Page 148 of Broken Mafia Bride

For the first time in a long time, I can feel my future stretching out in front of me, full of endless possibilities. I have my father’s support, I have the man that I love by my side, our child, my long-lost sister, and there are no more strings pulling at us.

We’re free.

“Giulia, are you all right?”

I blink back into the present. Raffaele is staring at me with concern. It’s only then that his condition becomes clear to me. His face is pale, and he looks shaky.

“I should be asking you that.” I hurry over to him. “You’re losing a lot of blood.”

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. We need to get you to the hospital. You’re bleeding and?—”

My words are cut off as he cups my face in his large hand and pulls me into a kiss. I melt into it, clinging to him like a lifeline. Even though Lucio’s dead body behind me should be all theevidence I need to feel safe, it’s Raffaele’s kiss that finally drives the point home.

“Don’t you dare die,” I whisper to him as we pull away from the kiss.

He chuckles lightly. “I’m not going anywhere. Not for a very long time. You’re going to get sick of me pretty soon, baby.”

“I could never get sick of you.”

A smile lifts his mouth. “I’m going to remind you that you said this a few weeks from now.”

“You better hope I’m not holding anything sharp when you do,” I tease.

Everything inside me feels like it’s shutting down slowly, like if I stop talking and smiling and making jokes, I’ll fall right apart. Like if I let go of Raffaele, even for a second, everything that has happened will catch up with me and knock me down.

And I’m not sure I’ll be able to get back up.

Deep down inside, I’m still reeling, trying to convince myself that I’ll wake up any moment from now and see that all of this was one bad dream that stretched into so many lifetimes. There’s a hurt, a gaping wound inside me.

And there’s also a part of me that’s considering Lucio’s last words. Will my father ever be the dad I want? I still resent him. I can’t help it. How can I not?

Even though my grandfather was crazy and almost ended this family, I have to admit that he did care about Val and raised her well. She grew up in a real home, safe, happy, and wanted. Unlike me, who lived like a ghost in my house, each day that I watched my father look past me like I didn’t exist breaking me a little more.

Would I have been better off with Lucio after all?

As if Raffaele can hear my thoughts, he wraps his arms around me and pulls me closer, my head pressed to his chest. “It doesn’t matter now, Giulia.”

“But maybe it does,” I whisper. “Did I really have the life that my mother would have wanted, or would she have wanted me here in Casa Bianca?”

“Don’t you see, Giulia?” He sighs. “For all the points he made, the fact is that he never came for you. And that’s all you need to know about the kind of person Lucio Sanna was. His love and care for Val was merely a fragment of his plan, a tool that he used to maintain this illusion of paradise.

“If he truly cared, he would never have lied to her and erased her identity,” he continues. “Even her relationship with Pepe was only permitted because it fit into the plans he had already outlined. Imagine what would have happened if she had fallen for someone not in his master plan.”

I think about it. “It would have ended in a situation just as bad as ours.”

He snorts. “You really think Lucio would have been as lenient as your father? He’d have gotten rid of me and held you at gunpoint until you said your ‘I do’s’ to whoever he thought was best.”

“He did so much evil, but now I understand how he got away with it,” I say. “He knew how to get into people’s heads, mess with them—a real master puppeteer.”

“I hate Enrico for a lot of what he’s done to you,” he tells me. “But I’m glad he got your mother out of here.”

I look up at him, my heart no longer feeling so heavy and burdened. There’s a lightness there, the wounds starting to heal. I know it won’t happen overnight, and I suspect that for the next few months, the horror of this entire mess will haunt me, but with Raffaele and Noemi and all my newfound family around me, I know I’ll be fine.

We willallbe all right.

“I’m glad he got her out of here too,” I admit.