Page 73 of Tempting My Mafia Monster

I shook my head and reopened the poem to show her, pointing to where he had signed it at the bottom. “She doesn’t know by Maddox Moriarty.”

It was the first time I’d learnt his last name.

“Moriarty?” Her eyebrows tightened as she strained to recall the memories, trying to drag them back through her disease. I leaned up on one elbow, my heart pounding as I realised she would have known about the alliance between Salvatore and Maddox’s father. Hell, she might even have met him.

“I must have read him before.”

“He’s not a famous poet, Mamma. Maddox Moriarty was the heir to an Irish mafia family. Zio Sal did business with them. Do you remember?”

I tried to keep the desperation out of my voice, but it was hard. I might get answers about the past without confronting Giovanni and explaining the whole situation. I wasn’t strong enough for that yet. I knew that once my brothers learned what had happened between me and Maddox and who Callum really was, they’d lose their goddamn minds. If any of them seemed relieved that Sani had killed him and forced him out of my life, I’d lose mine. What good would it do to create more tension between us? I wanted to protect my memories and cherish what we had without everyone’s opinions tainting them.

“Moriarty,” she repeated slowly. I touched her arm, desperate to hear anything she knew.

“Sean McKenna killed the Moriartys about twenty-four years ago.”

Her eyes sparked. “Si. Oh, what a wicked man. I remember that. Yes. The Moriartys. I liked them a lot. Awful, so awful what happened to them.”

“What happened to them? Weren’t we supposed to help them?”

She sighed, a long sound heavy with regret. “Sean wanted power over Ireland. He wanted all crime families to work under him. Cillian Moriarty fought back. The Moriarty family controlled Dublin and weren’t willing to give it up, as they shouldn’t. But Sean was vicious. He attacked Moriarty’s men in the streets, burned their businesses, and killed soldiers’ families. But Cillian struck back tenfold. Unfortunately, things got much worse when Cillian accidentally killed Sean’s young son.”

My eyes widened. I hadn’t fully believed Sean was telling me the truth about that. “Accidentally?”

“Cillian knew Ireland’s problems would be halved if he could get rid of Sean. He planted a bomb in Sean’s car, the one he always used for business, not for family. That fateful day, Sean put his son in it instead, along with his son’s nanny and two soldiers. The bomb killed them all.”

Merda, that was bad. I could see why Sean wanted revenge, but he’d started the war himself. He’d killed his own parents to take control. Who does that for greed and power? Only the devil.

“Was this around the time Zio Sal died?” I asked, keeping my tone light to avoid triggering any painful memories for her. Her relationship with my uncle had been complicated, to say the least. Her face tightened, and she scowled.

“I think it was a few months before he died. The war in Ireland was brutal. We had to be careful not to show too much involvement, because Diego Barbieri was supporting Sean. The last thing we wanted was to break our peace treaty with Southern Italy and start a war here. Little did we know that’s exactly what Diego had planned. Looking back, that’s probably the first attempt he made to force us to go against him. But we didn’t bite. Sal sent Cillian some of our men and weapons. But in the end, it wasn’t enough to save them.”

“What about Gio? Did Cillian ask for his help after Sal died?”

“Si. But Giovanni was in a difficult position. He’d just become Boss of Del Brenta, and the threat from the Leones was serious. We needed our resources here. As a new, young Boss and me as his newly appointed consigliere, we couldn’t risk a war with Diego. So we told Cillian we could offer his family refuge if he wanted to send them away from Ireland for a while, but we couldn’t spare any more men or resources.”

I dropped my head onto the pillow. I hated it, but it made sense. From a business and leadership perspective, Gio made the right call for our family. But the guilt was there. There was no guarantee that, if we had helped, the Moriartys would have beaten Sean, but they would at least have had a better chance.

“When we all heard what Sean had done to that family…” She shook her head in disgust. “We vowed never to do business with him.”

“What did he do?” I swallowed the lump in my throat. Maddox had never gone into detail about his parents’ deaths or about the night Sean took him. I’d never wanted to push him, as I could see how difficult it was for him to talk about.

“Oh, that’s not something you should want to hear, tesoro. It’s not a pleasant story.”

“I’m not as fragile as I look,” I argued, holding her gaze. I needed to know everything about what made the man I loved who he was.

She smiled and stroked a curl from my face. “Oh, I know. You are my daughter after all.”

She pulled herself up to sit against the headboard with difficulty. I forced myself not to help her, knowing that when she was lucid, she liked to pretend she still had independence.

“Rumour has it that Sean had someone contaminate the Moriarty family’s private water cistern. The entire family, many of their household staff, and some soldiers became extremely unwell, but had no idea what the illness was.”

“He poisoned them?” I gasped.

“He made them weak. He attacked their home when their defences were low, and they were too unwell to fight back in full force. Cillian tried to protect his family with everything he had, but he and his men weren’t strong enough to fight the men Sean brought with him.”

“He killed them while they were already suffering?” Sean was a coward. I didn’t think I could hate him anymore, but I was wrong. I hoped I had killed him, but part of me wanted him still alive, so I could kill him all over again.

“Oh no. That would have been too simple.”