagger back, and he chuckles darkly. “I did warn you to sit down.”

“What kind of sick joke is this?”

“It’s no joke.” He rises to his feet, hands stuck in his pockets.

“Does Valentina know?” I snap, my voice rising. “Does she have any idea what Lucio did? That he shattered her family? That he killed her mother?”

I pace, every step fueled by the fire clawing up my throat.

“Giulia’s lived with that loss like a phantom limb—grieving a sister she doesn’t remember, carrying a silence that’s been eating her alive.”

I stop. Face him. My jaw locked so tight it aches.

“She’s been half a person since that day on the cliff.”

He exhales slowly, like the truth is being dragged out of him.

“Cat doesn’t know,” he says. “She has no idea she’s Giulia’s twin. No idea her real name is Valentina.”

His voice tightens.

“Whatever happened on that bridge—the trauma—it wiped her clean. And Lucio? He didn’t hesitate. He saw the perfect opportunity. A blank slate to shape however he wanted.”

He meets my eyes, guilt etched deep into his face.

“He fed her a lie. Told her she was an orphan he rescued off the streets of Sardegna. And she believed him.”

I’ve always thought my father was the worst person on earth. Edoardo is a manipulative, heartless, conniving bastard—but compared to Lucio Sanna, he’s small fries. The lengths Lucio will go to, the depths of hell he’s willing to crawl into just to get what he wants, are terrifying.

“You never told her. Why?” I ask.

“First, I don’t know how deep Lucio’s damage goes. I don’t know what memories he’s buried, twisted, or erased altogether. Dropping the truth on her like a bomb—what if it shatters her completely?”

He scrubs a hand over his face, eyes haunted.

“And second… I’m scared.”

I raise a brow. “Of what?”

He doesn’t answer right away. Just stares at the floor like it might offer a way out.

“I’m scared she won’t be the same once she knows. That everything between us—everything I built with her—won’t survive the truth. That she’ll look at me like I’m part of the lie.”

I fold my arms. “You think finding out she’s Valentina Montanari—Re Ombra’s blood—will change her that much?”

He finally looks up.

“I think it’ll change everything.”

His mouth presses into a thin line. “She’s already so loyal and grateful to him for what she thinks he’s done for her, Raffaele. One day, I want to take her—take us—far, far away from here. I’m terrified she’ll never agree to leave him if she knows he’s her grandfather.”

“So you’re lying to her just like he did?” I ask with a derisive snort.

Lucio’s poison runs through every one of us. He builds puppets, then cuts the strings and watches us collapse.

“What makes you two so different?”

“Are you trying to tell me you’ve never hidden something from Giulia?” he shoots back, giving me a look. “Even if it meant protecting her?”

I eye him carefully. “What aren’t you telling me? This is more than the bullshit reasons you’re giving me.”

“Damn it, Raff,” he growls. “That bastard Lucio dug a trap for me and shoved me straight into it. He knew Cat was interested in me—he’d seen the way I watched her. She was seventeen, and I was sixteen years older. Old enough to know better.”

He lets out a bitter laugh. “Lucio knew all of it. And he knew exactly how to play his cards.”

I take a step toward him. “Pepe. What did you do?”

He doesn’t answer. Just stares past me like he’s looking at ghosts.

“Tell me,” I growl. “ Now. ”

Only then does he speak.”

His eyes flicker with memories of the past. “He sent me to her. I don’t have hard evidence, but it’s no coincidence I got summoned to his office and found a drunk Caterina waiting for me.

All it took was a kiss to seal my fate. I’d been digging into what happened at the bridge before then—he must’ve found out. ”

Pepe lets out a humorless laugh. “It was either keep my mouth shut and get his blessing to marry her, or face the justice I ‘deserved’ for touching his underage ward.”

He raises his head and meets my eyes. “I had no choice but to fall in line. I didn’t groom her or prey on her. I love her.”

The more I uncover about Lucio, the more it feels like I’ve sent Giulia straight into the lion’s den. I need to call her—now. I pray she hasn’t reached her grandfather’s office yet. I don’t even want to imagine what might happen if he catches her there—or worse, if she confronts him.

“I believe you,” I say, because I see it—the desperation in his eyes, the aching need to hear that he’s not the monster Re Ombra has manipulated him into becoming.

“I need to warn Giulia,” I add, already pulling out my phone and dialing her number.

Relief washes over me when she answers on the first ring—until her next words slam into my chest like a punch:

“I’m kinda in the middle of something.”

“There’s something you need to know,” I say evenly, forcing my voice to stay calm.

There’s no response from her. Confused, I strain my ears and just make out the sound of shuffling. What the fuck is going on in there? “Giulia? Giulia?”

Still nothing.

A cold wave of panic rushes through me. “Giulia, answer me. Are you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” she replies.

“It’s about Lucio,” I say, my tone dropping. “It gets worse, baby. I think you need to get out of there. Now.”

“What did you find out?”

“The incident at the bridge that caused you to lose your mother was his doing. And apparently, your twin is alive. He’s kept her here all these years. That sick bastard tore your family apart in some fucked-up plot to keep everyone under his thumb.”

“It’s Caterina, isn’t it?” she breathes. “She’s my sister. Valentina.”

I pause. “You knew?”

A broken sob cracks down the line.

“Giulia, baby, I want you to get out of that office now,” I grit out. “We’ll find Noemi, but I’m not risking you. Everything we thought we knew about Re Ombra was just surface-level. I don’t want you anywhere near him. You hear me? Get out of there right now.”

“I have to go,” she whispers—and hangs up.

My heart free-falls. That tone in her voice—it’s final, like she’s already walking into fire.

I blink at the phone, a deep unease filling my stomach and making it tight and achy. If there’s one thing I know about Giulia, it’s that she’s stubborn as hell. I have a feeling she’s not going to listen to me and leave Lucio’s study—not until she finds something.

And now that she knows about his involvement in her mother’s death, she has an even greater vendetta against him.

I turn back toward Pepe, who’s watching me closely, assessing me, trying to guess my next move. “We need a safehouse on the island where Lucio won’t find us—somewhere we can stay and figure all of this out. Do you have a place for us?”

“Raffaele—”

“Do you?” I snap. “Are you going to continue living your life under Lucio’s thumb? Face it, Pepe, everything is going down one way or another. This is the perfect time to choose your side, stand your ground, and save the woman you love.”

“I know what side I’m on,” he snaps back. “I was trying to say that your best course of action would be sticking around and pretending you’re still under Lucio’s thumb. Trust me, you’re not ready to go on the offensive against him.”

I glance over my shoulder. I can see Casa Bianca’s high fence and wrought iron gates from the open garage doors. There’s an odd niggling at the base of my spine—a sense of danger I can’t shake off.

Finally, I see Lucio for what he is.

Not just a king.

A goddamn shadow .

One we’ve all been living under.

“It doesn’t matter if we’re ready,” I tell him. “Desperate times call for desperate actions. He made the first move by touching my daughter, and now I’m finding out he’s fucked up Giulia’s entire life. We’re long overdue to be on the offensive.”

I don’t wait for Pepe to reply. I turn and bolt out of the garage, warning bells going off in my head so loudly they drown out everything else. Sweat pours down my face as I race across the street, Casa Bianca just up ahead.

The island no longer feels like sun-warmed stone and olive trees.

It’s all shadows now. A lie carved into paradise.

And that house—Casa Bianca—doesn’t look like a home.

It looks like a tomb.

As I reach for the doorknob of the front door, lightning flashes and a boom of thunder follows, matching the loud thud from inside and shaking the entire house to its foundation.

The sound isn’t just thunder—it’s an omen. A warning.

Or maybe it’s war drums.