Page 53 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

“If I refuse…” I lifted my head and glared at Sean as he narrowed his eyes in warning. “If I tell you to find another fighter.”

“You know what will happen.”

I ground my molars, working my jaw at the impossible choice. Kill Soraya’s brother, or Sean will kill one of my own. Sean sighed and glanced at Oscar. They exchanged a look that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Oscar reached under the table for something.

“I didn’t want to break this to you this way, Monster.” Sean took the folder from Oscar’s hands. “I really didn’t. But I’m not agreein’ to this battle just for myself. I’m offerin’ you a chance at revenge.”

“What revenge?” I hissed.

“Do you know her surname yet? You’ve heard me call her Soraya, but…” he tsked, and my spine straightened. “Do you know she’s a Buccini? Her eldest brother is Giovanni Buccini.”

My body turned to ice. I stared at Sean’s smug expression, willing this to be another of his fucking games.

“Don’t believe me? Ask her.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. My heart raced. I kept my eyes on Sean. I didn’t want to believe it. He was messing with me. That’s all this was. Another form of psychological torture to break me. But I had to know. I turned slowly to glance at her, those wide, confused hazel eyes bouncing between Sean and me. And I saw it.

She was a fucking Buccini.

My nostrils flared, and I clenched my fists in my lap before turning back to Sean. The darkness was clawing, tearing through my veins, demanding to take over. But that’s what he wanted. He’d planned this from the start. And I wasn’t going to let him win this one. It would take more than that to break me the way he wanted.

“So?” I forced nonchalance into my voice, and Sean raised his eyebrows.

“So?” He scoffed, looking at Oscar. He started chuckling before slamming his hand on the table, making Raya jump. “I tell him the woman he’s fuckin’, the woman he’s protectin’, is from the very family that betrayed his, and he says… so!” My body started vibrating as I tried to contain the rage and not dive at him for enjoying this so much. “Your father would be rollin’ in his grave. Oh, sorry. Rollin’ in his well. Not grave.”

I leapt to my feet and roared. Before I could swing at him, a gun was pointed at my temple.

He cocked his head to the side and stared up at me as I heaved in harsh breaths. “Let’s not be reckless, Monster. If I have to shoot you now, what do you think will happen to her? Unless you don’t care anymore.”

I closed my eyes and forced myself to sit back down. Raya’s fingertips brushed my forearm under the table, and I knew she was trying to reach me. But I couldn’t look at her. I was still processing who she was and what it meant.

Logically, I knew she had nothing to do with what happened to my family. She would have been a child, probably the same age as my twin sisters were when it happened. Did it change how I felt about her? No. But I needed a minute to process it and to try not to kill someone because of it.

I lifted my arms onto the table and dropped my head to my chest, hoping to find some restraint somewhere deep within me to keep me from ending up with a bullet in my skull before this meeting was over. Sean knew how to push my buttons, and he had the detonation switch in his hands; I could feel it.

“So it’s water under the bridge?” Sean taunted. I clenched my jaw. “Even though Santino tortured and killed your brother too. Will you forgive that so easily?”

My head snapped up. My muscles locked. His icy blue eyes met mine, but instead of amusement, there was seriousness. “What the fuck did you just say?”

Sean slid the file in front of me, unopened. I stared at it as the walls of the room warped and vibrated around me. This couldn’t be true. My brother was alive, living a good life with his adoptive parents. I knew because once a year, on my siblings’ birthdays, Sean let me look at their social media to prove they were safe and happy. I watched a video of him just six months ago, celebrating his birthday on a yacht in… Italy.

I opened the folder. The metal around my wrists rattled as I trembled.

My vision blurred as I stared at the photograph of my brother’s tortured, battered, and dead body. Soldiers moved behind me at Sean’s silent command.

Soraya gasped, slamming her hand over her mouth as one name slipped from her lips. Not the name he was born with, but the one his adoptive parents gave him when Sean sold him to them at nine years old.

“Callum.”

Too Late?

How was this possible? How was Callum D’Ardenzi Monster’s brother? The man who manipulated the Mayor of Rome into going to war against my family, tried to destroy Santino and kidnap Arianna? It made no sense. It couldn’t be true.

With my heart trying to break itself out of my chest, I glanced at the man beside me, who was still staring at the photographs my family had sent Sean weeks ago as a warning to leave Arianna alone. And it wasn’t a pretty sight. Callum, once an attractive man, was battered and bruised, toes and fingers missing, knife wounds to his body, and his eyelids had been cut off to show lifeless, bloodshot eyes staring back. A pool of red blood covered the concrete behind his head from the fatal gunshot wound in his head. The one he gave himself just to end the ordeal my brother was putting him through.

At first, Monster didn’t react. At all. He sat there, staring at the pictures as if they had turned him to stone. He couldn’t process what he was seeing, and for a split second, I hoped it was because Sean was lying.

Then everything changed.