Page 72 of Broken Mafia Prince (His to Break #1)
I lock eyes with Giulia, seeing fierce determination mixed with a desperate plea for help.
In an instant, she lunges, her body pushing against her captor in an attempt to escape the nightmare he has forced upon her.
Then a shot rings out, slicing through the silence, and my world goes still.
She falls back, her hands reaching for me, a single tear tracking down her left cheek.
My body freezes as I watch her fall. The whole world fades around us, until it’s just me and her. She slips, disappearing over the edge of the cliff, swallowed whole by the darkness below.
“Giulia!”
A cold rage fills me, burning hotter than before. I’ve failed. There is no coming back from this.
I strain against the edge, my heart pounding frantically as I search for signs of her.
With violent anger, I twist sideways and fire several shots into her captor. He staggers back, collapsing before he can take another breath.
I look toward the edge of the cliff, my breath ragged, heart pounding like a war drum. Gripping the rocks, I peer down, scanning the darkness below.
Below, the water churns violently, crashing against jagged rocks, a chaotic, merciless abyss. The cliffs are steep, sharp, and unforgiving, disappearing into the darkness like the mouth of hell itself.
The waves crash against the stone with relentless force, and the helplessness of the situation settles over me like a ten-ton weight.
But fuck it all.
As I lean forward, preparing to jump after her, Matteo suddenly grabs me, pulling me back.
“You can’t! Jumping after her would be nothing short of suicide,” Matteo says firmly. “She’s probably dead, Raffaele. No one can survive in these waters with a gunshot.”
“Giulia!” I scream. “Giulia! Giulia!” Over and over again for what feels like forever.
I don’t stop calling for her until my throat feels raw.
There’s a roar in my head, like thunder, crashing waves, and then a hurricane.
I can feel a crack in the walls of my humanity, and it splits all the way down.
I turn to the man and see that he’s managed to crawl a short distance away, his back riddled with bullets. Blood stains the ground beneath him, but he’s still breathing—barely.
Now Matteo towers over him as he kneels, gun pressed to his head, just like the bastard did to Giulia.
I don’t think. I move.
Dropping my gun, I close the distance in seconds, my fists shaking with rage.
“Raffaele, wait, we need to question him?—”
I push Matteo out of my way. I swore to protect her, I swore to give her a future; I made so many promises and broke them all in a heartbeat.
My body is being moved by the forces of wrath and vengeance.
I spy something a few feet away and recognize it, picking it up reverently.
Giulia’s dagger. She always had the damn thing attached to her.
“Wait… please,” the man croaks, coughing up blood. “I had no choice.”
“Neither do I.”
I grip Giulia’s dagger—its cold, familiar weight a bitter reminder of battles past—and drive it forward.
The metallic tang of blood fills my mouth, and the sound of tearing flesh is drowned out by my pounding heart.
In that instant, every sense is ablaze with retribution, every throb of pain a symphony of lost promises.
His blood splatters everywhere, and Matteo says something, but I barely register it.
It’s a distant murmur, lost beneath the wet, sickening sound of steel meeting flesh.
This man was already dead the moment he touched her.
One last time—I plunge the blade deep between his ribs, until his body slackens, until his eyes go glassy and empty. His pathetic life drains from his eyes.
A hand grips my shoulder.
“Raffaele, he’s dead.”
I stare at the body before me. What was once a man’s face is now red pulp. He’s completely unrecognizable, but even that brings me no satisfaction. I know for a fact that nothing else ever will.
Rising to my feet, I stagger away, back to the very edge where she fell.
“We have to get out of here,” Matteo says. “We can’t be seen as witnesses here. By now the men—what the fuck are you doing?”
I glance down at my hand, blinking at the gun that’s suddenly in my grip. As if of its own free will, the hand with the gun starts to lift.
“Raffaele,” he warns. “Put down the gun.”
The earth is rotating in the wrong direction. I’m empty on the inside, and the world is dimmer, muted, slower. Pressure grinds against my bones, pulses at my temple. The loss is a physical pain that threatens to rip me apart piece by piece until there’s nothing left.
I stare out at the water below. Matteo is still screaming behind me, his voice filled with panic, but I can’t hear him anymore. All I can hear is her terrified scream.
For a heartbeat, the world narrows to this single, desperate decision.
I see flashes of Giulia’s bright smile and hear echoes of promises we once made as I battle against the crushing despair that threatens to pull me under.
In that suspended moment, I struggle to decide: Cling to hope, or succumb to the void.
Ever so slowly, I raise the gun, pressing the barrel to my head. I realize this is the coward’s way out, but none of it matters now.
Nothing fucking matters.
I squeeze my eyes shut, my finger hovering over the trigger.
“Don’t you fucking dare, you stupid idiot!” Matteo shouts.
A smile tugs at my mouth.
And then—I press down.
The gun kicks back in my grip, the force rattling through my bones. A deafening, earsplitting bang shatters the quiet, echoing off the mountainside like a war cry.
And then… nothing.
Yet, as the silence swallows me whole, a faint echo of her voice whispers through the darkness, daring me to rise from the ashes of this final, desperate act.
THE END
Broken Mafia Prince is Book 1 of the His to Break duet. The story concludes in Book 2, Broken Mafia Bride .
Trapped in a quiet coastal town with no memory of her past, Giulia knows only two things: someone tried to kill her… and she’s pregnant with a stranger’s baby.
Raffaele has spent months ripping the underworld apart to find the woman who vanished on their wedding day. But when he finally tracks her down, someone else is protecting her now.
Read Chapter One on the next page!