Page 11 of Broken Mafia Prince (His to Break #1)

RAFFAELE

“All you have to do is get in, locate the safe box here, attach the device to unlock it, grab the bag, and get out.” Emilio runs his fingers down the roughly sketched map on the desk.

“What about guards?” I ask, studying the layout carefully.

“They’ll all be focused on the arriving shipment and protecting the drugs. Don’t worry about them, just do your part and get out.”

Of all the men in my father’s employ, Emilio’s my favorite. He’s the head of my father’s security, a no-nonsense man with his head screwed on straight. He’s sharp when it comes to the business, and I’ve caught him reading a book a few times, which explains how he has that extra edge in this world.

Right now, he’s staring at me with searching eyes, and I know exactly what he’s looking for: hesitation, doubt, and fear.

“Can you do this, Raffaele?” the man asks, mouth pressed into a thin line.

The word no rises in my throat, but before it can even make its way out, my father’s voice cuts in.

“Of course he can do it,” he snaps. “What kind of question is that? He has no choice but to do it. He’s a man now, and he has to prove himself as one. You think I’m going to hand over my business someday to someone who can’t even retrieve a package from a warehouse?”

This isn’t retrieval, I want to say—it’s theft. But I’m smart enough to know those words won’t go over well, so I swallow them down with a dozen other protests.

“Father, I think?—”

“He’ll do it,” he growls, his cold blue eyes narrowing at me. “And he’ll return with the item, or so help me god, boy…”

He doesn’t say the rest, but a shiver of apprehension goes down my spine at the inferred threat.

I don’t doubt that he’ll follow through with a fitting punishment if I fail.

To a man like Edoardo Gagliardi, his son isn’t just a person—he’s a legacy.

And a failure in that legacy is worse than having no son at all.

He already sees me as his greatest disappointment, and he’d rather not have a son than have one who makes him look bad.

Everything for him is about appearance and his ego. He can’t stand not being the most successful, the most feared, the most respected. And I know that I’m the aberration to his perfect plan.

“You’ll be fine,” the head of security says, folding up the map. He hands it to me, and I accept it with shaky hands, swallowing around the boulder in my throat.

“Give him the gun,” Father says, blowing cigar smoke into the air. For the rest of my life, I’ll always associate the smell of Cuban cigars with him, and it’ll forever make my stomach roll with discomfort.

“The gun?” Emilio hesitates, his brows furrowed.

Father nods. “All that training he’s been doing, it’s time to put it into action.”

“I don’t want to shoot anybody,” I blurt out.

I realize a second later that it’s the wrong thing to say. Father’s eyes frost over as he sets his cigar down in the ashtray.

“With all your faults I already have to put up with, don’t add being a pussy to it,” he hisses. “Give him the damn gun.”

This time around, Emilio doesn’t hesitate to pull out a Glock from his waistband and hold it out to me. I take it from him, my hands clammy. The gun feels unusually heavy in my hand, and I know it’s because this time, I won’t be shooting at a marked dummy.

It’s not just a weapon now—it’s a promise I don’t want to keep.

I hope to god I won’t have to use the gun.

Get in, get the package, and get out. Facile .

The confidence that had filled me in my father’s study deserts me as soon as I find myself crouching behind a crate in a dark warehouse, trying not to breathe too loudly.

Two men sit a distance away, speaking in rapid Russian. One of them is showing the other something on his phone, and the sound of their laughter rings through the space. A glance at my watch reveals that I’ve been waiting for almost half an hour for the men to move away.

I only have about thirty more minutes before the men supervising the offloading of the shipment return and then I’ll be screwed. There are two options: I can either say fuck it and abandon this mission, or I can take my chances and hope the two men will be too distracted to notice me.

“Fuck it,” I mutter, inching toward the back of the building.

There’s a door at the far end that leads into a smaller room according to the layout Emilio gave me. Back there is the safe box containing the item I’m to retrieve.

Sweat slicks down my back as I make my way to the door.

Every few seconds, I pause to make sure the men are still deep in their conversation. My mouth curves into a smile as I finally slip into the back room, triumph rocking through me. All I have to do now is get to the safe and get out of here.

Wasting no time, I hurry to the safe box and dig out the small device from my bag. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure I’m in the clear, I attach it to the keypad on the safe box like Emilio instructed. It makes a clicking sound, and numbers start to flash on the device.

“Come on, come on,” I mutter, my heart pounding.

The first number turns green.

Three more to go.

The numbers continue to flash. It feels like a century later when the second number clicks into place. And then the third follows moments later. My palms are sweaty as I stare at the flashing screen.

“One more,” I whisper, dragging a hand through my hair.

I watch the numbers closely as they flash on the device, so focused on it that I don’t notice someone coming up behind me until I’m whirled around.

“Who the fuck are you?” the man asks in his deep, accented voice. His gaze shifts over my shoulder when the device clicks, indicating that the last number has turned green.

My heart skips a beat when his dark eyes meet mine.

“ Ublyudok !” Bastard! I don’t need to know the language to understand what that one means, or to know that the man isn’t pleased by what I’m trying to do. I reach for the gun in my waistband, but I’m too slow.

He swings his fist before I can make a move, and it comes crashing down on the side of my head. The force of the blow rattles my skull, and I stagger backward, the gun slipping from my hand and clattering to the floor.

He roars something at his friend that I don’t understand. What I do understand is that if I don’t get out of here, I’m dead, and my father will call it a day.

Mother won’t survive it , I think.

The thought snaps me out of my daze, and I dive for the gun on the floor while the men are still arguing. Raising it with surprisingly steady hands, I fire at the man who hit me. The bullet tears through his head, taking half of it.

My stomach turns at the sight, but I don’t give myself time to be horrified at the fact that I’ve just killed a man. I yank the safe open and pull out the bag. The dead man’s friend lets out a furious cry and pulls out his gun.

His first shot whizzes past my ear, causing my breath to stutter in my chest.

I don’t think, I just run.

Arms pumping, I race out of the back room and come to a screeching halt at the sight of four guns pointed straight at me. The noise must have alerted some of the men.

“Drop de bag, and put your hands up,” one of them orders, his accent so thick that the words are almost indecipherable.

I toss the bag on the floor and raise my hands in the air in surrender. The full force of my situation hits me at that moment, and I realize I’m going to die here. Maybe this was my father’s whole plan to get rid of me.

In that moment, I find myself thinking of someone I haven’t allowed myself to think about in a while.

The girl’s voice floats in my head. “What kind of stupid name is Laika?”

“Drop the gun, kid,” the man orders.

If I die here, I’ll never see Giulia again. I don’t know where the thought comes from. It’s a stupid one anyway. She probably wouldn’t remember me now.

“Now!”

I begin to bend to drop the gun, when all of a sudden, a gunshot rings out. One of the men makes a gurgling sound and slaps a hand over his neck as red begins to seep out of it.

All the lights go off in the warehouse, plunging us into darkness. I know this is my chance to run for my life, but my legs refuse to move, terror rooting them to the floor.

Someone barks something in Russian, and then there’s another gunshot. The room dissolves into chaos, with gunshots being fired randomly. And yet, I remain frozen there, like the coward that Father always says I am.

“Let’s get out of here!” a voice I recognize as Emilio’s hisses at me.

When I don’t start moving immediately, he grabs my arm and drags me out. I stumble after him, feeling like a failure. I hesitate to get in Emilio’s sedan waiting at the end of the street, knowing that my father won’t let my incompetence go unpunished.

I’m too much of a coward to face him with this failure hanging over my head.

“Get in, Raffaele,” he says impatiently.

The drive back to the house is silent and fraught with tension. Emilio looks furious about something, but it doesn’t feel like the emotion is targeted at me. I want to ask him if Father sent him to get me, or if he made the move on his own.

I don’t know if either option will make me feel better.

Because it means that neither of them trusted me from the start to pull it off.

“Where’s my gun?” He pulls the car over in front of the wrought iron gates of the house. “You’d better not have lost my gun.”

I hold it out to him, but instead of taking it, he just tsks. “Clean it up, I’ll come for it later.”

Surprised, I step out of the car, and it zooms off even before I’ve made it the short distance to the gate. The walk from the gate to Father’s study makes me want to hurl, but I continue bravely.

It feels a lot like exam days from when I was younger, but ten times worse. The study door is wide open, as if he’s been waiting for me. I can’t read the expression on his face, and it makes this situation even more nerve-wracking for me.

“Where is it?” he asks as soon as I step into the room.

My mouth feels as dry as sandpaper, but I manage to get the words out. “I don’t have it.”