Page 86 of Broken Mafia Bride

Hazel eyes flash at me, and I brace myself for her anger—but I’m left disappointed when she just lets out an exhausted sigh and walks off in the direction of my car. The Giulia I know would’ve cut me down to size and raised hell if I ever tried to boss her around like that, but the one now stiffly buckling her seatbelt beside me looks like she just wants to be far away from me.

A hundred different words rise in my throat—an apology, an explanation, reassurance. But they all feel weightless, inadequate.

There’s a solid, reinforced steel wall between us now, and I don’t know how to break through it. I know how to handle the temperamental Giulia—the one who would’ve screamed in my face about how stupid I was, who would’ve fought for her future tooth and nail. But now, I’m floundering, unsure of what to say to reach her.

Ditching Isa isn’t an option now, but I don’t have many to choose from.

The rest of the car ride is filled with the heavy, pressing weight of silence. The silence isn’t empty—it’s crowded with everything we’ve left unsaid.

She looks so tired, and I want to fix this for her. Get our daughter back, rewind time so I never touched a bottle, neverwent anywhere near Isa. My palms are clammy around the steering wheel, and sweat drips down my back even though the air conditioning is on full blast.

Finally, I pull the car into the massive garage of Casa Bianca and turn it off.

“Giulia, I?—”

She hurriedly pushes her car door open and marches into the house. I take a deep breath before trailing after her. Giulia walks straight to the kitchen and grabs a bottle of water from the fridge.

I lean against the kitchen island, watching her as she gulps down the water, throat bobbing. I can almost hear the thoughts racing through her mind with her gaze fixed somewhere across the kitchen.

Why? How did it happen? Was she the only woman you could possibly be with? How many times did it happen? So when you said you’d end it all, was it because you were feeling guilty? Did you enjoy it? Was she better than me?

And that’s something I’ve also been asking myself since this whole debacle: What happens now?

Finally, she drops the bottle on the counter and leans against the fridge. “Say what you want to say, and then we’ll close this entire discussion forever.”

I scoff. “I doubt you’ll hear a word I’m going to say with that attitude.”

Her mouth presses into a thin line. “I shouldn’t even be allowing you to fill my head with more lies.”

There’s a beat of silence. “Giulia, I never lied to you. I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

She swipes her tongue over her lower lip. “It’s a little too late for that, don’t you think?”

“I never meant for any of this to happen,” I tell her. “It was a drunken mistake. I was lonely, miserable, drunk, feelinghopeless from running into dead ends upon dead ends searching for you. You don’t know what it was like for me these past few years.”

Giulia slants me a look. “So this is my fault?”

“I never said that.”

“Then what are you saying?” she cries, turning away to rake a hand through her hair. “Because I don’t get this. How could you boldly march into this place and make promises when you knew there was something between you two?”

Tears cling to her lashes, and she quickly blinks them away. “Face it, Raffaele, you lied to me.”

“And so did you!” I roar, my temper snapping. I advance to her, fingers curled so tight into fists at my sides that my nails bite into my flesh. The pain there is nothing compared to the way the rest of me feels, like it’s slowly being passed through the grinder.

“I never lied to you.”

“You hid my child from me for years,” I point out. “When were you going to tell me about her?”

And then another sickening thought flashes through my mind.

“Were youevergoing to tell me about her?”

“This isn’t about me right now. You slept with my cousin. Out of the millions of women in Chicago, why did it have to be her? And how can you stand there and say it meant nothing? You’re marrying her, and she’s carrying your child,” she continues. “Where does that leave me? What’s the plan here, Raffaele? Are we all just going to live happily ever after in some twisted domestic fantasy and pretend this isn’t insane?”

“Can you just stop!” I grab her by the shoulders. “We can work through this, baby. This isn’t the worst thing that’s been thrown in our way.”

“Maybe,” she replies, eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “But maybe everything that’s been thrown our way is a sign thatthis was never meant to be, and it’s high time we read the writing on the wall.”