Page 64 of Broken Mafia Bride

Our hands brush—just barely. I lift mine, slow and deliberate, and wipe a silent tear from her cheek with the back of my fingers. Her eyes lock with mine, wide and wet, and suddenly the air thickens with the weight of everything left unsaid.

The silence howls between us. Pain pulses like a second heartbeat.

I lean in, close enough that she shudders when I speak, my voice low and rough against her ear.

“You know what’s not fair?” I whisper. “The fact that you had all the cards—and I was left floundering, wondering. I’ve searched for you every fucking day of my life—from the moment you fell… to this very second, standing here with you. I followed leads across the world. Wasted time, resources—and four years of my life—searching for a woman who didn’t want to be found.”

I pull back just slightly, enough to see her face again—but not enough to let her go.

I want to lean closer, see if her mouth still tastes the same. It’ll be a bad idea, of course, but ask me if I give a shit.

“You think you know everything, but you don’t,” she whispers.

“I—”

But she’s had enough of hearing me talk. “No—youlisten tome!” she snaps. “I stayed away because I was trying to protect myself?—”

“And you think?—”

“And my child!” she cuts in again.

“I don’t—” I start again, but she cuts me off—and this time, the words that leave her mouth stop my heart cold.

“Ourchild, Raffaele!”

19

GIULIA

“I… I don’t understand.” Raffaele’s eyebrows draw together, a deep V forming between them. “What do you mean by our child?”

I sigh. “I was pregnant when…”

He staggers back a step, putting space between us. A storm of emotions flickers across his face—too quickly for me to read any of them. But god, I want to. I need to know what he’s thinking.

“When did you find out?” The words fly out between us, accusation ringing behind them.

I open my mouth to tell him it doesn’t matter, but his eyes narrow as if he knows exactly what I’m about to say. “Was it before or after you were kidnapped?”

Somehow, I think he already knows the answer to that question—but I still give him the reply he’s waiting for. “Before.”

His eyes squeeze shut, and this time around, I know exactly what he’s feeling. Pain. It’s written on every tight line of his face, the white corners of his mouth, the clench of his jaw, the fists at his sides, the way his shoulders curl in on themselves.

“Why?” he finally asks, blue eyes meeting mine again, blank again, all his emotions wrestled behind a wall that he never used to bother putting up with me.

But I guess I deserve it. I deserve to be locked out like every other person. And still it hurts.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Were you ever going to tell me, Giulia?” he asks again. “When was I supposed to find out? I don’t get it. Why would you hide your pregnancy? Did you think I wouldn’t want it? Because Giulia, we both know that’s bullshit. We both know that there’s nothing I wanted more than to start a family with you, so tell me why you’d hide it.”

I blink back the tears threatening to form in my eyes. “I was going to tell you, Raffaele. You have to believe that, even if you don’t believe anything else. I was going to tell you, it was going to be a surprise.” A shaky laugh escapes my mouth. “And then everything happened.”

“Which brings us to the next problem,” he says in a cutting voice. “You survived, and you decided that you wanted none of it—not me, not the life we were supposed to live together.”

“That wasn’t how it was!” I snap, hurt that he’d even think it was anything like that.

“Then tell me how it was!” he snarls, dragging his both hands through his hair. “Explain it to me, Giulia, because all I have are questions. Questions I’ve been asking since you disappeared and never gotten any answers to. I’m sick of having so many question marks hanging around my life.”

I want to pull him into my arms. Everything inside of me is gravitating toward him, but that wall stands firm between us. The only way to break it down is to tell the truth.