Page 147 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

My gut twisted. He knew I was coming.

“Moriarty!” Santino’s urgent voice boomed from outside. I spun on my heel and bolted back outside. Italian soldiers were opening fire at the back of the warehouse, and Alessio was sprinting through the trees towards it. Santino ran towards me, pointing to the back. “He’s fleeing.”

Fucking coward. He’d never stand and face me.

I took off before Santino reached me, boots pounding the dirt as I rounded the warehouse. There he was, in the distance, tearing through the trees, running like a monster was after him.

I was.

I’ve been called many things in my life. Slow wasn’t one of them. Sean had roughly fifty metres on me, but panic makes a man clumsy. He tripped and ducked repeatedly, trying to dodge the bullets flying his way. The two men he’d been with were face down in the dirt, and I leaped over their bodies.

“Tell your men to hold fire!” I yelled at Alessio, who had taken cover behind a tree with his rifle when he saw me pursuing Sean.

He shouted in Italian for the guns to cease fire, and I closed the distance between us in seconds. Branches scraped across my face and body as I used every ounce of power in my legs to propel me through the woods. The navy blue suit flickered between the tree trunks ahead of me, closer and closer.

Santino’s heavy footfalls thundered somewhere behind me. Alessio barked Italian orders further back. Everything fell away. My vision, rage and focus were fixed solely on that fucking blue suit. This was for my parents. For my sisters. For Conor. For the boy he’d carved out of me to make a monster. For Raya. This was for all of it.

I launched myself off my back foot and drove my shoulder into his spine, sending him crashing into the dirt. We hit the ground hard; the air punched out of him in a strangled cry as I flipped him onto his back, pinned him beneath my forearm, and reached for my knife—

Dark brown eyes bulging in terror stared up at me. Not frosty blue.

Same age. Same suit. Wrong face entirely.

“Please—” the man spluttered, holding his trembling hands up by his head. “Please, please don’t!”

“Who the fuck are you?” I roared, pressing harder into his throat. Behind me, Santino’s boots skidded to a stop. “Where is he?!”

“I-I d-don’t… I don’t know,” he whimpered, his voice thick with a Dutch accent. “A man paid me. A man paid me to dress like this and come here. That’s all. I swear to God. I swear on my life, I don’t—”

I jumped off him. Ice trickled down my spine. Santino grabbed the man by his suit lapels and hauled him to his feet, hissing in his face, “You’ll need to give us more than that if you want to stay alive.”

“I didn’t know why,” he cried. “He gave me the suit and handkerchief and told me these men would take me where I needed to go. He paid me more money than I’ve ever seen in my life, and I have a wife—I have a wife and a disabled child with many medical needs, and we needed the money…” His voice cracked into a sob. “Please don’t hurt me. I’ve never hurt anybody. I’m nobody. I’m—” Santino let him go, and he fell to his knees.

“Maddox?” Santino tried to snap me out of the dark hole I’d fallen into in my mind.

I couldn’t speak. My hand trembled around the handle of my knife. So fucking close. I had him. I thought I’d finally—

“You’re Maddox?” The man’s eyes widened. His shaky fingers fumbled inside his suit as he searched for something. Santino’s gun jerked up to the side of the man’s head again, in case he was about to draw his own gun on me. He whimpered and closed his eyes. “It’s just paper. He told me to give it to him, to the one covered in tattoos who looked like he wanted to kill everyone. He said you went by Monster or Maddox.”

He drew out a small square of paper. I stared at it. Then I took it.

Dread flooded through me as I unfolded it, the man sobbing at my feet. Santino and Alessio stood deathly still, waiting.

Before I’d even read his cruel taunt, the cold realisation had turned my blood to ice. He’d let us come. He’d lured us here because he’d already gone somewhere else. Somewhere he knew would hurt more. He’d always wanted to break me, not kill me.

I knew exactly where he’d go to do it.

And who was there.

I turned and ran.

Ambush

Liliana strolled around the side of the stables, her cheeks rosy and radiating with the glow of a woman who’d just had an orgasm. I snorted when she flashed me a cheeky smile and flopped down on the bench beside me.

“Looks like it was a good one.”

“Better than average,” she said coyly, brushing the last strands of hay from her dress and eyeing the two soldiers strolling past with a bright smile. When they were out of earshot, she whispered, “But I wouldn’t get too excited. I practically gave it to myself.”