Page 29 of Broken Mafia Prince (His to Break #1)

GIULIA

I ’m not wearing lipstick for him.

I’m wearing lipstick because I want to. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I’m going to see Raffaele. I’d never make such an effort for him. I’m not trying to catch his interest or get kissed again or anything. That would be crazy.

The only reason I’ve agreed to see him again is because I need him to get to the bottom of all this and make it out alive. I’m only following Isa’s advice to use him. That’s all.

Say it with a little more conviction this time , a voice in my head taunts.

“Shut up,” I hiss.

“Who are you talking to?” a deep voice asks.

I let out a startled squeal, jumping a foot into the air and whirling around to see Raffaele peeling out of a dark corner of the warehouse.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I snap at him. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”

He glances over my shoulder before his eyes meet mine. “Who were you talking to?”

“That’s none of your business.” Heat rises to my cheeks, and I cross my arms over my chest, staring him down with annoyance.

His mouth quirks up at one corner, and he hums. “It’s my business to know if you’ve brought someone else along for our private rendezvous or if you have a microphone on you and someone is listening in.”

I roll my eyes. “This isn’t a James Bond movie. Stop being so paranoid.”

Too fast for me to sidestep the move, his hand flies out and grips my arm, dragging me into his body. I gasp as I’m pressed against his hard body.

“You think this is a joke, Giulia?” he hisses. “The Echelon Syndicate doesn’t fuck around, and they won’t hesitate to end every single last one.”

I swallow nervously, my stomach clenching. “I know that.”

“Do you?” He scoffs, eyes searching mine. “This isn’t a game. I called you here to talk to you because I don’t know if I can trust any other Montanari. Our fathers don’t want to listen to the voice of reason, so it’s up to us to protect our legacies. We have to fight for our futures.”

“How?” I ask the million-dollar question.

Raffaele lets me go and steps away, and I find myself missing the innocent contact. I resist the urge to rub my hands over the spot on my arm where it feels like he’s left a handprint on me.

His jaw clenches, anger sparking in his eyes. “My father is collaborating with the Syndicate. They’ve promised him an immense amount of power and control of major cities, and all he has to do for it is raze your family to the ground.”

My jaw drops open, and I stare at him in horror. Of all things I expected to hear when he called me out here, I never thought I’d be hearing that Edoardo Gagliardi is so desperate for our blood that he’s gone into an alliance with the evilest group in the world.

“W-what?” I finally stammer out. “Why would they want…” I trail off, at a loss.

“My father is too blinded by his hatred to realize that the deal is too good to be true,” he sighs.

“Why would the Syndicate want us gone so badly? What can they possibly gain if we are gone? If it were literally any other person on the planet, I’d say they were trying to get their hands on our family property and businesses, but what we own is nothing compared to what the Syndicate owns.”

“That’s the part that doesn’t make sense.” Raffaele looks just as confused as I am. “Why do they want this war?”

At that moment, the silence of the warehouse is broken by the sound of a loud boom. The world seems to rock with the force of the explosion, and I’m flung backward, crashing into some crates behind me. Thick smoke begins to rise around me as fire licks up the walls of the building.

“Giulia!” Raffaele roars, racing for me. “Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” I groan, raising my hand to where I smacked the side of my head against the wall. The area feels sore, but I’m relieved to see it’s not bleeding. I take his hand, staggering to my feet. “What the hell is going on? I’m getting really sick of bombs being thrown at me.”

His eyes narrow, but before he can ask, there’s the sound of heavy footsteps headed our way.

“Don’t let them get out alive!” a man’s voice orders.

Raffaele and I exchange glances, and he whips out his Glock, turning off the safety. “Stay here and?—”

“I don’t take orders from you,” I snap, pulling out my dagger from where it’s strapped to my boot. His eyes widen at the sight of the weapon. I brace for the usual condescension about how I can’t possibly know how to handle it, and I should leave a big, strong man to protect me.

“The darkness is our advantage,” he tells me instead. “If my calculations are right, there are maybe eleven of them.”

I whistle, suddenly wishing I’d brought a gun. “Eleven? They must be getting desperate.”

And by they , I mean the Syndicate. There’s no one else I can think of who would go through this much reckless effort to get rid of us.

“Don’t die, Giulia.” His voice is uncharacteristically soft, and it gives me pause.

I glance over at him, but he has his gaze fixed ahead, an unreadable expression on his face. Does he care? Or am I being delusional? There’s no time to think about that, though, because at that moment, the men burst into the burning room.

I take a stance, gripping the dagger tighter. There is a moment of silence as we size each other up, Raffaele and me versus ten armed men. I crack my neck, the sense of calm that envelops me whenever I’m in the training ring filling me now. And then all hell breaks loose.

The men charge. I throw my dagger with all my might, and it digs into one man’s head. He drops dead just as another opens fire. I leap for one of the crates, taking cover as the man continues to shoot in my direction. I turn my head and see Raffaele crouching behind a crate, too.

Our eyes meet, and he nudges his head forward. I give him a slight nod, and together we crawl around the stacks of crates, in sync in a way that only people who’ve worked together for years can achieve. The thought makes me falter for a second, but there’s no time to send myself into a spin.

The men haven’t noted that we’ve shifted positions and are now directly behind them. I spy the first man’s dead body with my knife in it. Raffaele catches my eye and shakes his head subtly.

I roll my eyes but decide to listen this time around. His mouth presses into a thin line at my attitude. Before I know what’s happening, he’s aimed his gun between two crates and fired.

I leap out of my hiding zone, grab my knife, and rush to where the men are just beginning to turn, finally realizing that they’ve been shooting in the wrong direction for a while. One of them tries to shoot at me, but his gun merely clicks.

A smile curves my mouth as I stab him in the stomach. The one at his side aims at me, but I turn in time and swing my arm up in an arch. He lets out a roar of pain as the blade slices off his fingers. I catch the gun before it can drop to the ground, then stick it in his mouth and fire.

Behind me, I hear the sickening sound of bone crunching.

I turn to see Raffaele clutching one of the men in place while his massive fists come down over and over again on the man’s face until it’s reduced to pulp. The other men lay dead at his feet, and eventually, he lets the one he has a hold of go. The man’s body drops to the ground with a thud.

When he turns in my direction, I take a cautious step back. The violence pouring out of him feels like a living, breathing thing. Goosebumps rise on my arms, my breath catching in my throat at the darkness in his eyes.

“I have a safehouse somewhere in the city,” he says. “Not even my father knows about it.”

My eyebrows crawl up to my hairline at the implication of his words. Would his father really send the Syndicate’s men after his own son? If he did something so diabolical, then there’s truly no low he won’t go to.

“Let’s get the hell out of here.”

It’s when Raffaele is slipping into the driver’s seat of the Dodge that I notice him wincing. “You’re hurt.”

“It’s just a scratch.”

“Hmm. This from the same man who wanted to send me to the ICU because of a bullet graze? Let me see.”

“I’m fine,” he grits out.

I grab his arm before he can start driving and shoot him a stern glare. “Just in case it’s not clear to you, I don’t plan on dying today. Either from the Syndicate’s attacks or by my driver dying at the steering wheel.”

Electricity charges between us as our eyes meet, and the interior of the car suddenly feels too small and cramped, like there’s not enough air in it.

After what feels like an eternity, he yanks his hand away. “The bullet didn’t get deep. Digging it out will be easy. I’ll even let you have a go at it when we are in the safehouse, but we’re not safe here, and my priority is getting us the fuck out of here.”

“Fine.”

The car comes alive with a smooth rumble, Raffaele navigating us away from the warehouse.

The car flies down the lit streets, and I find myself watching the way his large hands expertly handle the steering, weaving us through traffic and corners.

I peek at his veiny forearms revealed from his rolled-up shirtsleeves, and my mouth waters.

I clench my thighs together when I feel a pulse between my legs. I’m not attracted to Raffaele Gagliardi; this is just a fluke. It has to be because of the adrenaline from the fight, nothing else. I chant the words over and over in my head.

The tarred streets eventually give way to a dirt road, the car rumbling through the uneven part until we finally pull over at a decrepit little wooden structure. I stare at the building in surprise.

“If you wanted to kill me, you didn’t have to bring me all the way out here to do it,” I tell him.

“I know.” He steps out of the car.

I hesitate to join him outside the safety of the car, wondering what stupid part of me let a man I barely know drive me to a strange location. He could be in league with his father, and this may have just been a master plan to lure me here.