Page 4 of Broken Mafia Bride

Just then, I hear the snap of a twig nearby. I freeze, cocking my ear and waiting. It’s probably just an animal, or I might have heard wrong.

I take another step, or at least, I try to. My legs buckle under me, and I crash to the forest ground, sharp thorns slicing at my palms when I try to break my fall.

A frustrated howl tears out of my throat. Am I going to die here, in this strange place, knowing barely anything about myself?

There’s no iota of strength left inside of me, and I suspect I’ve ripped the stitching at my side.

I’m starting to fade out of consciousness, staring up at the birds circling in the sky and the way the trees sway in the breeze. I hear a twig snap again, closer this time. I turn my head to the side and see the man scowling down at me.

“I told you not to do anything stupid!”

“G-go to h-hell,” I croak out before the world goes dark again.

2

RAFFAELE

19 Hours After the Incident

“We’ve gone over the entire place more than five times, and there’s no sign of her.” Tommaso’s expression is wary, and he’s right to be.

“Look again!” I growl.

He exchanges a glance with Matteo, who’s standing behind me. “We’ve gone through the cliffs and water with a fine-toothed comb.”

“Are you trying to tell me that she fell into the water and somehow managed to disappear completely?” I ask coldly. “I don’t know about you, but in my world, that’s not how things work. People just don’t fucking disappear into thin air.”

“We’ve been searching for?—”

I grab the front of his shirt and yank my right-hand man forward before he can finish his sentence, bringing him right to my face. To his credit, he doesn’t struggle, just allows me to manhandle him. There’s wariness in his eyes, but not enough for my liking.

He must know that Matteo has my gun in his hold and doesn’t plan to release it anytime soon. I allow my lips to spreadin a sharklike smile and let him see the madness behind the facade I’ve been trying to maintain for the last nineteen hours, starting from when Giulia didn’t show up at the church, up until this moment.

I feel some distant gratification when terror flashes in his eyes.

“Nobody is leaving until my fiancée is in my arms.”

“Raffaele,” Matteo clears his throat. “If she’s been in there for over ten hours, she’s probably?—”

I don’t let him say it. I toss Tommaso away and whirl around to face the other man and reiterate. “Nobody is leaving until she’s in my arms!”

There’s chaos in my head, and my body is an empty husk, being pulled along by sheer force of will and stubborn hope. Hope that I’ll find her, that I’ll get to hold her again, that I’ll end up at that altar with her and watch her become my wife.

We should have left all of this behind and run at the first sight of trouble. Fuck fixing things. Fuck making the right decision and whatever else we told ourselves, just because we thought it was up to us to be the heroes of this story.

I don’t allow myself to believe that I’ve truly lost her, because if I have…

No, I shake my head thoroughly. She’s out there somewhere. The fact that I’m still living and breathing is all the evidence I need that she’s still alive.

“I need my gun,” I tell Matteo.

“Fuck off,” he scoffs.

Since he wrestled my gun out of my hands, he’s been hovering over me like I’m a freaking toddler, and it’s damn annoying. I don’t remember hiring a babysitter.

I narrow my eyes at him. “Give me my damn gun.”

“What are you planning to do with it?”