Page 18 of Dirty Mafia Torment

No matterhow hard I rub the circular scar on my wrist, it doesn’t fade. Just like my panic never goes away.

I should be elsewhere rather than at the Beneventi wedding right now, wasting precious time when there’s urgent matters I’ve yet to see to. Like recruiting decoys to throw any search off my tail. Like winning the lottery or, at the very least, discovering if my inheritance hasn’t been completely been bled dry.

Money is crucial to staying gone. God’s blessed me with the time, and I pray a solution will present itself.

Yeah, I should be anywhere but seated in a pew inside this church and desperately avoidinghim.

First name, heartbreak.

Middle name, excess.

Last name striking a heady combination of fear and respect in everyone around us. The kind that forces grown men into their Sunday best, the kind that turns liars into saints the second they stepinto church. It’s a wonder the walls don’t collapse under the weight of their hypocrisy.

I give in to temptation and look at the man who I counted on saving me.

Lorenzo Beneventi. Standing between his father and brother at the altar. Sinewy. Gaunt. Looking every inch like a rock god. Charisma seeping from his skin. That devil-may-care smirk still intact.

I want to claw my nails across his smug face.

Women eat up the bad-boy act, don’t they? The dirty, filthy devil who makes boundaries just to break them. The bastard collects hearts like trophies.

And now he’s up at a goddamn altar. A place I imagined seeing him under far different circumstances. The sight alone makes my blood boil until all I can do is keep from screaming.

He leans toward the priest, whispers something, and the poor man’s face flushes crimson before he snaps back to scold him. Renzo grins like the devil himself. What kind of twisted soul pisses a priest off at his own family’s wedding?

He’s thinner than before, his complexion pale. Living life to the fullest has dimmed some of his sparkle. Really, he looks like hell. What has he done to himself?

My gaze collides with the asshole standing next to him—Alessandro Beneventi. He glares at me, like my very existence insults him.

I smooth a loose strand of hair off my forehead with my middle finger.

His lips tighten. He looks ready to drag me outside by the throat. His twin, mercifully, doesn’t even notice me.

How I’d love to slide off a pink heel and crack Renzo’s skull open. While I’m trapped, he flies free as a bird. Accountable to no one, and caring about no one, not even himself.

Death by stiletto.

The thought almost makes me smile.

My father nudges me. “Stop staring at that worthless piece of shit,” he warns, clueless as always. “He’ll screw anything that walks, but when it comes to the famiglie, he’ll just screw you over.”

A truth I know all too well. I’d rather have no hope than the hollow kind—that’s the lesson he taught me. I put faith in him, and he crushed it beneath his heel. That sting runs deeper than any physical pain. I taste it still, bitter and sharp, like a bleeding wound that refuses to scab.

I drag my gaze away from Renzo. “Don Beneventi will be insulted if we don’t congratulate him on his wedding,” I say coldly.

“That’s not the Beneventi I’m referring to.”

My father’s always two steps behind, incapable of seeing the real me. His blindness is a luxury I’ve learned to cultivate.

I release a long, exaggerated sigh, letting the sting leak into my voice. “Lorenzo Beneventi is the last man I want any contact with.”

And that’s true, though he’s not alone in his place atop the list. Add Carlo and Emo, and you’ve got a full roster of men capable of tearing me open and letting me bleed out.

I squeeze my eyes shut and force a prayer.God, I don’t need love or mercy. Just money. Enough to escape. Enough to never look back.

“Don Lucchese’s funeral was the last time all us capos were together,” my father murmurs beside me, oblivious.

The ceremony begins, and I stare at the pink toes of my heels for the duration, only interrupted by my father during a lull after the priest finishes a blessing. “Stroke of luck we were invited, but especially lucky the reception’s at the Beneventi estate.”