Page 141 of Broken Mafia Bride

The one time I want Enrico to be a calculating bastard, he ends up being sentimental. A humorless chuckle slips out of my mouth. Fate is such a cruel bitch.

I eye the older man with a brand-new perspective. I don’t know what conversation he and Giulia had, but I’m not going to forgive Enrico as easily as she did. I believe that if he hadn’t been such a shitty father, none of this would have happened. We would never have had to arrange a secret wedding—the seed for Lucio kidnapping her, her memory loss, and then losing our daughter.

Bitterness fills me, settling in my stomach like dark, heavy ink.

“I know you hate me,” he suddenly says.

My head jerks up in surprise, and our gazes lock on each other.

A small smile curls one side of his mouth. “It’s obvious. Don’t look so surprised.”

“There’s no reason for me to hate you. I don’t even know you.”

He tries to shrug, but only ends up wincing when the cuffs dig into his wrists. “It still doesn’t change the fact that you hate me. You blame me for everything that’s happened. You think that if I hadn’t been such a piece-of-shit father to Giulia, none of this would’ve happened.”

I consider lying, but I don’t know if we’re going to make it out of this alive. The least I can do for Enrico is be honest with him—even if he deserves nothing from me.

“You’re right,” I say eventually. “I don’t fucking like you, Enrico. Sure, you’re not as bad as Lucio, but you’re not blameless in all of this—and you know it.”

“Of course I know it!” he snaps. “You think I haven’t blamed myself every day since I found out that she’s alive—after four years of feeling like I single-handedly murdered her? I blamed myself for years after the accident on the bridge too. I told myself that if I had just left Eleanora with her sick father, she would have been fine.”

He breathes hard and fast. “But now that I realize all the evil Lucio’s done, it’s clear to me that taking her away from here was the best thing I ever did. My biggest mistake was spending so many years drowning in my own guilt.”

Enrico licks his dry lips. “I’m afraid of dying. And not because I haven’t lived a full life, or because of the judgment awaiting me afterward. I’m terrified that my El will never forgive me for what I’ve put our daughter through.”

I stare at him, trying to put myself in his shoes. The guilt and anguish are clearly written in the deep lines of his face, but a part of me still refuses to see him as anything but the first man who broke Giulia’s heart. I should take a page from her book and let the past go—but I can’t.

Unlike her, I never saw the man who was the perfect husband and father—only the part that hurt her over and over again, the part that took advantage of her repeatedly just to fuel his baseless hatred and war against my family. I don’t trust that he’s suddenly a changed man.

Perhaps now that he’s facing his own mortality, he’s desperate to make peace with everyone he’s wronged so his soul can find rest.

Well, fuck him.

Maybe after all of this is over, and he proves that he’s ready and willing to truly know Giulia and be there for her, I can start to think of him as something other than a sorry excuse for a father. But until then, I’m anti-Enrico.

“I know you don’t trust me?—”

“You can bet your ass that I don’t.”

He sighs. “I don’t know if you’re the best choice for my daughter.”

I bristle at that, a retort gathering in my throat, but he speaks again before I can spit out my acidic words.

“But she loves you, and it’s clear you feel the same,” he says. “I expected you to walk away—to give up on her—a long time ago.”

“That’s kind of your MO, not mine.”

His jaw clenches. “I’m not trying to manipulate how you feel about me, but I just want to point out the obvious: Giulia has forgiven me, and she wants me to be part of her life. Do you really want her to spend the next few months or years feeling like she’s caught between us all over again?”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You bastard.”

Just then, the door opens with a heavy creak, and three of Lucio’s armed men walk in—one taking a position in the corner of the room, aiming his gun at me. The other two go about undoing the chains the cuffs are hooked to.

As soon as we’re free, they drag us out of the room carelessly. I glance over my shoulder just in time to see Enrico stumbling weakly, nearly face-planting. One of the guards yanks him back up by the shoulder and shoves him forward.

I grit my teeth in anger. Even though I’m not Enrico’s biggest fan, the rough treatment still grates on my nerves.

“Where are you taking us?” I ask.