Page 13 of Broken Mafia Bride

“If you’re really behind this—” I start, but Isabella quickly cuts me off.

“We’re wasting time being at each other’s throats when the real people or person behind this is getting away,” she snaps. “Have you spoken to your father?”

“There’s no way he knew about my plans,” I argue. “I was careful. And anyway, my father and I aren’t really seeing eye to eye at the moment.”

“Which is more reason he could have taken her. Maybe she was supposed to be a bargaining chip. I hate to say it, but the Gagliardis have more motive to take her than Enrico.”

The man in question steps forward, fingers curled into fists at his side. “That bastard Edoardo. I knew I should have killed him when we had the chance.”

“You have no proof he did this.” I don’t know why I’m defending him. Maybe some part of me still feels loyalty to myfamily, or maybe I’m stubbornly refusing to believe that my father can bethatmuch of an evil bastard.

“I don’t need proof,” Enrico snorts. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. This has him written all over it: trickery, ambush, and underhanded methods. This means war, and this time around, I’m not going to stop until the Gagliardi family is nothing but a speck of dust.”

He begins to step closer to me until he’s in my face. “Tell your father I’m coming. He’d better pray I don’t get there first.”

“You’re not really planning another war.” Isabella looks incredulous. “We’re still trying to recover from the first one. What the hell, Enrico? Are you doing this for Giulia, or is she just a convenient excuse for you to continue your eternal grudge?”

Let’s not be martyrs.The words I’d whispered to Giulia when I asked her to marry me. The words she’d said back to me, her voice steady, not even forty-eight hours ago.

“Raff, you have to talk to your father and find out the truth,” Isabella implores.

The problem is that if I go anywhere near my father, he’ll order his men to shoot first and ask questions later. Saying that we aren’t on speaking terms is being extra generous. I have, after all, messed up his plans, betrayed the family, and turned myself into the enemy.

“I don’t know how that’s possible,” I finally confess.

She grips my hand, eyes wide and teary. “You have to try, Raff. He might have her after all. I’m sure neither of us wants this to escalate to a full blown-out war.”

I tune out Enrico’s erratic barks and screaming, all my focus on Isabella’s pleading eyes.

“We have to work together just like old times to find her,” she offers me a tentative smile.

I drag a shaky hand through my hair, glancing over at the older man. Coming here today, all messed up in the head andhungry for blood, may have been the worst decision I’ve ever made, next to not grabbing Giulia and disappearing into thin air from day one when we reconnected at the airport.

I shake the thought away.

It doesn’t matter that I can’t change the past. What Icando is take action here and now. I’m going to find Giulia, and I don’t care how high or low I have to search. She couldn’t have disappeared into thin air, shit like that just doesn’t happen.

Someone somewhere must have seen or heard something.

My chest aches with something I don’t have a name for. Guilt. Rage. Love so desperate it feels like it might swallow me whole.

If she’s alive out there, she’s scared. She’s waiting for me to come.

Spinning on my heels, I stalk out of the room and the house. I’m going to find my woman, and I’m not going to stop until I have her back in my arms, no matter the price I’ll have to pay.

Even if it costs me what little soul I have left.

5

GIULIA

Four months later

“Any luck with the search?” Mrs. Amato asks as she heaps food onto my plate.

I roll my eyes fondly at my gigantic portion of food. Sienna’s mother thinks that I don’t eat enough, constantly worrying about me being skinny and the baby. She’s made it a point to send Marco and me home with Tupperware full of food.

“No luck yet,” I tell her. “The state investigator hasn’t decided to bless us with his presence yet.”