Page 33 of Broken Mafia Bride

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, thennothing 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.