Page 65 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

“No, stop! Look at me!”

My chest heaved violently when I heard her voice. I hesitated. The poison in me demanded I ignore her. Do not look at her. She was a weakness. He deserved to die.

“Please!”

I glanced up.

She stood on the Irish balcony, hysterical, her hands gripping the rail so tightly that her knuckles were white. Those hazel eyes ripped through whatever was left of my soul. It was the first time I’d seen genuine terror in her eyes. Not just fear, but the kind of terror she wouldn’t survive. Out of everything she’d been through, everything she’d overcome, this was what would kill her. Losing him. Because of me.

Santino coughed beneath me, barely conscious, trying to drag air back into his lungs.

“Please,” she mouthed as more tears ran down her cheeks. Something in my chest cracked wide open. My mother’s face flashed before my eyes, tear-stained and battered as she begged Sean to spare her children. I finally understood a human emotion I hadn’t experienced since I was a twelve-year-old boy, having to choose between my life and my siblings’. Love wasn’t dragging someone into your darkness because you couldn’t bear to lose them. Love was letting go before you destroyed them, too.

I loved her more than I hated Santino.

I loved her more than I hated McKenna.

I wanted to be something better than what he made me. Even if it was only for her. Even if it lasted only seconds.

My breathing turned ragged as I forced my fingers to uncurl from the Italian’s hair. His head dropped forward, and he groaned, rolling onto his side and staring up at me through swollen eyes. I staggered back from him, each step a painful resistance against the Raw Mercy that demanded I paint my skin with his blood.

My body swayed. I fell against the cage. I felt hot. Too hot. My blood was burning. My vision blurred at the edges as I turned to look up at Soraya again, needing her. She was still crying. I’d do anything to stop it, to wipe away the tears I’d caused.

Sean shouted the name he gave me, demanding I kill. Kill. Kill. Kill. But I wasn’t his Monster. I was Maddox Moriarty. Heir of the Moriarty Family. And the only person my fury burned‌ for was him.

The adrenaline surged as I turned and stumbled towards the cage door. My heartbeat was wrong now. Too fast and wild to be anything but a warning. Whether it was the drugs poisoning me from the inside out or the loss of blood, it didn’t matter. I’d take him with me to hell.

The men had no weapons. They’d been forced to leave them all at the arena entrance as a precaution, so no one could interfere with the fight. McKenna was unarmed. His men were unarmed. I’d never had a better chance. Something metallic glinted on the floor outside the cage. I snatched it up, my boots tripping over each other and nearly sending me to the floor. The broken shard of steel cut into my palm as I gripped it tightly. Shouting erupted from all around the warehouse, but I couldn’t focus on any of it. I started climbing the steel bars at the front of the gantry platform, where Sean was barking orders at his men in a panic.

Soraya cried as Oscar grabbed her when she tried to step closer to the edge.

My hand slipped off the bar. I caught it again, hoisting myself higher as I stared up at McKenna. His face filled with delicious fear as he realised I was coming for him. And fuck, that felt good.

I hauled myself upwards again, only to be yanked back an inch by a weight on my ankle. I glanced down and saw Santino. He tugged harder, putting his full body weight into the pull. My body jerked violently backward before I could get a better grip.

“Sani, don’t!” Soraya screamed.

Santino’s bloody, beaten face beneath me was twisted with determination as he dragged me down with the last of his strength.

I lost my grip and the world flipped. The rattle in my skull as it hit the concrete floor should have been the last thing I remembered. But it wasn’t. It was her face. Those three words.

The shard of steel clattered uselessly from my hand.

I’d failed. After everything, I’d failed. A promise broken. Two siblings dead. Another to suffer the same fate. Sean still lived. No revenge. And I’d never know what it felt like to walk this Earth as a free man.

But at least she loved me. I just hoped she knew I loved her too.

We've Got You

No. No, no, no.

His hand slipped from the railing in slow motion. For a few impossible seconds, he seemed suspended in the air. A scream tore from my throat as his head hit the warehouse floor with a crack I felt in my bones.

Everything stopped, including my heart.

Silence. Nobody moved. Everyone stared.

He stayed sprawled on the floor, his eyes still locked on me. But he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t getting back up. The man who always got back up. The man who had survived everything.