Page 37 of Broken Wolf Heart (Mafia Pack #3)
GREY
T he second I walk away from the crowd at the gate, something snaps loose in my chest. Not like a clean break.
More like threads tearing from the inside out, unraveling everything I’ve been holding together with gritted teeth and willpower.
I don’t bother with cars or keys. Instead, I head for the woods.
The moment I’m moving, my wolf claws at my skin, desperate to shift. To run. To move in some way that lets him out—and lets the pain out with him. Somehow, I know this is the only way to avoid the darkness taking me over, to let my wolf have full control over me, mind and body.
I shift quickly. The force of it is hard, brutal. The kind of shift that hurts more than it should. Muscles tear, bones snap, and the air splits around me as my wolf takes over and launches into the woods.
And I run.
The wind roars past my ears. Trees blur past, and earth churns beneath my paws. My wolf howls—high and wild and feral. Not because he’s angry.
Because he’s scared .
We’re not right. Haven’t been since Franco. The power I took from him is still inside me like rusted iron—corroding everything.
I don’t know how to fix it.
I don’t even know if it can be fixed.
So, I keep running. Long enough that the sun starts to dip behind the trees, dragging the sky with it.
Then I smell him.
Crow.
He doesn’t sneak up on me. Doesn’t have to.
He just runs alongside, quiet and steady.
Matching pace like we’ve done this a hundred times—probably because we have.
None of the others know it, but Crow and I used to run together a lot before I left the city.
He’s the only one who actually knows how to sit in silence, and not just as a beast but as a man.
So, even on the nights I told everyone else to stay away, Crow would show up, and we’d run just like this. Never saying a word. Never needing to.
We slow and shift almost in sync near the river. I drop down to the mossy bank and sit, uncaring that we’re both naked. Sweat coats my skin. Adrenaline courses through my veins. My wolf is only mildly placated, but I need to see if I can maintain control on my own.
The current of the river is steady, crystal water washing over the smooth stones. I watch it for a moment, the words I want to say sticking in my throat.
Beside me, Crow doesn’t say anything. Just stares at the current, arms dangling over his bent knees.
Eventually, I ask, “You mad at me?”
He looks up then. “For what?”
“Finishing him off like that.”
He shakes his head. “No.”
I wait .
Then he says, “I’m not sorry he’s dead. But I don’t feel better, either.”
I nod, waiting, giving him space to get his words out.
We haven’t talked about what happened in that warehouse. And even though I know Alvaro isn’t the first man Crow has killed, we only kill our own father once.
Crow leans forward, flicking a stone into the water. “I used to think, if I could just make him see me, respect me, I’d finally matter.”
“And now?”
“I don’t care what he saw.” He looks over at me with haunted eyes—it’s a look I recognize. “But I don’t know who I am without that fight.”
His voice is raw. Like a scab just peeled back.
“I get it,” I say.
He glances sideways. “Yeah?”
“For a long time, my whole identity was tied to surviving my old man. Outsmarting him. Beating him. Hating him.”
Crow nods slowly. “It keeps you alive. But it doesn’t teach you how to live.”
We’re quiet again.
Then he says, “When I was a kid, cooking felt a little bit like living.”
“Makes sense. Eating your food feels like living to me.”
He grins, and it’s a bright light in the darkness of his expression.
There and gone way too fast before the ghosts of his past return.
“My mom taught me to cook, you know. Made everything from scratch and insisted I do the same. It was annoying as hell at the time.” He snorts at some memory then immediately sobers again.
“She always dreamt of opening a restaurant of her own.”
I don’t say anything.
I know we’re both thinking how fucked up it is that she didn’t get to live long enough for that dream to happen. That Alvaro did—but squandered his life by being a fucking monster.
Finally, he adds, “Sometimes, I still think about opening a place. Just mine. Small. No blood on the floor, you know what I mean.”
I look at him. “You should.”
A muscle in his jaw twitches. “I don’t even know what that kind of life looks like.”
“Maybe that’s the point,” I say. “You get to find out.”
He doesn’t say anything to that, and the silence lasts for a long while after that.
At the end of it, we don’t hug. Don’t do some dramatic goodbye. Crow just stands up, shifts again, and disappears into the trees like he never stopped running.
I wait a minute.
Then I pull out my phone and type a message.
Need your help. Just you and Mac. Location incoming. —G
Then I head for the safe house. Home.
The sun is nearly gone when I get there. Dusk casts long shadows across the front porch, the whole place soaked in stillness.
But it’s not as still as it should be.
I’m not alone here either.
I slip into the backyard and let myself in through the door off the master bedroom. Silently, I snag a pair of shorts and pull them on. My wolf paces under my skin, not with rage this time but something heavier. Anticipation. Exhaustion. Dread.
I step through the bedroom door, expecting some assassin from my father’s pack.
Instead, I freeze at the sight of my mother.
Serena Diavolo stands at the stove, stirring a pot like she’s lived here for years, though her hand trembles as she sets the spoon on the counter.
Her hair is down. She’s wearing one of Lexi’s old hoodies.
She looks… softer. Less like the regal, put-together woman I know and more like some girlish version of herself I’ve never met.
She turns, though I’ve made no sound. Her eyes meet mine, and in them live all the memories of my failures.
I can’t move. I’m not sure I’m breathing. What’s she doing here? How did she find it? Not that I don’t want her here, but her presence means this place is no longer safe. When she returns to my father, we risk?—
“Hi, Grey,” she says softly.
“What—how are you here?”
She steps toward me slowly, as if she thinks I might bolt. “Lexi slipped me a note at the funeral.”
She holds out a scrap of paper. I take it and read Lexi’s handwritten words: If you want out, come. Underneath it are coordinates to the house.
And then I realize: the quick greeting we gave her at Franco’s funeral. Lexi’s hand in my mother’s, squeezing. Slipping her a note, apparently.
My mate did this.
In the middle of her grief, amid fighting a war with my father, under the weight of leading a pack that didn’t ask for her—she still thought of my mother. Of me.
A knot forms in my chest. Not just for my mom, who made it out, but for Lexi, who made it happen.
“I didn’t know,” I whisper. “She didn’t tell me.”
“She said you wouldn’t let yourself hope if you knew. Said you’d try to talk her out of such a risk.”
“Wait. When did she say all that?”
“She told Razor to come find me after the funeral. He helped me unbind myself, and then he drove me here. I didn’t even go home to pack a bag.”
Her smile wavers. The dark circles beneath her eyes are suddenly more pronounced. She’s afraid .
Her words hit me like a ton of bricks. “Wait, you left the pack?”
She nods. “It was the only way, right?”
I swallow hard, knowing how much pain her wolf must be in without an alpha to ground her. “Yeah.”
As a kid, I’d begged her to do it. But she could never bring herself to take that final step. Like it was too painful. But I realized what she’d meant was it would be too permanent. And now…
My legs finally start working again, carrying me forward. I grab her shoulders, squeezing. “You’re safe now. He can’t reach you here.”
“I know,” she says. “I’d like to join your pack. If you’ll have me.” Her lip wobbles.
“I would be honored,” I tell her.
I fully intend to be the one to hug her.
But then she opens her arms, and I step into them like I’m ten years old and my father has just finished a tirade and stormed out.
Like we’re both just trying to pick up the pieces of ourselves after he’s gone.
Like, even though she’s the one who bore the brunt of it, she’s still the one comforting me.
But this time—finally—we’re the ones who left him.